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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

#251

Post by pdonis »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #136
pdonis wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Sure, if you sit at your desk all month, never visit a high street, and also can't use a postbox, this is an unsolvable problem. Got me. I'm out yo, physical interactions are better than this GPT-3 shite.

> if you sit at your desk all month, never visit a high street, and also can't use a postbox

I never said any of those things. And the idea that schlepping around all over the place to pay monthly bills in person is the best way to get physical exercise is laughable.

> physical interactions are better than this GPT-3 shite

IMO your posts read a lot more like GPT-3 than mine.

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

#252

Post by 14 »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #156
bko wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there were a digital cash that you can self custody, easily verify and transfer. In all seriousness, I think some form of cryptocurrency could serve this purpose and move us away from relying on banks that act on behalf of the state. Obviously there's a whole lot of baggage with the current cryptocurrencies out there today, but there's no reason we have to resort to carrying around pieces of paper or voting f…

> I think some form of cryptocurrency could serve this purpose and move us away from relying on banks that act on behalf of the state. If such a crypto would exist, with enough stability, trust and ease to make transactions, the state would be so unhappy that day that it would make it illegal faster than light. Removing monopolies from the state are huge challenges.

And this is the problem that I see as well. One can buy crypto but how do you convert to fiat currency if the government controls all the off ramps? This is the flaw with bitcoin as far as I can tell. Maybe one day someone on the darkweb will start selling goods like an Amazon style store where you can get anything you could on Amazon, like a drop shipping store, sent to your house for bitcoin. If you can link it on the internet you can have an intermediary ship it to you for bitcoin. I think there is a real market for such a store in the future. How the person who is collecting all the bitcoins exchanges their bitcoins to cash I haven't figured that part out yet. Maybe they do it in a country like Venezuela but I am not sure if that is possible.

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

#253

Post by ghaff »

pdonis wrote: post #241
brendoelfrendo wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can do so online (which I do for many monthly bills). But that doesn't really solve any perceived problems about maintaining anonymity associated with making cash payments buth neither does anything going through a bank.

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

#254

Post by 34679 »

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…

Facts are important, and so is language. The RCMP claim they provided a list of "influencers". The problem with that denial is that the set of all people who influenced the protest includes the set of all donors. In other words, it doesn't matter if they didn't share a list of donors if the list they did share includes all of the donors.

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

#255

Post by bko »

heavyset_go wrote: post #220
bko wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there were a digital cash that you can self custody, easily verify and transfer. In all seriousness, I think some form of cryptocurrency could serve this purpose and move us away from relying on banks that act on behalf of the state. Obviously there's a whole lot of baggage with the current cryptocurrencies out there today, but there's no reason we have to resort to carrying around pieces of paper or voting f…

Monero was blackballed in the US, and same with Monero conversion services like xmr.to. Coinbase refuses to support Monero. Turns out that governments do not like anonymous cryptocurrency at all.

It doesn't need to be anonymous. Even if the state knows your public address, they can't confiscate your funds without you giving away your key. They can try to prevent people from accepting your funds but that's a lot harder to enforce

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

#256

Post by decafninja »

pessimizer wrote: post #124
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…

This is simply not true. Not only is cashless not at all more convenient than cash for minor purchases, and not only are 10% of the US population unbanked, but in addition the access of third parties to purchase records just alarms people. In my circles, I often see people withdrawing out pocket money on a regular basis for small purchases, and using cash for large peer-to-peer purchases that they're unsure of the ta…

I pay with my credit card even for In the case where they don't accept credit, and I can't be bothered to go make the purchase somewhere else, I'll just tell them to take the dollar bill and keep the change. Not having to deal with loose coins is worth it.

How is carrying, paying with, and managing cash in your wallet more convenient than tapping a credit card or your phone?

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

#257

Post by [deleted] »

heavyset_go wrote: post #214
obviouslynotme wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem IS businesses refusing cash. They legally cannot, at least not in the USA, and I doubt in most countries. Thanks to the legal tender laws, businesses cannot legally refuse the legal tender, especially in its cash form. Once a deal is made and cash is offered, service must be rendered or it is considered stolen. A fun way to exploit this (before coin machines) was to go to tow truck lots, offer pennies, a…

Cash is only legal tender for debts. I can run a business that refuses cash as long as services or products are not rendered before payment. I can say that if you want to eat at my restaurant, you need to use credit or debit cards only.

[deleted]

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

#258

Post by MrStonedOne »

tshaddox wrote: post #246
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…

> 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.

Being able to audit the government requires being able to know what the government is doing, not just what the government says it's doing.

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

#259

Post by mardifoufs »

ripley12 wrote: post #194
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…

I think those things are true, and I live in Canada. I strongly support Trudeau's actions on this, and I'm sad that the government took so long to crack down on the "truckers". It's deeply damaging to civil society when a few extremists can shut down a city without consequences.

Suspending basic rights, the constitution, and due process without consequences over a protest is what's damaging to civil society. I'm genuinely baffled by how you can see protests as damaging to civil society but reacting to them by suspending the charter and using an act that has only been used in wars and armed insurrection before is perfectly healthy for our system. When has that ever happened in the western world before over a protest?

The gilets jaunes were miles ahead in terms of disturbance and there wasnt even a debate about "suspending" everyones rights until they stopped dissenting and being annoying. What a complete shame for canada and the nonchalant reactions like these make me even more impatient to leave this country as soon as I can get a new job. The recent events have been really eye opening.

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

#260

Post by xanaxagoras »

conradev wrote: post #230
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 goin…

All of these scenarios can be addressed with a fungible cryptocurrency.
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