In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by pdonis » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:40 AM UTC

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #223

mrleinad wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> he 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

No, I said I had never heard of any bank offering the service of taking all the account numbers of all the bills I have to pay and paying them for me out of my bank account.

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

#242

Post by pdonis » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:41 AM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #235

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.

It sounds like you're talking about taking cash to your bank and depositing it into your own bank account, which of course you can do. The original commenter was talking about taking cash to your bank and somehow very quickly distributing it to everyone you owe money to this month.

> The original commenter was talking about taking cash to your bank and somehow very quickly distributing it to everyone you owe money to this month.

Exactly.

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

#243

Post by mardifoufs » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:42 AM UTC

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...

That's a bit misleading, considering it was replacing the War measures act that was even worse. Mulroney's government didn't "create" the law, they just toned down the original (which is also why we don't call it "martial law" anymore but it's in the same vein). And IIRC, the only two PMs in Canada's history that actually enacted the war/emergency measures act outside of an actual war are... the two Trudeaus.

Actually it's funny since Mulroney never used it either even when it could have been justified. He was the PM during the Oka crisis [0], which was a full on armed conflict between the army and first nations nations that also lead to closed bridges & deaths. I can't imagine what we would call that nowadays if we call the truckers insurrectionists, terrorists, etc. I guess they understood the monumental consequences of enacting federal emergency measures liberally back then

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis

(It lasted 77 days, involved at least fully 100 armed militants, blocked 3-4 bridges around montreal for sometimes weeks, killed police officers, involved a literal 5km frontline between the 2 sides and yet Mulroney was very worried about involving the federal government and even more so playing with emergency measures. Even better: the government actually talked with the protestors and didn't treat them like untouchable non-citizen foreign agents. The crisis was solved with negotiations)

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

#244

Post by lhorie » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:42 AM UTC

throwaway22032 wrote: post #212

lhorie wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But surely you must realize that there's more to money than just paying bills. Japan still has a strong cash culture, but even there people put their money in a bank. A cash society cannot be resilient to an evil government if you consider that said government could theoretically freeze funds at the bank level. In fact, this scenario sort of happened in Brazil in the 90s, and that's a country that had a very large po…

There is a distinction between freezing someone's accounts and ability to open accounts for the long term vs. them beginning to starve within days because they don't have any way to pay for anything immediately.

> them beginning to starve within days because they don't have any way to pay for anything immediately

I mean, if that's the only scenario you care about, you can just carry more cash in your wallet.

But when you said "a system that allows governments to arbitrarily "turn off" thousands or millions of people at the push of a button", that sounded like you were worried about more than just not having enough money for groceries for the week.

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

#245

Post by tzs » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:42 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #119

Another day, another answer to "What is Bitcoin good for?" Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30435383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30408611

Bitcoin increases the chances of a dystopian authoritarian future happening, precisely because for the most part the use cases where it actually works better than the regular banking system are when someone is trying to evade the law.

Proponents like to imagine that people using it to evade the law will mostly be using it to evade unpopular laws such as laws that restrict civil rights, but I thinking they are being way too optimistic. There are far more people who are simply criminals and fraudsters who need to evade popular laws in order to blackmail or steal from or scam ordinary people than people who need to evade unpopular unjust laws.

This will lead to public support for laws that extend things like KYC down to even small ordinary transactions and the government knowing how much you have and how much you spend and where it all came from and where it all goes. To make that work the government will need a lot more surveillance but the public will be fine with that.

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

#246

Post by tshaddox » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:43 AM UTC

caylus wrote: post #81

adriand wrote: post #57

I agree that this needs to be taken very seriously. However, the author overstates his case significantly when he writes: > Doing this to someone—a small business owner in BC, a public servant in Winnipeg, a student in Halifax—who made a small donation to support the convoy is a clear abuse of power. However: > The RCMP, banking sector and federal government said Monday that account-freezing powers bestowed under the…

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…

> 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?

If a crucial part of your argument is the epistemological claim that we obviously can't trust anyone who presents evidence or arguments that we don't like because they could be lying, then there's clearly no way of having a reasoned discussion.

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

#247

Post by BeefWellington » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:45 AM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #145

Excellent article and one that I wish my friends would read. Recently on a hike I mentioned how upsetting Trudeau’s actions are, and none of my friends had any idea what was happening up in Canada, except someone talked about a few things that I don’t believe are true: truckers were violent, few Canadians supported them, etc. - I think those things are not true. As other people here have pointed out, cashless society…

> except someone talked about a few things that I don’t believe are true: truckers were violent, few Canadians supported them, etc. - I think those things are not true.

