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In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

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Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#161

Post by nathanaldensr »

throw0101a wrote: post #138
noetic_techy wrote: post #39

Exactly correct. Anyone who is applauding this, just imagine the opposite political party in power using this against you or organizations you support. This is why no one should have been happy when executive orders became the norm in the US and congress did nothing. This is how you lose a senate and gain a Caesar, and look what happen to Rome eventually… Debanking someone who can now no longer pay for thier own defe…

> Anyone who is applauding this, just imagine the opposite political party in power using this against you or organizations you support. It was the opposite political party, the Conservative under PM Brian Mulroney, who wrote the Emergencies Act in the first place. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act#Legislative_hi...

I think this proves GP's point. Some people are finally starting to reject the "red vs. blue" false dichotomy.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#162

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #116
pdonis wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem IS businesses refusing cash. The public really does not benefit I benefit quite a lot from not having to use cash. I pay all my bills with credit cards. That means I can do it remotely, taking a few minutes a month, without having to leave my house. Having to pay each bill in person, in cash, would be a huge cost to me in time and effort. And if the companies I'm paying those bills to had to have the pe…

Nah, you're just not thinking about it. Trivial solution: I walk to bank some day once a month, give them cash, give them account numbers, sent. It'd be done in all of ten minutes. Does it exist where you live? Maybe, maybe not. Hell, if I knew you I'd do it for you, I'd enjoy obfuscating my accounts. And no-one is saying that literally every transaction has to be done in cash, just that it should be _possible_ to do…

[deleted]

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#163

Post by brendoelfrendo »

pdonis wrote: post #129
throwaway22032 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, you're just not thinking about it. Trivial solution: I walk to bank some day once a month, give them cash, give them account numbers, sent. It'd be done in all of ten minutes. Does it exist where you live? Maybe, maybe not. Hell, if I knew you I'd do it for you, I'd enjoy obfuscating my accounts. And no-one is saying that literally every transaction has to be done in cash, just that it should be _possible_ to do…

> Trivial solution: I walk to bank some day once a month, give them cash, give them account numbers, sent. It'd be done in all of ten minutes. I've never heard of any bank offering that service. > no-one is saying that literally every transaction has to be done in cash, just that it should be _possible_ to do so. Agreed. But it should also be recognized that there are many people who have good reasons to use payment…

> I've never heard of any bank offering that service.

I'm not a cash person, but this is literally how cash deposits work (in the US). You fill out a deposit slip with your account information, hand the slip and the cash to the teller, and that's about it. If you own checks, your check book probably came with some deposit slips pre-filled with your account information.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#164

Post by romaniv »

> The government’s action is troubling enough, but what should really disturb us is the ease and invisibility with which it is being done.

This is such a great point. I'm not sure why it needs to be made over and over again, but it seems that's the only way it doesn't get buried.

Let's play a game. I will be the institution, you will be the person. You will get ability to record me with your cellphone and post stuff online to complain about various issues. I will get the ability to see all your financial transactions, listen to all your communications, track your location, arrest you when I don't like you recording me, smear you online and pressure companies to ban you from literally any service imaginable, including banking.

Both of us will be bound by the legal framework, but when I don't like it, I will have the ability declare the state of emergency and scrap all the rules. Also, I will have sovereign immunity when I break the rules. Also, many of my actions will be secret because of national security.

Oh, and I will be doing all the things described above using your money.

Sounds fair?

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#165

Post by nathanaldensr »

sneak wrote: post #125
brandonmenc wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens is we make laws to outlaw this behavior.

The laws always have carve-outs for national security. What if the orders to deny you banking or travel or communications that come prior to a trial come from the state itself? Laws can't fix this.

Agreed. Laws work when there is a shared ethical base between the People and the governments that represent them. Unfortunately, there isn't, if there ever was. The very idea that just because there's a law means 1) it's ethical, and 2) it'll be ethically enforced is foolish. I wish it weren't as I consider myself a highly ethical person. That doesn't mean I'll deny reality.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#166

Post by csee »

chowells wrote: post #59
throwaway22032 wrote: post #3

The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. In the medium to long term it's simply incompatible with any reasonable definition of freedom. Surveillance is bad enough, but a system that allows governments to arbitrarily "turn off" thousands or millions of people at the push of a button is too powerful to not be abused. Even the mere existence of such a system has a chilling effect. Which I suspect is precisel…

Carrying cash is exactly how you lose it all to police corruption, sometimes called civil asset forfeiture. Cash is no answer without sufficient legal protections. And if you have sufficient legal protections, cash mostly just buys you inconvenience. The problem isn't businesses going cashless. The problem is leaving structural control over money to profit-seeking enterprises.

Carrying $50 in my wallet which gets seized with an extremely low probability is not how I "lose it all". It's how I "lose $50 maybe but most likely not".

How I would lose it all is if we go to a digital currency and I get banned at the flick of a switch!

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#167

Post by tryptophan »

lhorie wrote: post #151
throwaway22032 wrote: post #3

The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. In the medium to long term it's simply incompatible with any reasonable definition of freedom. Surveillance is bad enough, but a system that allows governments to arbitrarily "turn off" thousands or millions of people at the push of a button is too powerful to not be abused. Even the mere existence of such a system has a chilling effect. Which I suspect is precisel…

> The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. I don't think you realize how cashless society really is. For a long time, we've been running on fiat money, debt, and other forms of monetary constructs that are, for all intents and purposes, just numbers in some database without the backing of physical bills. Imagine coordinating all of the stakeholders for a condominium building project with only paper curren…

Paper money in the usa is a fiat money... (as is bank ledger money)

All fiat means is that it is unbacked by physical things, such as gold or silver.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#168

Post by rektide »

walterbell wrote: post #107
stickfigure wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Incorrect, the battle is partly won... Not in the slightest. You can mandate that people accept cash, but you can't force people to pay with it. The writing is on the wall; barring some sort of major social upheaval, cashless will be more dominant in the future. It's just too convenient. So let's figure out what kind of benign future we actually can build. "Everyone decides to use cash again" just isn't going to ha…

We don't need "everyone" to use cash for "everything", just some people to use cash for some transactions. It is legal in most jurisdictions to give discounts when paying with cash. That is enough motivation to use cash for larger purchases, since it saves costs for both the merchant and the customer. The only loser is the now-redundant payment processor.

The problem as stated by the topic is that those who are cashless (which is a vast & growing amount of people) are subject to having their digital assets frozen on a moment notice.

These proposals that we need to focus more on cash-ed people are mishearted & distracting from the core topic. Sure, a more cash-ready society is better able to help someone who has to rebuild their life, forced into a cash-carrying state. But it does nothing to prevent or remedy having your assets stripped from you by the whim of some megacorporation trying to improve their PR spin on a hot-topic.

People need assistance before being thrown to rock bottom by the corporation, not just after.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#170

Post by Koshkin »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #120
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, considering the "real world" too inconvenient and seeking ways to make it less so is what humanity has been doing for millennia, right? Most people use a washing machine rather than washing their clothes in the river, because indeed, the latter is too resource intensive, difficult and ugly if you have an alternative. Of course, this doesn't mean that a technology that provides convenience can't come with hidden…

Sure. Using cash is not actually inconvenient though. I often find that people use the term "convenient" to mean "more pleasing to me" which is completely different. It's not more convenient for me to buy milk from Amazon than it is for me to get it from my corner shop, it might be more pleasing if I didn't like seeing or talking to people. Those are two different things. By contrast if I had to wash my clothes in a…

Having to carry pieces of paper around, and getting pieces of metal as change is inconvenient. Come on people.
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