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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

#451

Post by voldacar »

fuckcensorship wrote: post #85
xiphias2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi called it digital cash actually for a reason, not cashlessness. It has similar properties to physical cash, as the ownership can't be taken away trivially. The problem is that people are still waking up slowly. For me the Cyprus bail-in in 2013 was the wake-up call that I need full ownership of my assets.

The key issue with using Bitcoin as a digital form of cash is that Bitcoin lacks a key property of cash: fungibility. Combine this with the transparent nature of Bitcoin's blockchain and you have a currency which is an authoritarian's dream and not a currency that could/should replace cash.

Are dollars fungible by your definition? They have physical serial numbers printed on them.

I agree with your broader point, which is why I prefer monero.

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

#452

Post by Kye »

conradev wrote: post #230
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…

How do you pay for digital goods with cash? Are you suggesting that every single online business that exists should have a mailing address to mail cash or checks, and have people to process them? I imagine that you pay for software in some form, as an example of a digital good. Do we need to go back to burning CDs and buying software in physical stores with physical money? Reject it all you want, but there is no goin…

This doesn't seem much different from mail order catalogs. Shareware had an address to mail cash or check to.

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

#453

Post by defaultname »

busymom0 wrote: post #446
defaultname wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> If you dislike democracy because your guy isn't in charge, you don't like democracy and should just accept that fact and save the rhetoric. You think the war measures act like the Emergencies Act is "democracy"? Blacks, indigenous and hispanics have the lowest rates of vaccination in both Canada and US. If you think they are all "attempting an insurrection with daily QAnon rallies", you are living in alternate univ…

No post body was provided.

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

#454

Post by Mountain_Skies »

daenz wrote: post #436
pkd wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you listen to the next question, it seems like he was talking about people in the U.S. donating to the movement.

Which is strange if that is the case because they have no jurisdiction to make any kind of veiled threats towards U.S. citizens.

They could ban those donors from ever entering Canada but that's about it. If they successfully pull off equating the truckers with terrorists, then they could request the US extradite them but that's pretty far fetched. Then again, pretty much everything they've done has been far fetched so who knows what they'll try next.

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

#455

Post by busymom0 »

defaultname wrote: post #453
busymom0 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you dislike democracy because your guy isn't in charge, you don't like democracy and should just accept that fact and save the rhetoric. You think the war measures act like the Emergencies Act is "democracy"? Blacks, indigenous and hispanics have the lowest rates of vaccination in both Canada and US. If you think they are all "attempting an insurrection with daily QAnon rallies", you are living in alternate univ…

Quoted post unavailable.

No post body was provided.

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

#456

Post by walterbell »

thfuran wrote: post #422
walterbell wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need "everyone" to use cash for "everything", just some people to use cash for some transactions. It is legal in most jurisdictions to give discounts when paying with cash. That is enough motivation to use cash for larger purchases, since it saves costs for both the merchant and the customer. The only loser is the now-redundant payment processor.

Unless it actually ends up costing the merchant more money because they need to store and transport large amounts of cash and doing that isn't free.

Some merchants have influence over both revenue and cost. Some merchants understand the economic value of transaction data ("data about money is more valuable than money") and prefer to utilize their transaction data directly, instead of blindly surrendering it to random observers in the payment supply chain. Some customers, when given a choice, prefer those merchants.

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

#458

Post by fortuna86 »

dheera wrote: post #417
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…

In China almost everything is WeChat/AliPay these days. People almost never use cash, even the street vendors use mobile payments. It's a problem because if you do something that Tencent doesn't like, they can just shut you out of your life, quite literally. And I'm not talking about politically sensitive stuff. At all. I'm talking about doing stuff that Tencent, the company, doesn't like. I'm talking about e.g. if t…

I tried to pay for a beer in China using cash (Yuan) and they refused. Credit card, no way. They just gave me the beer for free.
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