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

thehub.ca

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

#271
post #101
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can fix that, and it is being addressed. Cash is a great answer to a whole lot of basic commerce, small scale, freedom style, between adults just adulting. The problem IS businesses refusing cash. The public really does not benefit and we have not shown we are able to avoid abusing electronics. One day maybe. Right now? Not a chance. Cash remains necessary and the costs are not crazy enough to warrant all the abus…

> 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…

there's a huge difference between not having to use cash and having not to use cash

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

#272
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?

> 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.

Shouldn't we be talking about what actually happened, though, instead of buying into a false narrative that is being intentionally pushed by people with an agenda? I agree that freezing the bank account of a student in Halifax because they made a small donation to the convoy protest would be an abuse of power. But since that's not what happened, despite the fact that various people with a beef with Canada/Trudeau/liberals/etc. are claiming it did, what exactly are we debating here?

We know that, after a period of weeks and after economic losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the government has gone after the principal people organizing and financing the blockades and occupations. They have used force and arrested some of them. They have frozen the accounts of others. We can argue about whether or not those actions constitute "egregious human rights violations", because then we're arguing about actual facts and actual decisions, not strawmen.

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

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be greatly surprised if cash were a vector for COVID.

It doesn't matter. It still feels weird to pay in cash even if some countries are starting to relax COVID measures.

I've been paying in cash all throughout COVID, doesn't feel weird to me.

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

#274

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] Dependin…

With a large enough gathering of people, for a long enough time, there will always be some violence. That doesn't necessarily make the gathering violent and it doesn't mean the organizers had violent intentions. I've watched a few live streams from people just walking around, talking to protesters at the event and none depicted any violent acts of any kind. There also weren't any swastikas or rebel flags that I could see in the huge crowds. This leads me to believe the incidents that did occur were isolated and not representative of the group as a whole.

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

#275
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, fo…

[deleted]

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

#277
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?

I feel like if this actually happened to any one of the protestors, that person would be all over social media publicizing this. So far, to my knowledge, that has not happened.

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

#278

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] Dependin…

Are you just blaming any and all crime that happened during the protest on the protestors and thus inferring the entire movement is violent?

I mean the only thing connecting your first link to the protest was it happened in the same part of the city. That's it. No other evidence. If a guy beats his wife at home do you blame that on the convoy too?

Seems like a smear campaign.

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

#279
post #239

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.

> this is literally how cash deposits work (in the US) I wasn't talking about cash deposits. I was talking about paying bills. I can't go to my bank and give them the account numbers of all my bills and have the bank pay them for me. If I wanted to pay each bill in cash, I would have to schlep to each individual company I pay bills to and pay them.

There’s nothing that makes it inherently impossible to put bills this way in cash, though.

For example, in Japan, you can pay bills by taking them to the local konbini - which is probably no more than a couple minutes walk away - then handing them the bills. They scan barcodes, take your cash, stamp the bills, give you your change. Done. No need for ID or a bank account.

The reason that people can’t easily pay bills in cash in the US is not because it can’t be done.

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