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Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

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Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#121

Post by whartung »

permo-w wrote: post #40
3pt14159 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can't be tracked If that were true, then criminal elements wouldn't need to severely launder their money. It's a spectrum. Cash can be tracked, each legitimate bill has a unique serial number, and yes, at least at present I haven't heard of private actors outside of those that service law enforcement tracking it, but the reality is that if you withdraw $8k to pay for a motorcycle and hand it to a guy that sells you…

are you suggesting that the serial number of every note you withdraw is registered against your account?

I admit this is a bit of tin hattery. But that said at my bank the cash is distributed from machines that the teller uses. You go up, make a withdrawal, they type the amount into the machine and bills are counted out.

I am sure this offers several advantages to the bank. That said, however, maybe I can see it being straightforward for these machines, along with ATMs, to log bill serial numbers as they’re distributed.

I have no idea if this is being done, simply, at least at my bank there’s an avenue for it to happen. I would also freely admit that it would be an imperfect system. But still food for thought.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#122

Post by thebigwinning »

scoofy wrote: post #66
thegrim33 wrote: post #47

The primary benefit of cashless is pretty much just the ability to be lazy. You swipe a card in a reader instead of having to count out cash. That's the major benefit. All things being equal, sure, it's more convenient. But all things are not equal; in my opinion the potential negatives that others in the thread have listed overwhelmingly outweigh the ability to be more lazy. That so many people have the desire to di…

The fact that getting mugged is so uncommon these days shows how naive this comment is to the second and third order effects of a cashless society. I think cash should always be an option, but I don’t pretend that cards haven’t dramatically improved our lives.

This might have something to do with an increase in surveillance and criminal record keeping.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#123

Post by skinkestek »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #86
londons_explore wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you visit Georgia (the country, not the state), they have a cool system for cash payments to websites. You go on the website, order your stuff. When the normal payment screen that comes up, instead of Mastercard or visa, you choose "Cash". You'll then be sent a text message with a number (or the number appears on the screen if you don't have a phone). You go to any ATM anywhere in the country, put that number into…

Do you have an account with the ATM provider? I'm wondering how these payment providers are in compliance with KYC and KYT regulatuons.

TLDR: it is a feature, not a bug

Long version:

I don't think Georgia has copied what I think of as the mistake of KYC, yet at least.

I feel KYC regulations as they exist today are a big mistake, that does little good, more harm than good and causes a lot of extra work and annoyance.

People always seem to think that de-anonymizing things will always make things better.

As I get older I feel the more someone wants to know my real identify the more likely I am to be abused somehow.

Meanwhile, talking to thousands of absolute strangers here on HN or via an anonymous reddit account or something feels relatively safe.

I have also with time started to think that in the long run the risk from governments harming me or my family is a lot bigger than the risk that someone else does it.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#124

Post by annexrichmond »

raincom wrote: post #39

Big brother wants to surveil on everyone, that's the goal of any cashless society. How the big brother can force shutdown a business, say, X, which doesn't comply requests without warrants? Just have visa/master/paypal (third party) to not do business with X, because X violates some TOS. Even though inflation has increased three folds since the bank secrecy act, they have kept the limits so low to track any cash entr…

Governments would have loved this power during the Covid lockdowns

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#125

Post by arcticbull »

nordsieck wrote: post #118
arcticbull wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally said 'lawful' transactions. Fraud is not lawful.

> I literally said 'lawful' transactions. Fraud is not lawful. The problem is, it's almost all allegedly fraud. No one has the time or money to prosecute all of the attempted fraud in the system.

Same exact process as now, except you have a guaranteed right to appeal.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#126

Post by mc32 »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #13

My concerns about a cashless society are the power it hands to a few oligopolistic credit card processors. Look at what happened to Pornhub. Regardless of whether you think Pornhub was in the wrong, it is striking that a business was cut off from global financial system by a small number of credit card companies. This was done without due process and under no countries laws. That should scare us at least a little.

Also the threat to civil liberties was exposed in Canada when the government saw it fit to freeze people's bank accounts. I believe this is being reviewed and maybe something will come of it so that the gov is not allowed to cavalierly freeze accounts in the future, but you can see how even liberal people are ready to violate people's civil liberties when they see it fit. It's like principles are only followed when times are easy. In reality principles earn their keep when they persist in the toughest of times.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#127

Post by smilespray »

onionisafruit wrote: post #116
arcticbull wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take this opportunity to advocate for 'payment network neutrality' - given their importance in the economy, I agree payment processors should be required to process all lawful transactions, by law. We should require this of any national payments processor in the US at the federal level - or state, I'm looking at you, CA and NY.

I would go further and remove the "lawful" from that. If you pay me $50 it shouldn't matter to the payment processor whether I gave you a painting or a blow job in return.

That went from lawful to mouthful pretty quickly.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#129

Post by scarface_74 »

raverbashing wrote: post #71
raincom wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost is not so much about paying armored trucks, but most banks don't want to deal with small businesses that deal with cash.

I swear money handling cost will be reduced by one simple thing that some countries like Canada and Ireland have done (and can be improved): ditch the smaller coin denominations (and maybe add higher denomination coins like $2 like EU and UK have) Anything under 10 cents gets rounded down/up accordingly It doesn't matter. Minting and transporting it, even in your pocket costs more than you'll ever get in dealing a mo…

That doesn’t stop theft by employees or robberies.

Re: Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

#130

Post by guyomes »

thegrim33 wrote: post #47

The primary benefit of cashless is pretty much just the ability to be lazy. You swipe a card in a reader instead of having to count out cash. That's the major benefit. All things being equal, sure, it's more convenient. But all things are not equal; in my opinion the potential negatives that others in the thread have listed overwhelmingly outweigh the ability to be more lazy. That so many people have the desire to di…

Even though I would not like to ditch freedom with a cashless system, I would not like a cash only system either, and it is not about being lazy.

An advantage of a system where cards or checks are widely used is that it decreases significantly the risk of getting robbed.

In some country with cash only, the citizens would travel by bus with big amounts of cash while bringing back money to their family. Sometimes the bus was stopped by armed robbers. Everybody would have to give their money, or to take the risk to hide it, or to take the risk to fight back. When a minimal system of money transfer was introduced in the country, those kind of robbery disappeared: there was no point anymore for the robbers to stop busses since the citizens didn't have huge amounts of cash on them anymore.

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