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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

#831

Post by Terry_Roll »

gampleman wrote: post #688
Terry_Roll wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've been told by Citizen's Advice before that if they don't want to talk to you, the best is to send a physical letter to their registered place of business with a clause such as "You have 7 business days to respond" etc. This then firmly places a time limit on how much stalling they can do.

Thats assuming Citizens Advice will even help you. My local Citizens Advice wouldnt help me, but thats headed up by a retired copper.

Edit: I've always found his ability to track me down in the middle of some woods when I was out walking to be a rather curious use of technology considering he was retired and wouldnt have access to mobile phone triangulation facilities or the gps facilities on my phone. However he outed himself when he went back to get some answers for me!

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

#832

Post by razius »

maccard wrote: post #697
auggierose wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Card reader acting up is very different from your bank account being frozen for weeks.

Agreed, however it's also an experience that almost everyone has had, and the straightforward solution (carry two cards from two different banks) _also_ tends to resolve the issue of your bank account being frozen.

No post body was provided.

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

#833

Post by raxxorrax »

YZF wrote: post #816
raxxorrax wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Protest is fine when you don't break the law. Protests mostly happen when the law sucks. My country also only allows permitted protest, but it also is a shitty country regarding civil rights. Trump would call it a shithole country and some would be offended by that. He is technically correct though.

If I don't like traffic laws, let's say it really annoys me to drive slowly on residential streets, is it ok for me to go downtown and start smashing the windows of all stores on main street? I'm protesting so it's fine to break the law? People implying that Canada doesn't have civil rights seem to mostly not be from here and they've no idea what they're talking about. Rights are balanced with responsibilities. I too…

Obviously that was not a statement against any and all laws.

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

#834

Post by aembleton »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #823
aembleton wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you even pay for rent or utility bills with cash? I'm 39; so maybe too young to have experienced that but how does it even practically work? Did your landlord pop round once a month? For utility bills, did you go to the bank and ask them to transfer cash to a utility company; or maybe at a post office? Or did the utility company send someone around to collect cash payments?

You're here because you're an engineer, right? I have a bank account. You give me £100 and tell me to send £100 to 00273 00338435. Done. As other posters have said, in many countries this is a Service(tm) but generally, unless you've gimped payments anyone can just do this.

Good way to clean some dirty money

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

#835

Post by pvarangot »

XorNot wrote: post #461
pvarangot wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I only saw that sign a couple times during the early COVID days and just payed with cash to see what happened and they took it without questions.

That's because you were being an asshole to a retail worker, who doesn't want to get into it with you and maybe get assaulted about company policy. You foisted a potential risk onto someone without power. Don't do that.

My experience with this no-cash signs was only on owner operated shops. Maybe I was being an asshole, and they were being assholes to illegal immigrants that can't have bank accounts, and maybe we are all assholes but I really don't care. What I do care is about being able to buy stuff anonymously and without banks or the government getting in-between me or my friends and our food.

Any place big enough to afford having retail employees that I've been to in SF was always still taking cash.

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

#836

Post by fortuna86 »

smcl wrote: post #668
fortuna86 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder how this would impact tourism. Like, if I'm at the beginning stage of planning a trip and I'm choosing where I want to go then "weirdly requires setting up a payment app" is one of the criteria that puts a country quite far down my list.

> "weirdly requires setting up a payment app" is one of the criteria that puts a country quite far down my list.

Goes beyond that. The visa process is the most intense of any major country (if you have a high ranking passport). WeChat (the only way to communicate) requires you to be invited by someone else already in country. Street signs aren't in English, neither are any public transport aids. You can't communicate, can pay for things, can't find your way around (once you leave the cities no one speaks English). It was incredibly hard to travel there.

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

#837

Post by Bud »

0xy wrote: post #611
Bud wrote: post #362

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.

Fascists and dictators alike have used banks as weapons against classes of people they disagree with. [1] [2] [3] It seems you are okay with these methods as long as they're used on your political opponents. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsbank#Nazi_period [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Finance_(Soviet_Un... [3] http://www.commartrecovery.org/docs/EnglishAnselmiReport.pdf

You're right. I'm totally more fine with using these measures against Nazis, as opposed to, say, non-Nazis. Thanks for helping me to clarify that!

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

#838

Post by eindiran »

abandonliberty wrote: post #827
agentultra wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally not what happened in Canada. The Emergencies Act does not allow the government to violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It must also be agreed to by the provinces. It's use has a fixed duration and scope of action. It was designed to prevent executive over-reach while still allowing the government, at the federal level, to respond to unprecedented situations that require it. Everyone who was a…

I feel like we're overrun by troll and bot farms. Compelling content directly out of the tinfoil hat "freedom convoy" bible. Canadians are happy to have their cities back. Most of them (90%+), and most truckers (90%+), realize we're all in this together and don't try to hold their fellow citizens hostage. You need to recognize the sources on these are the same who've been saying that requiring someone to not infect o…

I literally laughed out loud when I read your username, thank you for that.

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

#839

Post by Nursie »

hamilyon2 wrote: post #719
Nursie wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it increases costs on business, which reduces the number of jobs available.

Something just short-circuited here. So, plain act of talking money from your customer is... inefficiency? What kind of business are you thinking about? Online-only?

> So, plain act of talking money from your customer is... inefficiency?

Hey, bit of a late reply, but yes.

You need to keep a float to provide change, you need security measures around your float and your takings. You have to count and reconcile the cash at the beginning and end of the day. Someone has to take it to the bank. Banks charge businesses for handling cash deposits. You need a cash register too! Which implies space as well as expense. There are many costs around a business taking cash.

Clearly, taking cards isn't free either, but it's often missed when people moan about card fees that sure, if someone gives you the cash for your goods, you have the cash now. But you don't just stuff it in your pocket forever, and credit card fees often come in cheaper than the cash handling costs mentioned above. People like to say that hiding card fees is evil, and cash customers are subsidizing credit card prices, but often it's the reverse that's true. While there may not be a per-transaction charge you can point to, overall costs to a business for cash are non-negligible.

Apparently this was a major driver behind the "Cashback" model in the UK in the 1990s when supermarkets started to be able to perform a cash withdrawal as part of your food purchasing transaction - it saved you a trip to the ATM, but more importantly for them it cut their handling costs and security requirements.

I've interacted with a few IRL businesses that don't do cash at all. Many food vans in London when I worked there were operating with a phone and a square reader only. This morning I bought a doughnut from a new doughnut shop here in Western Australia, and they run the business from an iPad on a stand and a similar reader. Any lost business from not taking cash is clearly not important enough for them to take on the added costs and problems.

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

#840

Post by Nursie »

undersuit wrote: post #774
Nursie wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if we put 'black people' in there you could make me look like a racist too! Wow. There are many reasons your allegory doesn't apply - 'people who want to pay cash' are not a protected class. Serving people with disabilities doesn't put me at risk of theft either, nor does it increase my banking costs. You're going to have to show some pretty good evidence of a positive social outcome to make this persuasive, beca…

If you're not going to service black people I might just have to think you are a racist. Just like if you refuse to serve the handicapped or LGBTQ I might think you are bigoted. And if you refuse to service people that use cash I might also make some further assumptions.

Unspecified ones that aren't anything like those other categories then? Seems about right.
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