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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

#341

Post by elzbardico »

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?

Well, it looks like a lot of this is designed to make the job of law enforcement easier because politicians that seem "tough" on crime have better election prospects. Freezing the money is far more dramatic and provides nice numbers for said politician's re-election campaign.

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

#342

Post by neves »

yesbut wrote: post #306
throwuwu wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not familiar with Brazil's system, but moving a central bank to being democratically controlled is betterbthan leaving this in the hands of a private company. The US central bank isn't currently democratically controlled, but it could be. Then collectively we could decide how a Brazil type system should function. People are better served when their banks aren't run for-profit.

Brazil Central Bank has a well paid and competent bureaucracy. The very successful PIX payment was its initiative, but the gov in power tried to pretend it was their.

BTW, Brazil Central Bank now is "independent", that is, their president was indicated by the looser candidate can do what he wants. In USA at least they respond to Congress.

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

#343

Post by blown_gasket »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #283
blown_gasket wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using your example, the wheel allows us to perform more work per unit of time. I think it would be good for discourse to identify that within society there is the general consumer public and then there is education, government, research, etc. Could you argue that the wheel allows an individual to be lazy? Definitely. Is it correct to argue that a wheel is a crutch and makes every individual that uses it lazy? Definit…

Surely the same happens with cashless payments? A teller in a store can process way more transactions via contactless than with cash in the same amount of time.

I agree that contact-less transactions are able to be performed faster. In the situation of a grocery-store checkout there are other factors at play. Have you paid and everything is still being bagged up? Is there anyone waiting on you? Probably others I'm not considering here.

Essentially I think this gets into a estimation of magnitude problem (outside of ethical, security, and other concerns). Where if the payment isn't ever the action being waited on, a contact-less payment while convenient doesn't save you any time to get out of the store. If you have just a snack and no lines then the payment will be the action causing the bottleneck.

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

#344

Post by xg15 »

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.

Businesses are one thing, but what I find truly dystopic about the idea of 100% cashless societies is that you could off people in the same way.

If today, you lose access to your bank account for whatever reason, you still have various options how to purchase necessities: If you got some spare cash, you could use that; otherwise you could ask a friend to lend you some cash.

In a cashless society, that won't work: Even if the friend wants to help you, they have nothing to wire the cash to. They'd literally have to buy the individual goods for you.

The only way to fix this would be to get a new temporary bank account until the old one is accessible again. But if you got banned for whatever reason, chances are the bank will ban the new account as well.

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

#345

Post by [deleted] »

lucumo wrote: post #65
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…

> 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 This isn't quite what you meant, but 20-ish years ago there was some crowd-tracking of Euro-bills. The Euro was pretty new and people were excited about their banknotes showing up in other countries. Some people created a website where you could en…

[deleted]

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

#346

Post by Spooky23 »

walterbell wrote: post #21
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could a website function with cash payments at all?

No one is arguing for a cash-only society. Digital has use cases. Cash has use cases. We can have both.

It’s pretty hard, cash is like contraband in many cases

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

#347

Post by [deleted] »

cyanydeez wrote: post #260
theturtletalks wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On the other end you have crypto. Unfettered electronic currency has not shined a light on honest arbiters

[deleted]

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

#348

Post by elzbardico »

tchaffee wrote: post #307
zhfliz wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you know about/suspect it you report it. how do you know with 100% certainty/due process that this is indeed the case and it's not just your ML algorithm going crazy? people can also pay with physical money if they desire to do so.

What I asked is specific: if you know the money is for a hit job will you still accept the business and take your fee or is there a moral line you personally won't cross? Yes, it's the job of the police to investigate but do you want the freedom to not engage in business that you consider evil?

Last time I checked both Visa and Mastercard have no problems being used to buy cigarettes or alcohol.

I'd bet that orders of magnitude more people die because of cancer caused by cigarettes and in episodes of domestic violence or traffic accidents caused by alcohol abuse than the number of people assassinated by hit killers hired online and paid with credit cards.

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

#349

Post by momirlan »

arcticbull wrote: post #218
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm, I dislike this weird defensiveness of newspeak. Does it suspend some rights available under normal circumstances? If yes, then it effectively suspends the constitution? Why does it feel like Simpsons nailed it so hard when Lisa proposed temporary refund adjustments and people cheered thrice out of sheer misunderstanding of the language used. And all that before we get to the part whether giving government power…

The Emergencies Act and how it's applied are governed by the Charter. It's a function of government as defined under the Charter. It's not a suspension thereof. It's moving into a different mode of operation, sure, but the it's still all a defined function of that system. As [1] states: > Any temporary laws made under the act are subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Bill of Rights, and must…

said Charter which is worth zero, when any judge or politician can override it.

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

#350

Post by tchaffee »

kortilla wrote: post #335
tchaffee wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I asked is specific: if you know the money is for a hit job will you still accept the business and take your fee or is there a moral line you personally won't cross? Yes, it's the job of the police to investigate but do you want the freedom to not engage in business that you consider evil?

That’s a bit of bullshit because these payment providers accept transactions for the government which consistently kills people at the local, state, and federal level every day. If you “know” the money is for a hit job, you contact the FBI or local police and they can mobilize protective services and arrest forces.

I'm not claiming payment processors are moral. I'm asking if the freedom to refuse unethical business should be your right. I was responding to the position of a parent comment that processors should accept even illegal transactions.

Of course you contact the police in the situation I described. Do you accept the payment though or do you refuse the transaction? You keep avoiding a specific yes or no question.

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