91–100 of 628 posts
No mention about the privacy implications of having every transaction tracked? We're already at a point where pretty much every transaction is tracked and a cashless society makes being tracked a requirement to function in society. Is privacy even a topic of discussion with governments looking to go cashless? I still try and pay with cash wherever possible, but many offline/physical stores often require a phone numbe…
As a resident of Sweden, i can only say that this is the future for all western countries. Life is just better without cash. We don't pay the mental tax of always ensuring i have dollar bills on me to tip left, right, and center. Your phone is enough to get you through the day. The govt is still run by the people for the people here, so most people aren't worried about totalitarianism. Most beggars now have signs wit…
As long as you are fine with companies tracking every place you go (via GPS), everything you purchase, everything you view on line, and everybody you know. Then sure, the phone can replace cash. Often I do not want any record that I have purchased something, I will stick with cash. Thanks.
- Alcohol - Cigarettes - Drugs - Condoms - Feminist literature - Anti-feminist literature - Ammunition - Guns - Bible - The Koran - Marx’s The Capital - Low cut dress
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=lZye
Edit: See also this table
As a resident of Sweden, i can only say that this is the future for all western countries. Life is just better without cash. We don't pay the mental tax of always ensuring i have dollar bills on me to tip left, right, and center. Your phone is enough to get you through the day. The govt is still run by the people for the people here, so most people aren't worried about totalitarianism. Most beggars now have signs wit…
As long as you are fine with companies tracking every place you go (via GPS), everything you purchase, everything you view on line, and everybody you know. Then sure, the phone can replace cash. Often I do not want any record that I have purchased something, I will stick with cash. Thanks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Self sufficiency is a continuum, not a boolean. Cash decentralizes permission for economic transactions.
I'm genuinely curious, what would be the rationale or incentive for a private payment processor (in a competitive payments market) to reject a legitimate transaction? The only reason I can think of would be false positive on fraud detection or system error or the such, all problems with the medium, not with centralization/permissions.
Paypal cite the following reasons that they may freeze or suspend an account (at their sole discretion):
- You’ve received an abnormally large amount of money in your account that is way above your average
- Someone has filed a complaint to Paypal about your business
- A series of chargebacks have been placed against your account
- Your website has questionable content
- You are in violation of Paypal’s use policy. For example if you sell drugs or anything illegal, you may get banned
- Your account information is not up to date or your account is not fully verified
- Someone has logged into your Paypal account from a strange location.
- Your credit score is low or something with your background history makes you a higher risk customer
- They have detected fraudulent activity on your account.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Self sufficiency is a continuum, not a boolean. Cash decentralizes permission for economic transactions.
I'm genuinely curious, what would be the rationale or incentive for a private payment processor (in a competitive payments market) to reject a legitimate transaction? The only reason I can think of would be false positive on fraud detection or system error or the such, all problems with the medium, not with centralization/permissions.
> WikiLeaks' founder accused two members of Congress of pressuring MasterCard (MA) and Visa (V) to block payments to his group after it published thousands of confidential messages about U.S. diplomacy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
> Julian Assange charged Tuesday that Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Rep. Peter King from New York influenced the moves by both companies in December 2010 to halt the payments.
> Assange, speaking to reporters from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he claimed asylum in June to avoid extradition to Sweden to face charges of sexual assault, said the blockade had eliminated 95% of WikiLeaks' revenue and cost the group roughly $50 million in donations.
Of course, it could be argued that we don't have a competitive payments market. But then your proposition wouldn't reflect the real world.
I couldn't pay for a lot of things there, since the booths only accepted Swish (the only relevant Swedish mobile payment solution, it's a de facto monopoly). I couldn't sign up and use Swish on my phone, since it only accepts Swedish bank accounts. I couldn't borrow money from my Swedish friends either, since they didn't have cash (and it mostly wasn't accepted at the festival anyway).
When I could get someone to pay for me directly, transferring the money back to them was hard (since the festival didn't have any ATMs), so I had to go through the whole burdensome SWIFT procedure with getting their bank account number, their full name and address, their bank info, IBAN number of their bank etc, so I could send the money back when I got home to Norway.
Utopia my ass.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Untraceable anonymous transactions is the minimal requirement for it not to be harmful and dystopian.
I agree, but unfortunately I don't believe a society being run by humans would ever implement that. The leaders will not tolerate that kind of loss of control.
As a resident of Sweden, i can only say that this is the future for all western countries. Life is just better without cash. We don't pay the mental tax of always ensuring i have dollar bills on me to tip left, right, and center. Your phone is enough to get you through the day. The govt is still run by the people for the people here, so most people aren't worried about totalitarianism. Most beggars now have signs wit…
As long as you are fine with companies tracking every place you go (via GPS), everything you purchase, everything you view on line, and everybody you know. Then sure, the phone can replace cash. Often I do not want any record that I have purchased something, I will stick with cash. Thanks.
Don’t get me wrong, I barely carry cash on me. I just have a bit in a safe. But I recognize the vulnerability. Natural disaster. Black out due to a node failure or two. An actual attack on the merchant services infrastructure or bank. Sure, cash can be stolen. But so can digital funds and you’re not limited to how much you can fit in a bag and carry.
It’s also funny how folks complain about privacy and not wanting private entities to have their nose in their personal lives and track what they do. Especially those Vikings whine about that regularly. Yet they trust how much data with merchant service companies?