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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

#471

Post by mstipetic »

sslayer wrote: post #449
elzbardico wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my biggest issue with this state of affairs. I am not a libertarian preaching unrestricted Laissez-Faire. But I do think that having your access to a payment system blocked should only happen as a result of a legal procedure with ample defense rights and based on laws voted by a parliament.

Having any access to paying for the necessities of life should NEVER be in the hands of a system that can be corrupted.

Every system can be corrupted. Feels like Americans are so afraid of the slippery slope at every turn, instead of accepting it is there always and the onus is on the people to manage them correctly and participate in the policy decision making that does that.

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

#472

Post by rglover »

caeril wrote: post #464
dahart wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the government that concerns me, it’s the corporations. And I don’t think it’s a contest or even matters if cell phones give more data. I’m worried about both.

No corporation can point a gun at my head and force me into a steel cage. No matter how evil and corrupt a given corporation is, it could never be as bad as a government.

Not yet [1]. Total symbiosis of corporations and government—to the point of making Mussolini blush—is the ultimate goal. Sure, that sounds paranoid, but look at how far we've come on that spectrum in the last 30 years. Proliferation of technology (due to its enabling of surveillance and weakening of the state) all but guarantees that future.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4DML7FIWk

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

#473

Post by stale2002 »

tchaffee wrote: post #463
stale2002 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok got it, so this means that your previously statement, where you said "My basic human freedoms should include the right to not do business with a hate group for example", is not true, or not your full opinion. You actually think that there are certain situations where it is OK to force basic utilities to transact with everyone. You just disagree where exactly the line is. But at the end of the day, yes you also agr…

Interested in the topic but not interested in your aggressive style and putting words in my mouth and telling me what I believe. You can have the last word if you'd like.

Yes, people usually don't want to engage when the contradiction of your new statement is put so clearly in contrast with your past statement.

I wasn't really expecting you to engage with the point in any way. It is so rare that people do.

The fact remains that you now admit that yes you want to force certain businesses, specifically utilities, to sell to people, and this contradicts your previous statement.

You even did one of the most effective forms of non engagement, where you say "you can have the last word" thereby making it so either your statement remains unchallenged, or making it seem like you "win" because I responded, which is what you told me to do.

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

#474

Post by wheeeeeeeeee »

tchaffee wrote: post #350
kortilla wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In this hypothetical situation you've set up in which Visa somehow knows that one of their billion+ payments is for the contract killing of another human, then no, it's probably better to not let the payment go through.

However I find the argument you're posing apparently in favor of allowing a business like Visa to decline transactions on ethical grounds to be missing some important rigor. It's honestly kind of boring to argue about very clear-cut and extreme example like a credit card payment that is clearly for a contract killing. That's not where the meat of the issue lies.

If you'd like to make the argument that a business like Visa should decline transactions based on the ethics (as opposed to legal & financial risk, which appears to be how they do it now) of that transaction, then I think you need to come out of the gate with a bit more rigor. Here are the questions that immediately come to mind for me:

1. Can we agree that the rules applied to a multinational corporation with billions in income utilized by hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis to exchange legal currency for goods and services should be different than the rules governing the bakery down the street?

2. If yes, then within the context of multinational financial corporations, what is "ethical"?

3. Who decides what that definition is for a multinational financial corporation?

4. Is that definition industry-wide or specific to a corporation?

5. Is a corporation expected to hold to a consistent definition of "ethical"? If they are, how is that enforced?

6. If a corporation is not required to hold to a consistent definition of "ethical", how is this different from "for any reason or no reason at all"?

7. If an individual's small business is deemed "unethical" by a monopoly or near-monopoly, such that it is impossible _in practical terms_ for the business to exist based on an extralegal decision by a multinational financial institution, should there be any recourse for that individual? What would that be? Over what timeline could it be reasonably accomplished?

8. Remaining firmly in the context of applying your above answers to multinational financial corporations: how do your answers create a net boon for society? Who is likely to benefit from your policies? Is there any apparent harm from your policies? Is that harm a net boon for society? How and why?

Without some thought put towards these questions, or ones like them, your (apparent, there's not a lot to go on here) proposal of universal ethical freedom for all businesses looks a lot like "unlimited freedom without regard for how that unlimited freedom affects others." Which, if you are seriously putting that argument forward, I'd like to circle back to contract killing and ask what damn right does Visa have to limit one's freedom to run a contract killing business?

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

#475

Post by sacnoradhq »

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.

1. Power to credit card processors, banks, and potentially the government.

2. 1.) can shut you down and you can be left without any form of durable payment or value.

3. Makes it very easy to track all of your consumption habits.

4. Creates a tiered society where the unbanked (poor and unhoused) are second-class citizens and cannot access the same things as others.

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

#476

Post by sacnoradhq »

ledgerdev wrote: post #370
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.

I also feel strongly we need some sort of semi-local payment system that connects merchants, local banks and customers. Sending a payment to my local municipality should not involve wall street.

Like cash?

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

#477

Post by sclarisse »

pessimizer wrote: post #361
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.

Look what happened to Wikileaks and Assange. I think that was the test that began the slippery slope. edit: Wikileaks to sue Visa, Mastercard over "financial blockade" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wikileaks-to-sue-visa-mastercar...

Also consider Operation Choke Point, where the government pressured banks not to do business with firearms dealers, tobacco dealers, and a variety of other firms they didn’t like.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

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

#478

Post by jameshart »

rglover wrote: post #472
caeril wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No corporation can point a gun at my head and force me into a steel cage. No matter how evil and corrupt a given corporation is, it could never be as bad as a government.

Not yet [1]. Total symbiosis of corporations and government—to the point of making Mussolini blush—is the ultimate goal. Sure, that sounds paranoid, but look at how far we've come on that spectrum in the last 30 years. Proliferation of technology (due to its enabling of surveillance and weakening of the state) all but guarantees that future. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4DML7FIWk

When you make statements like ‘Total symbiosis of corporations and government … is the ultimate goal’ without attributing that goal to anyone, you come off as sounding a little bit tinfoil hat.

Boston Dynamics is no more (and honestly in many ways far less) enmeshed in the security state than any number of military suppliers. Seems like a poor argument that things are specifically bad now or getting worse on this front.

If you’d pointed at Palantir perhaps you’d have had a point.

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

#479

Post by multiplegeorges »

mc32 wrote: post #126
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 t…

> 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

The law that allowed them to take these extraordinary measures includes a required independent public inquiry into their use. That has happened.

It found that the use was justified, measured, and rescinded immediately once it was no longer necessary.

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

#480

Post by tphyahoo2 »

scoofy wrote: post #358
tphyahoo2 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without bitcoin, you collect the ransom in gold with a dead drop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_drop "But the police can watch the dead drop." True. "No police or the victim dies." Also true. Bitcoin does make kidnapping a bit easier though. It is true. It also makes hyperinflation by the state impossible. Hyperinflation does a lot more damage than kidnapping.

> Without bitcoin, you collect the ransom in gold with a dead drop. Where the perpetrator needs to: 1. Be in the general area. 2. Only ask for enough currency that's easy to physically move (an actual real limitation in many countries) 3. Be sure the bills aren't marked (practically impossible). Because of this: 3(1). Be sure to not deposit the currency, ever. 3(2). Be sure not to use the currency with anyone who kno…

"Without bitcoin, you collect the ransom in gold with a dead drop."

maybe you missed the bit about gold.

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