The thing about the cashless surveillance panopticon is that it still can't stop illegal drugs. Every prison is exactly that kind of surveillance society, and in every prison drugs are readily available. HSBC is one of the principle members of this privatised money system. It was found to be laundering money for international drug dealers, and got off with a slap on the wrist. Nobody working at the bank has been pros…
I don't mean to be pedantic, but that statement would definitely be improved with a link to a source
In praise of cash
61–70 of 369 posts
Re: In praise of cash
#62While I agree that cash is extremely convenient and largely anonymous, it is still much more of a hassle to manage than credit or debit cards are. I lived in NYC for a bunch of years and the one thing that I absolutely do not miss is paying for >$100 dinners, entirely in cash, because the restaurant was "too cheap" to handle processing and transaction fees.
Heh, where I live in Brooklyn there are no places that take card for less than $20 (sometimes $10). It definitely required some adjusting.
Re: In praise of cash
#63While I agree that cash is extremely convenient and largely anonymous, it is still much more of a hassle to manage than credit or debit cards are. I lived in NYC for a bunch of years and the one thing that I absolutely do not miss is paying for >$100 dinners, entirely in cash, because the restaurant was "too cheap" to handle processing and transaction fees.
I assure you the reason they didn't accept anything but cash was not because they were cheap but because they could mix in and clean up dirty cash from their other clients for a fee without an audit trail.
Also related, tax purposes, e.g. they can pay workers under the table.
Re: In praise of cash
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I must admit that I don't understand the details of bitcoin. But if I understand correctly, can't a majority of owners block your transaction?
Most Bitcoin owners have absolutely no say in whether or not your transaction goes through. Only miners can do that. Big miners can easily delay your transaction, by refusing to include it in a block, but the only way they can prevent your transaction entirely is if all of the miners collude not to include it.
You only need collusion among a majority of mining power to ignore a transaction, not all miners.
It's still effectively impossible because it would undermine confidence in the system (which is why people are willing to pay miners in the first place).
Re: In praise of cash
#65In my experience as a college student, it is exceedingly rare to use cash, especially cash in amounts greater than $5, for anything other than crime. While you can argue that one should be able to reasonably break laws and not get caught - anything else is a surveillance state and there is value to discretionary enforcement - I wouldn't characterize criticism of cash as just manipulative. For example, on my campus, t…
In europe most of the population seems to prefer to pay in cash (for clothes, groceries, electronics etc. pp.).
> In europe most of the population seems to prefer to pay in cash (for clothes, groceries, electronics etc. pp.).
That is a very coarse and completely unfounded statement. The situation differs greatly per country; you can spend months without touching cash in the Netherlands or Sweden. In the Netherlands we've passed the 50% mark for electronic debit card payments at a point of sale a decade ago!
Online purchases are soaring too across the continent, which means that for clothes and electronics there is a shift towards less and less cash transactions each day.
Re: In praise of cash
#66While I agree that cash is extremely convenient and largely anonymous, it is still much more of a hassle to manage than credit or debit cards are. I lived in NYC for a bunch of years and the one thing that I absolutely do not miss is paying for >$100 dinners, entirely in cash, because the restaurant was "too cheap" to handle processing and transaction fees.
> it is still much more of a hassle to manage than credit or debit cards are I don't really get this. I use credit cards (almost entirely online), but I've never used a debit card. Not out of any deep-seated aversion, I just don't see the point.
The appeal is largely that credit cards let you spend money you don't have, and debit cards, by definition, don't. For people who have a hard time operating within their budget with credit cards, this is a huge difference.
Re: In praise of cash
#67While I agree that cash is extremely convenient and largely anonymous, it is still much more of a hassle to manage than credit or debit cards are. I lived in NYC for a bunch of years and the one thing that I absolutely do not miss is paying for >$100 dinners, entirely in cash, because the restaurant was "too cheap" to handle processing and transaction fees.
Which means your bank knows if you buy a sex doll, if you have diarrhea, if you are a member of a political party or if you donated to your cult.
And I don't believe in the legal system enough to think that the information is not shared.
Also, cash is one of society safety net. You see, nothing is black and white, and society is not perfect. If it can control everything, then the citizen has no margin, no grey zone to try things that the current society consider wrong.
And this is a problem, because you can't make society evolve if you can't try what you want to change for first.
Cash let a small part of society locally try things that are not (currently considered) right. Without it, you would soon have a static society.
Another problem is that, because society is imperfect, it will create rules that in certain situation are bad for the people. Without a way to bypass the system at a local level, you are at the mercy of errors (not even talking about evil doing), with no short term solution.
Without cash, if visa or bank x doesn't like you, you are screwed. Without cash, if you are doing something moral but illegal, you are screwed. Without cash, if you are doing something that society consider immoral (ex: going to a gay bar in a repressive country), you are screwed.
Yes cash is abused, but a life without cash eventually would derive to something way worse : a rigid society.
Re: In praise of cash
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because the restaurant was "too cheap" to handle processing and transaction fees. I applaud businesses like this. The fact we slowly let a few giant private corporations enact a 1-3% fee against pratically the entire consumer economy would be ludicrous in any other situation. Plus the privacy concerns just are not worth the convenience. Whenever possible I use cash, simply so I slow the day coming where I can't fun…
The bulk of that transaction fee gets rebated back to the consumer as points, cash back, etc. I only use 2% cash back cards.
So anyone who isn't creditworthy (ie. poor) pays additional tax in the form of higher-priced goods. But to heck with them for being poor, right, because you get the convenience and cash back?
Re: In praise of cash
#69Obliquely relevant: A healthy society needs a bit of crime.
https://kpulawandsociety.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/durkheim-c...
Re: In praise of cash
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article you linked was on HN's or reddit's frontpage recently, that's why I wrote "most". ;o) (plus I don't know enough about every european country obviously). EDIT - looking at the date of the article it might have been not the same, but a similar one.
Anecdotally, I think you're generally right that Europe isn't as heavily into plastic (whether credit cards or something else) as the US. (Though they're pretty widely-accepted in the UK where I spend most of my European time.) I'll be in Germany at the end of the month and it sounds as if I should definitely expect to pay cash a lot of the time. Sweden does seem to be this cashless outlier for some reason. [EDIT: I…
> Anecdotally, I think you're generally right that Europe isn't as heavily into plastic […]
Depends on your definition of plastic. Debit cards are common here. Europeans tend not to use credit cards as much as Americans though; they are mostly used just for travelling or (international) internet purchases.