Live data from Hacker News

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

thehub.ca

331–340 of 849 posts

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

#331
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In Argentina there's a service named "Pago Mis Cuentas" (Pay My Bills). You can add all your services (gas, electricity, cable, internet, taxes, etc). When there's a new bill for the services you added, it's displayed on a list with checkboxes right beside each one of them. Check the ones you want to pay, click Pay, and you're done. It's linked directly to your bank account. The website was created by a bank consorti…

It's not, because this conversation is specifically about how much worse it would be to pay all your bills in cash, while you seem to be talking about a digital payment.

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

#332

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…

No, poll after poll has shown that Canadians were overwhelmingly against the truckers [1], and a strong majority supported the use of the emergency act (there was even a point where bringing in the military polled quite strongly with Canadians). There have also been a multitude of reports of violence, including at least one case where protestors attempted to burn down an apartment complex with its residents locked in…

You link to CNN and globalnews though. Not really unbiased sources. And I think we have learned about "polls" over the past few years, at least I have, in the US elections.

I have no doubt many Canadians are not happy about the protests. Maybe even most. But I don't believe these polls for one second. It looks like propaganda saying "see, everyone believes XX thing thing the government in power would like you to believe".

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

#333
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.

kraken.com? Just try a different exchange?

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

#334

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…

Your last sentence sounds like civil forfeiture and I certainly think it should be outlawed. As far as cashless society winning, I dunno, I'm definitely worried about that outcome, but it's straight up illegal in my state to not to accept cash in a retail establishment and a good number of bars I go to don't accept cards at all. I use cash all the time and I find it way more convenient than a credit or debit card. My…

> My wallet doesn't randomly prevent me from opening it at a grocery store I have been to a thousand times and stop me from paying for groceries.

One of my least favorite experiences was telling my banks that I was going to travel so that they don't freeze my accounts for "suspicious activity" when I start spending money at my destination, and then having them freeze my accounts anyway when I got there after trying to pay for dinner. Caused a problem with the hotel and the place I rented a car from, too.

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

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wor…

Act was made for the Borg but the Ferengi attacked, so we used it on them

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

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing loud noise at all hours of the night is torture and has been recognized as such since at least the Geneva Convention.

Yeah I think people forget that the protestors were making life miserable for tens of thousands of people with their incessant honking at all hours of the night. The rail protests just gummed up supply chains, this was actually harassing people.

not to mention the cancer patients in their death beds at the bruyere hospital... fighting to stay alive with 90+ db horns going for multiple hours along the streets

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

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wor…

> I'm genuinely baffled by how you can see protests as damaging to civil society

Protests that shut down cities and piss off residents for days/weeks at a time can be, particularly when the protestors break a ton of laws, urinate on the memorial to the unknown soldier, and the police aren't interested in fixing any of that.

> suspending the charter and using an act that has only been used in wars

The act has never been used before, AFAICT it's a new one, and it's specifically not about wars.

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

#338
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.

Every bank has been doing this since for at least 30 years. Companies register. It is simple and easy.

Telephone banking used this before internet banking.

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

#339

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…

> 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…

But it's really hard to get PAID any serious amount of money in cash, and it's increasingly hard to withdraw or travel with cash. Just because you can still buy groceries for awhile doesn't mean you can function for any length of time if the government and the cashless system is united in unbanking you.

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

#340
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

loving Hightowers recent foray into BTC on twitter [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower/status/14962234722087403...

Post reply on HN