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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

#221

Post by kyrra »

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.

WSJ opinion pages actually have a good opinion piece on this yesterday. The general take I got is that all money police or judiciary collect should go into the state's overall general fund, rather than going to the local government.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/policing-for-profit-speed-trap-...

Mirror: https://archive.fo/T4tgR

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

#222

Post by BeefWellington »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #161
throw0101a wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Canada hasn't had a "red vs blue" system for ages. Even during Mulroney's heyday there were at least five parties holding seats federally.

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

#223

Post by brendoelfrendo »

mrleinad wrote: post #210
brendoelfrendo wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Can't you make deposits directly on the ATM? Where I live, the ATM takes your bills, counts them, and directly deposits them in the account you choose. No need to interact with any of those pesky humans.

Well, yes, but the GP comment was specifically saying that they had "never heard of any bank" offering the service of taking cash and depositing it into a provided account, which is weird because that is very much a standard service that brick-and-mortar banks provide.

Either the other user was uninformed or my sarcasm detector is broken today.

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

#224

Post by rr808 »

reaperducer wrote: post #76
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. Agreed. Recently, I came across a coffee shop and a bakery that proudly displayed "We are cashless. No cash accepted." signs. Not accepting cash is a method of discrimination. It keeps people without bank accounts out of your establishment. The overwhelming number of people without bank accounts are minorities and immigrants. That's why in some cities it is illegal…

> Maybe those businesses saved 0.006¢ on the transaction by not accepting cash.

I'm not sure where you are but in the US the banks will charge a few percent + 10c, its adds up to a lot of money. Plus you dont need to pay people to count/store cash, or get robbed which adds big savings.

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

#225

Post by nickff »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #161
throw0101a wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

While I agree with you that we shouldn't think in 'red vs. blue' terms, the Emergencies Act was actually written because Justin Trudeau's father had undertaken even more extreme measures in the 1970s, while leader of the same party that Trudeau currently leads. This is a situation where the Liberal party has consistently taken extreme anti-civil liberties positions.

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

#226

Post by heavyset_go »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #197
csee wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Yeah, it's super disingenuous. Right now I can have any number of different assets and freely trade them in and out of cash. There is no off switch for that. In digital currency land, once the account is turned off, that's it. If I can only pay via card, I can't barter at the local corner shop, I'm capital F fucked unless I can somehow convince a friend to buy everything for me. The end. I'm convinced, utterly convin…

> I'm convinced, utterly convinced, that these threads just attract propaganda bots or something. It's like they get stuck at the very top level of "but card means tap is save 0.1 seconds!" and that's it, all other executive function is disabled.

There are a lot of people who are invested via their job, their business or their literal investments, into cashless payments. Big public companies like Apple and Google have made billion dollar investments in cashless payments, and a lot of people hold their stock and/or work for them.

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

#227

Post by Findecanor »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #113
ddingus wrote: post #67

We do, and frankly need to reject the cashless society. Cash is pretty great. I am a fan, and have all the usual, ordinary reasons most people do. Cashless seems like a goal others want, but most people probably don't.

No COVID was the last push. Germs and all that.

The danger from being infected from germs or viruses through cash is highly overrated.

Studies have shown that among bank notes, microorganisms can survive for a significant time only on bank notes made of polymer. Most bank notes in the world, including US dollar bills, are made of cotton, linen or a blend of the two whereon microorganisms tend to dry out more quickly.

Copper is antimicrobial, and that includes "gold" coins, of copper alloy. Most "silver" coins, including those in circulation in the US and most of the EU are of copper alloys too. Steel coins are not so good though.

Bank of England has summarised several studies (starts 1/3 down the page) :https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2020/2020...>

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

#228

Post by josephg »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #159
caylus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything this reinforces the author's point about the dangers of lack of transparency of "digital jail". How do we know that statement is true? It's hard to hide who has been jailed (though "disappearances" come close), whereas we have no choice but to take the word of the entity which we have granted unchecked power that it has not abused that power. There's also plenty of wiggle room in their statement - they sa…

It is utterly amazing to me that despite all of human history being filled with stories of egregious human rights violations, lies, and propaganda coming from governments all across the political spectrum and world that people still trot out the "look, read this official information. This is proof!" excuse. How many more examples do we need before the opposite is assumed?

Eh. With 7.8 billion people on this planet, there is so much going on that you can find examples to support any narrative.

Want examples to show governments tend toward corruption? Easy. Want examples showing governments working well? Sure! Examples showing citizens exercising power? Yep. Examples showing citizens being crushed under the heel of their government? We have that too! Black people being killed by police? Sure! White people being killed by police? That happens too! How about police getting attacked by civilians? Google has you covered.

> How many more examples do we need

If you go looking for examples to support your narrative, you'll always find them. We need data and analysis. And no, the plural of anecdote isn't data.

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

#229

Post by wolpoli »

throw0101a wrote: post #130
john_moscow wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually looked into the incident with the donor's account being frozen. From what I could understand: 1. The person made a donation to the Freedom Convoy. 2. Trudeau signed the Emergencies Act, giving rather broad power to freeze bank accounts without due process or clear recourse. 3. The person's bank account got locked due to an unrelated reason (false positive on the fraud check system). 4. The person either di…

> 1. The person made a donation to the Freedom Convoy. > 2. Trudeau signed the Emergencies Act, giving rather broad power to freeze bank accounts without due process or clear recourse The Emergencies Act is not retroactive. If this was the order of operations then their account was not locked because of the EA .

The order is retroactive. It simply specifies that institutions have a duty to cease dealings with people involved.

https://orders-in-council.canada.ca/attachment.php?attach=41...

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

#230

Post by conradev »

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…

How do you pay for digital goods with cash?

Are you suggesting that every single online business that exists should have a mailing address to mail cash or checks, and have people to process them?

I imagine that you pay for software in some form, as an example of a digital good. Do we need to go back to burning CDs and buying software in physical stores with physical money?

Reject it all you want, but there is no going back.

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