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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

#361

Post by JamisonM »

34679 wrote: post #254
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.

You can get yourself all twisted up in semantics if you want.. lots of people seem to be arguing all sorts of goofy stuff - Canadians that work in the banking sector actually know the government is telling the truth. That is what is actually going on.

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

#362

Post by Bud »

Ok, fine, perhaps we need to take Trudeau's measures more seriously, and the ramifications of his measures, but guess what else we need to take seriously?

The current threat of Trump-inspired fascism worldwide. Of which the "protests" in Canada are but one facet.

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

#363

Post by ransom1538 »

14 wrote: post #252
AdrianB1 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

lol. I did some homework on this idea. Check this out: https://purse.io/earn/btc

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

#364

Post by JamisonM »

daenz wrote: post #292
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…

Here's David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. He was asked directly whether or not people who donate to the movement should be worried.[0] >If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars to this kind of thing, then you ought to be worried. Can you understand now why people may be concerned about the scope of who is being…

IDK, he said the scope is a donation of over $100,000 - so probably zero people should be worried?

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

#365

Post by ArchD »

heavyset_go wrote: post #348
neb_b wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You did not mention the Lightning Network, where fees are negligible. You cannot seriously research on bitcoin without coming across the Lightning Network.

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

#366

Post by heavyset_go »

ransom1538 wrote: post #333
heavyset_go wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

When I tried to sign up, I had to scan my driver's license, enter my SSN, take a picture of myself and attach a bank account. Doing all of that kind of goes against the anonymity aspect.

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

#367

Post by daenz »

JamisonM wrote: post #364
daenz wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. He was asked directly whether or not people who donate to the movement should be worried.[0] >If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars to this kind of thing, then you ought to be worried. Can you understand now why people may be concerned about the scope of who is being…

IDK, he said the scope is a donation of over $100,000 - so probably zero people should be worried?

I took it to mean if the "movement" (of which you are a member) is donating that much money, but I can see your interpretation as well. It's ambiguous, which is not a good look for an official on such an important topic.

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

#368

Post by dopidopHN »

stickfigure wrote: post #89
walterbell wrote: post #22

Earlier 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... 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…

Fun fact : a least one city in the country has a large percentage of bar being cash only. ( New Orleans )

It’s clearly to have difficult to trace accounting.

It’s a blip, but still, that exists and I don’t see that changing any time soon for those particular places.

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

#369

Post by BeefWellington »

34679 wrote: post #274
BeefWellington wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Anyone claiming this was a "peaceful protest" is I think at this point choosing to ignore the mountain of evidence to the contrary.

Separately, at what point does a protest cease to be peaceful?

What percentage of bad apples would satisfy you that this wasn't a peaceful protest? 1%? 10%? 50%? I'm curious because you can make that argument about pretty much any protest/disruption.

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

#370

Post by throwaway22032 »

decafninja wrote: post #256
pessimizer wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In the asymmetric centralised case of a reasonably established business accepting payments from thousands of people (and barely, if ever, issuing payments in the other direction) it's not. It's about the same, barring this hyperbolic stuff about "despising" coins.

In the generalised case, e.g. I need to pay my friend, or a builder, or a taxi driver, or someone at a market stall - essentially any standalone human, it's a complete mess. You need an account, so you need to decide whether you're an individual or a business, then you have that account, then you need a terminal for cards or an app or bank numbers for them to use an app to transfer or...

With cash: here is $20, done.

Cashless payments impose a bureaucratic structure which simply does not exist with cash. You give me thing I have thing, job done, bish bash bosh.

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