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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

#271

Post by tchaffee »

darkerside wrote: post #263
tchaffee wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if it's for human trafficking? Payment processors are made up of people, and people have to have the freedom of drawing a moral line they won't cross. The real problem as I see it is that payment processing is a near monopoly. Better competition and smaller players would almost guarantee that every transaction except the most egregious would have a willing payment processor. Diversity is so often the best answer…

It's odd to me that the way to combat this is to freeze money. Yes, money is the lifeblood, but that means you can also follow the money to the source. Wouldn't you want to do that instead of freezing it and killing the lead?

Depends on the case. If you already know who belongs to a terrorist organization then maybe stopping the money and limiting the ability to terrorize would be a higher priority.

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

#272

Post by politician »

jameshart wrote: post #206
raincom wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because three letter agencies have a huge incentive to trawl through politicians' private lives through credit card purchase data, and use that against them if they don't want to toe the line of these agencies, whose ex-employees are guests on the main stream media. Just leak enough to derail any politician.

There's presumably a lot of evidence of this you can point to...?

Read about J. Edgar Hoover.

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

#273

Post by BlueTemplar »

gloryjulio wrote: post #159
mc32 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Just want to comment that the 'liberals' in Canada r the definition of right wing liberal - pro business, pro oligarch, f the poors, flood the market with cheap immigrants labors while raise the property value sky high. They would give the plebs some scraps of coz. It's better to be homeless with some food than being hungry

Not like that is different in the USA ?

Or did Sanders et al. suddenly become the majority of the Democrats while I wasn't paying attention ?

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

#274

Post by cortesoft »

tchaffee wrote: post #261
onionisafruit wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And if it's for human trafficking? Payment processors are made up of people, and people have to have the freedom of drawing a moral line they won't cross. The real problem as I see it is that payment processing is a near monopoly. Better competition and smaller players would almost guarantee that every transaction except the most egregious would have a willing payment processor. Diversity is so often the best answer…

If you know it is for human trafficking, why would you cut off the payment instead of arresting the people?

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

#275

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Animatronio wrote: post #75
mrtranscendence wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an early adopter of (debit) card only, using it for everything in 1999. Your experience has never happened to me, as far as I recall. I don’t think I’ve ever had to go to an atm because the reader didn’t work.

Well, it happened to me just the other day - said it cannot read the card or something like that (even though I had used it less than 15 minutes earlier in another shop). There was already a queue behind me so I forked $40 for gas and went on my way.

Where do you live that you just don’t pay with a card at the gas pump? I’m guessing not in the USA?

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

#276

Post by ImAnAmateur »

danpalmer wrote: post #89
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #67

Even if it weren't a terrible, awful idea from a democratic point of view, it's just silly from a logistic point of view. This means you create a single point of failure for your entire society: electricity provision. Got a power shot down? Suddenly nobody can buy anything. Got a war on your territory? Your trade routes will get destroyed 4 times faster. Want to be a reserve currency? Guess what, now you have to do l…

Most stores aren't going to be able to sell you anything with no power, regardless of taking card or cash, because sales need to go into a database via a register, update inventory, etc. Sure a few small family run businesses, maybe restaurants, might be able to take cash, but almost no chains will be able to run and that's most stores in most places.

Home Depot has a backup generator or battery in order to still allow transactions to go through in the event of a power outage. It even ran the air conditioning. They stored the payments offline until they were able to connect online again.

What I've seen happen more often is that there is a network error and digital payments can't be processed for hours. Digital money relies on a lot more complex infrastructure than just electricity.

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

#277

Post by throwuwu »

rsaesha wrote: post #270
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.

There is an option: a direct payment system provided by the Central Bank to the general public. In Brazil it is called PIX, and was implemented in 2020. Last month it has processed more than 3 million operations. Works 24/7, 0 fees to end users, low cost for business. IMO, going cashless is not an "if", it is a "when". https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/financialstability/pix_en

Who controls the central bank in Brazil? Who can implement changes to this system? How much PII is recorded with each transaction and who can view it?

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

#278

Post by er4hn »

theturtletalks wrote: post #150
onionisafruit wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a clever setup. Using laws like the Anti-Money Laundering rules, the government nudges credit card companies to avoid high-risk businesses. These companies can then turn away any business without explaining why, all in the name of "security through obscurity." But when you think about it, this setup skips past important legal protections like due process and the presumption of innocence. It's like the government…

patio11 covers this a bit in a series of blog posts in his newsletter: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-....

Quoting a relevant paragraph from the AML post above: Much like KYC, AML policies are recursive stochastic management of crime. The state deputizes financial institutions to, in effect, change the physics of money. In particular, it wants them to situationally repudiate the fungibility of money. (Fungibility is the property that $1 is $1 and, moreover, that you are utterly indifferent between particular dollars.) They are not required to catch every criminal moving money (that would not be a positive result!)

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

#279

Post by BlueTemplar »

petilon wrote: post #243

When you pay cash you are paying for the credit card convenience (the fee that is built into nearly all price tags) without benefiting from it. My bank returns 2% of the charged amount. If I paid cash I would forego this benefit.

I don't have a credit card, and don't know anyone who does - only debit cards. So this might be specific to your bank and/or country ?

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

#280

Post by seanmcdirmid »

tehCorner wrote: post #193
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…

Brazil has a similar system called “boleto”, you chose that option and the systems promts you a barcode you can use to pay with cash in ATMs, paharmacie and some other stores with no comission AFAIK. It has some limits (10000 BRL when i used it) but thats more than enough for most purchases

Switzerland has (or had?) those red and blue slips that you could pay online or at a bank or perhaps an ATM. It made online payments virtually zero overhead, not sure if it was anonymous.
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