Have you sought out the information on whether it is or not, or just decided it wasn't?

Re: violence:

The scariest to me personally was someone attempting to start a fire in a building nearby to the convoy while duct taping the doors shut.[1]

Depending on your threshold for violence, the numbers could vary greatly, from a handful to several hundred.[2][3]

Regarding polling, there were a number of polls showing they didn't have broad support, especially as time went on.[4]

[1]: https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/ottawa-police-investigating-attemp...

[2]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/hate-crime-hotline-ott...

[3]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13-Zg8yjEPYyybbLy70njbWxG...

[4]: https://angusreid.org/trudeau-convoy-trucker-protest-vaccine...

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

#248

Post by pdonis » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:45 AM UTC

throwaway22032 wrote: post #215

bugbuddy wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The idea that cash is this hilariously inconvenient thing is a complete fabrication. >That's a strong statement without considering that your experience might not match others'. IMHO, both the original statement and the respond are opinions. It may well be the case that cash is universally not “hilariously inconvenient.” Without some empirical evidence, it is just a shouting match. In my opinion, cash is actually…

Nah, we're just not talking about the same thing. He's saying that using cash is inconvenient because no-one uses cash where he is. I'm saying that it's not because at its' core it's fundamentally just handing over a bit of paper. It's not a statement about how many people accept cash where I am. I can't easily pay my mortgage with cash directly either. The point is that it's not an insurmountably difficult thing. Th…

> He's saying that using cash is inconvenient because no-one uses cash where he is.

No, I'm not. I'm saying using cash is inconvenient for me for things like paying my monthly bills because it would require me to physically go to each individual company I pay bills to and pay them in person. Whereas with a credit card I can pay all my monthly bills in a few minutes from my desk at home. Even if my utility company, for example, would accept cash in payment (as they probably would since most companies offering basic services like that are required by law to accept cash), I wouldn't do it because of the huge increase it would be in time and effort every month. I have better things to do with my time than schlep around all over the place to pay bills in person.

> I can't easily pay my mortgage with cash directly either. The point is that it's not an insurmountably difficult thing.

You're shifting your ground. Before you were saying that using cash wasn't inconvenient. Now you're saying it is for some things, like paying your mortgage. Which is exactly my point.

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

#249

Post by Supermancho » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:46 AM UTC

upsidesinclude wrote: post #43

jakobdabo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. No, that battle is lost. Cashless is easier and more convenient, it's hard to beat that. We need more constitutional human rights. It's not okay to take or freeze somebody's money/property without any court decision. Edit: some of the answers assume that I'm against cash or that by saying "battle is lost" I mean cash is gone; My point of "cashless winning" is tha…

We don't have limited rights. You need to work on understanding that rights are not granted. Rights are inherent. Enumeration of rights is only to emphasize the importance

> We don't have limited rights. You need to work on understanding that rights are not granted.

That's a definition you accept, which is not a useful definition to me.

There are rights that are not inherent and sometimes the legal and moral mix. eg I don't have the right to take an organ from a human who has not yet suffered systemic death, unless they have gone through a process that includes giving consent to that process that may allow the organ to end up under my purview AND I accept it.

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

#250

Post by pdonis » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 1:47 AM UTC

throwaway22032 wrote: post #215

bugbuddy wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The idea that cash is this hilariously inconvenient thing is a complete fabrication. >That's a strong statement without considering that your experience might not match others'. IMHO, both the original statement and the respond are opinions. It may well be the case that cash is universally not “hilariously inconvenient.” Without some empirical evidence, it is just a shouting match. In my opinion, cash is actually…

Nah, we're just not talking about the same thing. He's saying that using cash is inconvenient because no-one uses cash where he is. I'm saying that it's not because at its' core it's fundamentally just handing over a bit of paper. It's not a statement about how many people accept cash where I am. I can't easily pay my mortgage with cash directly either. The point is that it's not an insurmountably difficult thing. Th…

> it's fundamentally just handing over a bit of paper.

No, it's handing over bits of paper at the particular physical location of the person or entity you are paying. For some transactions, like paying for your food at a restaurant, that's no problem because you're there anyway. For other transactions, like paying monthly bills, it is a problem.