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

Post by DeathArrow » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 6:35 AM UTC

Terry_Roll wrote: post #376

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…

I had my only personal UK bank account frozen without warning for weeks. The first I knew of it was when the call centre wouldnt answer the phone for 45mins from the shop where I had just tried to use the card. Had to abandon the process and go home. Next morning, call the bank call centre, do security get told they cant talk to me. The processes to get the account activated was interesting, I couldnt complain to the…

Post by Nursie » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 6:44 AM UTC

allisdust wrote: post #468

beloch wrote: post #287

The most concerning thing about Trudeau's use of the Emergencies Act is that it was both unnecessary and, despite the protests being quelled, ongoing . First, the police in Ottawa chose not to enforce even basic laws in the area of the protest for several weeks. The result was lawlessness and a total lack of respect for the police. They were being jeered at for putting threatening flyers under windshield wipers one d…

Is it really unclear? There are examples from other countries. Erdogan got emergency powers during a coup and continued to hold on to them for a long time and before finally giving up, he made enough changes in the constitution and law that effectively he retains all of them. I see the same pattern here. I would be surprised if there is going to be another PM ever in Canada. If it sounds ridiculous, think about the f…

Post by convienent888 » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 6:45 AM UTC

jjav wrote: post #513

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. Very much this. It is disappointing and scary to see tech people, of all groups, who like this idea. Cash is a perfect currency. It is strictly peer to peer, fully fungible, can't be blocked or censored by any party, anonymous, has no dependency on anything (still works when the electricity and internet are down).

Post by jjav » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 6:48 AM UTC

decafninja wrote: post #381

throwaway22032 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

I'm not sure I quite understand, but doesn't the bureacratic structure of cashless payments also provide the benefit of automatically documenting all your transactions for you so that you don't have to keep track of them manually? Unless, as I mentioned in another reply, your intention is to hide such transactions for whatever purpose - i.e. I know quite a few merchants use cash payments to avoid paying taxes. But th…

Post by ekianjo » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 6:51 AM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #206

stickfigure wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. In classic HN fashion, everyone disagreeing with this is focused on their own solipsistic perception of the relative merits, technical and otherwise, of cash versus electronic payments. But convenience always wins. The not-yet-evenly-distributed future is represented by App…