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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

#341

Post by dane-pgp »

chrisseaton wrote: post #56
forty wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you pay taxes in cash? I don't think it's possible in my country.

> Can you pay taxes in cash? I don't think it's possible in my country. In most countries a tax payment that is due counts as a debt so is covered by legal tender laws, which do require that people accept payment in cash. It may not be an option presented to you, but it is usually legally available to you, if someone is trying to enforce a debt such as payable tax. Note that legal tender laws don't apply to a service…

> Scottish bank notes are not legal tender

In fact, in Scotland, neither are English bank notes. (Technically there is legal tender in Scotland, but only Royal Mint coins, and Bank of England one pound notes, which are no longer circulated).

http://www.rampantscotland.com/know/blknow10.htm

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

#342

Post by Nursie »

raspyberr wrote: post #131

How are there so many comments that don't seem to understand you can have both. YOU can keep using cards for literally everything. Cash just need to exist and businesses should be forced to take it. That doesn't mean YOU have to use cash. YOU can live happily without it and use cards but the less well off should still have the right to use cash. But just because they may sometimes use cash that doesn't mean that YOU…

As a small business owner, why do I need to deal with the extra expense of taking cash? I need to hold a float, take security measures to protect it, take time to count up, take time to go to a physical bank to deposit, all sorts of extra costs in staffing or just plain time. And all for a fraction of a percentage of my customer base.

It just doesn't make sense and I don't see why I should carry that burden.

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

#343

Post by johnisgood »

dylan604 wrote: post #199
commandlinefan wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Carrying cash is exactly how you lose it all If you can even put your hands on it in the first place. A $100,000/year salary is roughly ~$6000/month after taxes. Where are you going to go to get 60 $100 bills every month, even if you could protect them?

Getting detained police after receiving your weekly/monthly cash payment would look very suspicious to Officer Friendly as, surely everyone would agree, only criminals carry that kind of cash around. There are many twists and turns down the slippery slope.

Jeez. I take "lots of cash" out of the ATM, because when I do it, I do it all at once.

Also... drug dealers are cashless, they are using Monero! :D Ha!

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

#344

Post by defaultname »

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…

While the linked article and the twitter thread it links are both quite good, your core point is absolutely correct.

As stated elsewhere, this is a minority government. If there is a single actual case of someone donating some small amount and having their account frozen, with the corresponding life mayhem, may the Conservatives use it to bludgeon the Liberals.

But there hasn't been one. Not a single case. A couple of opposing politicians and twitter personalities have invented vague claims of cases, but these are clearly a fiction (or have been clarified as "but it could happen" scenarios).

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

#346

Post by bobthepanda »

Supermancho wrote: post #236
walterbell wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> convenience always wins Until people discover that the next place they wave their watch has customized the transaction based on the previous place they waved their watch. It's all fun and games until a voice speaks behind the one-way mirror, shattering illusions of payment neutrality, e.g. the incident in Canada which prompted the original article.

> Until people discover that the next place they wave their watch I'm not sure this has ever caused a reversal. There is a minority who speaks out, which sometimes gets traction enough to cause some sort of change, but the majority take the path of least resistance.

it kind of depends.

there have been big pushes against red light cameras and similar automated license-plate enforcement in the US. which is actually kind of a wash, when you consider the alternative is often the unequal manual policing instead.

in an older version of this, I know some places had and then removed the ability of tollbooths to cut speeding tickets. (It's pretty trivial to establish speeding if you get between two tollbooths faster than the speed limit would otherwise allow.)

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

#347

Post by ClumsyPilot »

tzs wrote: post #245
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 w…

"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.'

Just recently we've had scandals with Credit Suisse and HSBC banking criminals and laundering drug money, add in all the tax heavens which are fully in UK/US jurisdiction and I think total volume of bitcoin transactions willvpale in comparison

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

#348

Post by heavyset_go »

neb_b wrote: post #19
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…

As long as bitcoin exists, the battle is not lost.

A few months ago, it cost $4 in BTC transaction fees alone to buy a $2 bottle of soda. Last spring, it cost $60 in transaction fees to buy a $2 bottle of soda.

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

#349

Post by Spooky23 »

jakobdabo wrote: post #13
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…

> 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…

Try getting rid of cashless stuff. It’s really liberating.

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

#350

Post by ACanadian »

catgary wrote: post #319
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…

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…

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