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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

#481

Post by [deleted] »

elzbardico wrote: post #332
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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#482

Post by thiuo2i3432434 »

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.

[flagged]

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

#483

Post by throwuwu »

rsaesha wrote: post #325
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?

From https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/about/faq BCB is a governmental institution, composed mainly of career civil servants hired rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. They answer to the government, not a political party. The Complementary Law No. 179/2021 defines a four-year term for the nine members of the BCB’s Board of Governors that does not…

Cool, career bureaucrats who get paid by the government and can’t be held accountable by the people. Nothing could possibly go wrong there.

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

#484

Post by throwuwu »

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.

There should be no central bank.

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

#485

Post by nulbyte »

MBCook wrote: post #377
lost_tourist wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally feel if the business is legal, then CC issuers should have to process it. If they want to be the top 3 or 4 gate keepers, they absolutely need to be completely neutral as long as the payment is legal.

While I understand that, how do you square that with one category of business causing way more chargebacks than average? Do they just have to eat it? Or can they charge higher fees to those merchants? If the latter they could quickly use that to discriminate. $100/tx fee would kill most any normal business. Perhaps the problem is the government doesn’t provide a non-cash lowest common denominator, so people are basic…

I'll preface this by stating that I work for a large bank, and the opinions I express herein are my own.

> ... how do you square that with one category of business causing way more chargebacks than average?

Simple: Liability shift.

The liability shift is what spurred merchants in the U.S. to finally, albeit begrudgingly, modernize by upgrading their terminals to take chips and NFC. They did so because the cost of not doing so was too high. Some hold outs exist, but they are quickly realizing their error in calculation.

Liability for card-not-present transactions and your typical our-word-against-theirs dispute has always been entirely on the merchant. The card issuing bank just facilitates the dispute resolution. Banks pocket the interchange fees either way, so who cares about the rest? About as neutral as you can be, setting aside the fact that the cardholder is the bank's customer (because they are also the merchant's customer).

Liability for fraudulent in-person (card-present) transactions was on the bank, which is why banks make such a big deal about fraud detection. There's no liability for a transaction that is denied. However, since the liability shift, fraud liability for card-present transactions is only on the bank if the merchant is using a new chip or NFC terminal when the customer presents a chip- or NFC-capable card. Swipe a chip card, and it's back on the merchant.

In the end, theoretically, you have merchants and banks both interested in quality of service and fraud prevention.

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

#486

Post by frfsfgxffd »

scoofy wrote: post #111
frfsfgxffd wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brazil is almost cashless today. first month with central bank digital currency, instant kidnaps were thru the roof. the "solution" lower limits of how much you can transfer. what a joke. now only 100usd per day can leave your pocket. wish i was kidding. even lower at night when traveling i have to wake up at 3am to make payments thanks to timezones. people can raise limits, but if you pay for something expensive onc…

Bank transactions are trivially traceable and reversible by the state. I've been actively against bitcoin and monero exactly because they facilitate kidnapping and other forms of effectively irreversible digital theft. The best part about living in a society with institutions based on trust instead of non-trust, is that it's trivially easy to eject bad actors from the system.

> Bank transactions are trivially traceable and reversible by the state

instant, cashless, transactions are not reversible, and can be withdrawal instantly on the other end. sum that with the usual practice of employing disposables young criminals to quickly withdrawal the funds and you have even less risk than btc or cash based crime.

sheltered engineers in silicon valley or theoretical economist in boston... will never get how easy it is for criminals to sidestep rules.

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

#487

Post by mixmastamyk »

jameshart wrote: post #385
mixmastamyk wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obtuse reverse skepticism is not a good look.

Pointing to a guy who’s been dead 50 years seems like weak evidence for the claim that government agencies are widely incentivized to undermine political candidates by… selectively leaking their grocery shopping habits?

They’ll look for anything they can find, when they need to. There are whole organizations devoted to digging up dirt, and others devoted to countering/deflecting it.

Risk minimization sounds prudent if you’re a target.

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

#488

Post by throwuwu »

rsaesha wrote: post #392
lazide wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, making it so you can’t buy anything without the gov’ts permission makes it not only more tempting for someone like Nazi’s to take over, but also much more effective for them to keep it and far more damaging when they’re in. Germany is a strongly ‘cash’ society partially because of this, but also because of what the Stasi did to East Germany. You really don’t want the folks in power to have even more of that kind…

A central payment system is absolutely not a tool of oppression. Case in point: don't like it? Don't use it. People are still free to not use it just like it even didn't exist. For everyone that chooses to, there is now an instant and free payment method. Where is the oppression? In your hypothetical scenario of nazis taking the gov, lets assume there is no central database. Nazis would go: ok banks give me your data…

Look into the efforts of individuals within Nazi controlled territory during the war to save Jews and other persecuted people. When the SS comes knocking, if you’re a good person, you have a chance of “losing” some records before you hand them over. If it’s all in one government controlled database then there is no chance for individuals to work against the system. Hey, I think they even made some movies and books about this stuff.

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

#489

Post by rglover »

jameshart wrote: post #478
rglover wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fro…

Not that you'll view it as valid but I'm using abductive logic. I shared the Boston Dynamics thing in jest, but I'd love to hear valid reasons for the existence of a bipedal robot that can run and scale over objects. Are these things being used to down dissidents a reality today? No, but it's a perfectly logical conclusion for what's down the pike.

FWIW, too, the "tinfoil hat" thing doesn't work on me. I will smugly tighten mine as I look down upon the naive proletariat being manhandled as "Do You Love Me" [1] is played over the crowd control loudspeakers.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw

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

#490

Post by stainablesteel »

trying to remove physical cash is trying to micromanage what people are allowed to use their cash for

its obviously a terrible idea, removing it would cause tons of friction that leads to an economic downturn, or people finding new, societally worse, ways of getting around it

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