Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by precommunicator » Tue, May 30, 2023, 4:15 AM UTC

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.

In my country it's required for cash registers to have a backup power enough for 48h of outage. We don't get outages that often (probably once a year or so) but the requirement is there.

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

#532

Post by fuzzfactor » Tue, May 30, 2023, 4:19 AM UTC

It's not just car dealers and auctioneers who traditionally said "cash talks and bullshit walks".

For cars it boosted your negotiating stance.

And auctioneers have an interesting word in their vocabulary, cashthedayofthesaleasiswhereisnowarrantiesofanykind!

Pronounced as rapidly as possible with no hesitation whatsoever.

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

#533

Post by politician » Tue, May 30, 2023, 4:33 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #393

politician wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read about J. Edgar Hoover.

The constraints and incentives for agencies like the FBI have changed a lot since Hoover (in no small part due to the abuses under Hoover.) “Read about J. Edgar Hoover” is a handwave, rather than an argument, and its made worse when it supposed to support a position on the current state of affairs.

The OP asked for examples, not arguments.

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

#534

Post by politician » Tue, May 30, 2023, 4:36 AM UTC

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?

If the very first director of the FBI immediately abused his position to blackmail everyone around, what do you think has been going on in the intervening 75 years?

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

#535

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Tue, May 30, 2023, 4:45 AM UTC

shishy wrote: post #10

Cash is great. Can't be tracked, credit card companies don't get to discriminate against the poor and create negative feedback loop traps that they can't out of, it's easier to be financially responsible with it. Bit unfortunate too that paying with cash just adds a tax onto the poor since the fees are basically priced into goods sold at stores, typically regardless of whether or not cash is used. But yeah, nice to h…

Cash pretty much has to be fungibile, it would just be too much work keeping track of the history of each dollar in your wallet.

Maybe that's nice because you can pay your taxes with money you made selling drugs.

Maybe it's bad because you don't know what kind of activity you're supporting when you accept a stranger's money. It could be that refusing to accept their money makes them unable to set up the mining operation that would poison your drinking water.

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

#536

Post by ThrustVectoring » Tue, May 30, 2023, 4:59 AM UTC

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…

More generally, large unaccountable bureaucracies are fundamentally against the intent of the Founders, the spirit of the Bill of Rights, and the principles of government by the consent of the governed. That these bureaucracies are powerful private oligopolies rather than formally governmental in nature is mostly just an uncorrected oversight on behalf of those who set up our political and legal systems without the benefit of foresight.

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

#537

Post by shortcake27 » Tue, May 30, 2023, 4:59 AM UTC

lisasays wrote: post #505

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it mostly crime related shenanigans? Not having to carry a wallet anymore. Never going to the ATM. No need to pocket loose change. Quicker checkout times.

Not having to carry a wallet anymore. And when we inevitably leave our card somewhere and we need to get home? Or it's blocked for some random reason? Nevermind the services that just don't take cash, or the fact that their card reader might be down, etc. Doesn't seem tenable to leave the house without at least some cash in a back pocket somewhere.

> And when we inevitably leave our card somewhere and we need to get home?

How is this different to cash? I also have Apple pay on my phone and watch.

> Or it's blocked for some random reason

I have a couple cards. Also, I've been cashless for 10 years across three countries and this has never happened.

> Nevermind the services that just don't take cash

Assume you mean card. Not a problem in many countries including Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. I travel a lot, remote, even random middle-of-nowhere merchants accept card. From a business point of view, cash-only makes zero sense. Why would a business turn away people who want to give them money?

> or the fact that their card reader might be down

Never had it happen. A couple of times the payment network has been down, and these terminals seem capable of making the transaction offline and syncing later.

If you're from a country where any of these are legitimate concerns for you, it doesn't mean cashless is bad - it means the systems are bad. And they can be fixed, again, AU, NZ, and UK (and more, I'm sure) are proof. Haven't carried cash for 10 years and it doesn't occupy a single thought.

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

#538

Post by shortcake27 » Tue, May 30, 2023, 5:11 AM UTC

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #133

I can't believe how willingly people submitted to going cashless. I was at a trendy rivertown restaurant, went to pay with cash, and the shock on people's faces was unbelievable, like I was some ancient alien. It honestly feels pretty forced, like there's a hyper-fashionable status attached to paying digitally. It's not the first time people lapped up a status marker hawked to them by some globocorp, just like iphone…

I'm cashless for none of the reasons you mentioned. It's simply more convenient. I don't have to constantly visit ATMs to withdraw money or carry my wallet, deal with coins etc. And my spending is tracked automatically. People can have opinions - just because you prefer cash it doesn't mean people who prefer cashless are brainwashed by globocorps.

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

#539

Post by soultrees » Tue, May 30, 2023, 5:14 AM UTC

user3939382 wrote: post #202

Whether or not you agreed with the trucker protest in Canada, I hope we all agree it’s pretty terrifying that the method the state decided to use to silence protesters was freezing their bank accounts without due process, any trial, anything. Cash is the best weapon against this.

The scariest part of that was people who weren’t necessarily in that group but agreed that the vaccine requirements were going too far so they donated to people who were willing to stand out, in a time when even questioning the office owners five got you called an anti-vaxxer, and got their accounts frozen.

I feel like that was the moment the government of Canada let their true colours show and it scared me.

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

#540

Post by htag » Tue, May 30, 2023, 5:17 AM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #85

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…

I have to apologize, but you don't understand what the concept of "laundering money" means. It has nothing to do with tracking cash bills through serial numbers and it has never had anything to do with that. "Laundering money" means that criminals make transactions in order to use cash they have from their illicit gains within the general economy, ie get it into a bank account and being able to declare where they got…

> motorcycle

It should be tracked to some degree. If the motorcycle is designed for street use (compared to track or dirt only) then there are several interested parties that need to know about some sort of transaction (insurance companies, DMV, state sales tax). There's some difference between "my insurance company knows I bought a GSXR" and "Visa knows I bought a GSXR", but less than you'd think. Even if the insurance company doesn't sell the data, you're likely to buy a new helmet with the Visa, increase browsing of motorcycle related webpages, or have some new speeding tickets.