Money is speech. The corporations have benefited and so shall we.
In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
301–310 of 849 posts
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lost in the sense of look around how people are spending their money. I'm very happy for that law, and hope common sense will prevail and cash will be around for a long time. But you can't deny that vast majority of money transactions in the modern world is cashless. Hence my point that the battle is lost - if you take away average person's right of using their credit cards or bank accounts, how are they supposed to…
I just realized last night that the self check outs at Walmart don't accept cash, as far as I can tell, and that the only choice is to use their regular till but that is staffed by one person so it is always a long wait which is what I am sure Walmart has planned to discourage its use.
>I just realized last night that the self check outs at Walmart don't accept cash, as far as I can tell
They do where I live.
All of the purpose build self checkout machines at Home Depot are cashless but all the ones that can be operated by an employee do cash when in self checkout mode.
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#303Earlier 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 is talking about a solution which would be vulnerable to the exact sort of "digital jail" being referenced in the article. They've added a central authority to their decentralized solution, in the form of the absolute classic way banks are used against people - by freezing accounts and deposits etc.
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 cash is exactly how you lose it all to police corruption, sometimes called civil asset forfeiture. If you have police seizing assets for bad reasons, allowing them to automate the process is going to make things worse, not better. Not to mention that accounts can also be locked (at least temporarily) via software bugs, overzealous security processes and identity theft, all of which happen all the time. Cas…
yep. I really like the system we have in Poland, where you have a full choice. You can live entirely cashless or cash only or hybrid.
You can pay any utility bill with instant transfers using a few clicks or with cash by visiting any post office where they wire the money to the service provider on your behalf.
Having options is always better than not having options and with our history of authoritarian governments who loved confiscating citizen's assets, I hope the current financial system stays as is.
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No, that battle is lost. Cashless is easier and more convenient. Incorrect, the battle is partly won in several U.S. cities (including NYC & SF) which passed laws to mandate acceptance of cash. However, cash-acceptance laws were mostly motivated by the unbanked, who are now being used to justify the introduction of nation-state CBDCs. China's CBDC is two-tier and preserves retail bank competition. People close to t…
> Incorrect, the battle is partly won in several U.S. cities (including NYC & SF) which passed laws to mandate acceptance of cash. I presume this[0] is that story... If i understand correctly, federal law also requires cash to be accepted to repay a debt, which perhaps interesting to some, usually includes restaurants; you eat your meal, and incur a debt doing so. Perhaps with takeout they could refuse to hand over t…
Only if the restaurant takes payment after the meal. If they require payment before (like at McDonald’s), it isn’t considered a debt.
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#306What good is money if it can't buy you the services you require?
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#307Freezing the assets of anarchists rioting in the streets is wonderfully Canadian, and I salute you. But locking people out of the banking system is not just limited to digital realities, I know because I had my bank account taken away from me 30 years ago. The practice of locking people out of the banking system, usually because they deserve it, is in fact exactly what is fueling the check cashing industry. It is what creates a subclass of homeless people. So I guess I'm just trying to say that this is nothing new, and it is certainly not unique to the experience of a few anarchists who don't want to wear their masks.
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#308The 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.
This is a straw-man argument that civil asset forfeiture is a reason to support cashless. Civil asset forfeiture applies to both cash and debit cards(do an AltaVista search about it). Also, I can’t decipher the contextual meaning of your last sentence.
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sending a check in the mail is not the same as having a digital currency. You can add cash to the bank account and write the check.
You still need to have a bank account to do that, and bank accounts are one of the first things law enforcement freezes when they want to take away people's assets. Objecting that the deposits you made into the bank account were cash won't help much at that point.
You don't need a bank account to send a money order. You just need to visit a post office with cash.
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
In response to the 2012-2012 financial crisis in Cyprus[1], the Cypriot government decided to take 47.5% of uninsured deposits over the amount of €100,000 in the Bank of Cyprus, and all deposits over the amount of €100,000 from the Laiki bank. Greece did something similar with their bonds. "Haircuts"[2] are regularly floated as solutions in financial crises. Just because it didn't happen during the last crisis, doesn…
Conversely if your house burns down 100% of the money under your mattress is now worthless.