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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

#581

Post by jokethrowaway »

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…

This is a political battle.

Whatever your laws will say, the politician will find an emergency to justify bypassing it. We all saw what happened with COVID. The only viable choice is not to have such powerful governments in the first place.

Contrary to the parent poster, I really think we do need the anarcho-libertarian dream - and it doesn't mean we should't have private justice or private protection: it just means this power shouldn't be wielded centrally (eg. by having private competing companies).

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

#582

Post by mellavora »

moralestapia wrote: post #134
chowells wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carrying cash is exactly how you lose it all to police corruption, sometimes called civil asset forfeiture. Cash is no answer without sufficient legal protections. And if you have sufficient legal protections, cash mostly just buys you inconvenience. The problem isn't businesses going cashless. The problem is leaving structural control over money to profit-seeking enterprises.

>Carrying cash is exactly how you lose it all to police corruption, sometimes called civil asset forfeiture. What a foolish strawman. As if people were to carry all their net worth in cash everywhere they go.

Not a strawman.

Nevada Cops Use Civil Forfeiture To Steal a Veteran’s Life Savings.

https://ij.org/case/nevada-civil-forfeiture/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28432736

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

#583

Post by mellavora »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #135
chowells wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carrying cash is exactly how you lose it all to police corruption, sometimes called civil asset forfeiture. Cash is no answer without sufficient legal protections. And if you have sufficient legal protections, cash mostly just buys you inconvenience. The problem isn't businesses going cashless. The problem is leaving structural control over money to profit-seeking enterprises.

From what I can see, your comment doesn't address the parent's comment at all. Government is not a "profit-seeking enterprise," it's a monopoly on violence . That is an enormous difference. I am not sure why you focus so much on businesses.

Because while you are correct in terms of political theory, the real world is different.

There are hundreds of news stories like this:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-11-12/stop-a...

Police departments often get to keep a large share of money taken during civil forfeiture. You bet this creates moral pressure to bring in more cash.

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

#584

Post by bryanrasmussen »

josephg wrote: post #228
nathanaldensr wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is utterly amazing to me that despite all of human history being filled with stories of egregious human rights violations, lies, and propaganda coming from governments all across the political spectrum and world that people still trot out the "look, read this official information. This is proof!" excuse. How many more examples do we need before the opposite is assumed?

Eh. With 7.8 billion people on this planet, there is so much going on that you can find examples to support any narrative. Want examples to show governments tend toward corruption? Easy. Want examples showing governments working well? Sure! Examples showing citizens exercising power? Yep. Examples showing citizens being crushed under the heel of their government? We have that too! Black people being killed by police?…

Don't forget: The plural of anecdote is data http://blog.danwin.com/don-t-forget-the-plural-of-anecdote-i...

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

#585

Post by artprojton »

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…

>We need more constitutional human rights.

I hate these solutions to all of the various problems. These governments and corporations don't care about any of these laws, make up new laws whenever they want, ignore laws whenever they want. You can't just undo millions of people using a system of physical money, but you can undo laws instantly, or not even follow them. All of the solutions to these types of modern societal problems have to be solved in a way that isn't just a few words in a piece of paper, because the people in charge can never be trusted.

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

#586

Post by MonsieurMoony »

Gadiguibou wrote: post #296

Since I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere in the comments so far, it's worth noting that the author has clear political allegiances. From the author's bio near the bottom of the article: > Howard Anglin is a post-graduate researcher at Oxford University. He was previously Deputy Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Principal Secretary to the Premier of Alberta, Jason Kenney, and a lawyer in New York, L…

> partially raised by Nazis

Any evidence for this claim?

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

#587

Post by ksec »

ksec wrote: post #474
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. Oh How the tide have turned. You may be surprised for half a decade from 2014 to ~2019 most on HN were "for" cashless society. Over the dozens of threads and thousands of comments. 90% of HN were happy when Tim Cook in 2015 declare Cash will be dead in the next decade. Apple Pay will make the society better. Tim Cook and Apple reiterate in 2016 and 2017 they want…

And I wish instead of putting technology into cashless, we should be doing the old sci-fi stuff which is putting technology into cash itself. Better Anti-Counterfeit money features .

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

#588

Post by zivkovicp »

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…

This is probably good advice, just remember that crypto is also digital and totally transparent (mostly). If you obtain your crypto via an exchange, then your wallet can be positively linked to your physical person, and (eventually) prohibiting transactions by blacklisting wallets would be trivial. :(

I imagine that is a ways off still because crypto is not _that_ mainstream, but I suspect the time to get started and make the effort to anonymise your wallet is now.

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

#589

Post by ladallada »

allisdust wrote: post #470
romaniv wrote: post #164

> The government’s action is troubling enough, but what should really disturb us is the ease and invisibility with which it is being done. This is such a great point. I'm not sure why it needs to be made over and over again, but it seems that's the only way it doesn't get buried. Let's play a game. I will be the institution, you will be the person. You will get ability to record me with your cellphone and post stuff…

Sounds fair as long as you are representing my views. When the coin flips I will get the unfairness of it. This is what current supporters of the regime (I guess we can now call it that) don't understand yet.

You're talking to one right now. So let's discuss.

My view is that everyone has the right to protest whenever and whatever. And you can also as part of your protest show a little bit of civil disobedience, like break a few windows, burn a fire can, chant loudly through the night keeping everyone awake, or block some roads. Something to really get people to pay attention and really listen to what you have to protest about and see how serious you take the matter.

But after people did notice you, and did listen, and after they've asked you to please stop your civil disobedience now and continue your protest within the laws, if you still continue with civil disobedience, well it is normal for the government to then follow up with threats of consequences, like tear gas, handcuffs, jail time, fines, account freezes, etc. And if you still refuse after the treats, then it's normal for the government to follow through with it after all that, and force you to now obey the civil laws.

This I feel is true of all protests, may I agree or not with the protesters.

You can continue to protest, but you can't be breaking the laws forever. We can't have people block the biggest commercial boarder between Canada and US all year long because they're protesting. Once the message has been heard, if people didn't care, it means you don't have support, and you kind of have to accept that. You can keep protesting normally hoping to slowly build more and more support, but you can't keep civil disobedience going on until you get support, because that's starting to get closer to coercion.

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

#590

Post by ArchD »

heavyset_go wrote: post #564
ArchD wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Off-chain solutions to the inherent inefficiencies of blockchain applications also sidestep the advantages that cryptocurrency proponents promise blockchains will bring.

How? Is permissionlessness and decentralization inherently harmed by using the Lightning Network?
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