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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

#551

Post by thesz »

arcticbull wrote: post #94
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'll take this opportunity to advocate for 'payment network neutrality' - given their importance in the economy, I agree payment processors should be required to process all lawful transactions, by law. We should require this of any national payments processor in the US at the federal level - or state, I'm looking at you, CA and NY.

Define law and lawful transaction. For one example, law is a changing thing and rapidly changing one. What was pretty legal activity at Canada for pretty long time was changed at the hands of the government into illegal activity quite quickly and, what is mostly concerning to me, that law even has a retroactive nature - accounts can be frozen based on the activities prior to the date law enacted.

In my not so humble opinion, payment processors should be transaction-blind - they should process any transaction and all transactions.

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

#552

Post by neom »

thesz wrote: post #551
arcticbull wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take this opportunity to advocate for 'payment network neutrality' - given their importance in the economy, I agree payment processors should be required to process all lawful transactions, by law. We should require this of any national payments processor in the US at the federal level - or state, I'm looking at you, CA and NY.

Define law and lawful transaction. For one example, law is a changing thing and rapidly changing one. What was pretty legal activity at Canada for pretty long time was changed at the hands of the government into illegal activity quite quickly and, what is mostly concerning to me, that law even has a retroactive nature - accounts can be frozen based on the activities prior to the date law enacted. In my not so humble…

What Canadian law are you referring to?

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

#553

Post by wwweston »

selcuka wrote: post #445
tchaffee wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you would willingly, knowingly, and personally process a transaction to kill someone? Not your problem, let the police discover it?

Your ethical thought experiment is fair. What would you do if you knew that it would be used for illegal activity. The point you are missing is the payment processors should not even try to detect what the payment is made for. It should not be their job. Does postal system open every envelope to see if there is cash inside sent as an illegitimate payment to someone? Because it's easier to do it online should not be t…

> The point you are missing is the payment processors should not even try to detect what the payment is made for. It should not be their job.

You're thinking about this as if the question is simply about whether or not payment processors should have the job of examining every individual payment. There's a potential discussion to be had there, but that's the only dimension of the topic, and one of the things we're talking about entire classes of activity.

If prospective clients like "Assassination Central" or "Doordash Blowjobs Inc" approach you as a payment processor, you might have some idea of what's going to happen. And in general payment processors have both an incentive and regulatory obligations to understand what kind of business they're facilitating, not to mention whatever individual inclinations they might have.

When it comes to something like Venmo, I'm not really sure how to handle that. I suspect invasivity isn't the only issue, it's also probably practically difficult to police effectively, but at the same time, if there were means by which reasonable correlations could be made, it's not clear to me that there's no activity whatsoever for which there's a case for flagging, however controversial which cases meet that criteria might be.

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

#554

Post by frankchn »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #532

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.

Car dealers now prefer financing (if you have good credit). They can make more money that way since the banks will give them a kickback for originating the loan.

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

#555

Post by lisasays »

shortcake27 wrote: post #538
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.

They weren't talking about people who prefer cashless as being brainwashed by the globocorps.

But rather merchants who insist that you go cashless - and not only refuse to serve you, but look at you as if you just emerged from a swap and learned to walk on land if you don't go along.

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

#556

Post by thesz »

neom wrote: post #552
thesz wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define law and lawful transaction. For one example, law is a changing thing and rapidly changing one. What was pretty legal activity at Canada for pretty long time was changed at the hands of the government into illegal activity quite quickly and, what is mostly concerning to me, that law even has a retroactive nature - accounts can be frozen based on the activities prior to the date law enacted. In my not so humble…

What Canadian law are you referring to?

Invoction of Emergencies Act during and after protest convoy and related banking regulation changes.

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

#557

Post by Daz1 »

ramblenode wrote: post #197
danpalmer wrote: post #68

Something often not spoken about (as the discussion often focuses on privacy and "power") is the price. As someone who uses card for most payments (maybe paying in cash a couple of times a year), cash is expensive to use. It requires time out of my routine to take the cash out, unless I can take out an exact amount there I'm then left with change, and then because I don't want the change I normally spend it on things…

> On the other hand cards are effectively free to me The average card merchant fee in the US is 1.5-3.5%. You're paying that much more for everything you're buying. That applies even if you use cash. So it's effectively a private sales tax. You absolutely pay for the convenience. It's just not on any receipt.

Handling cash is a similarly expensive exercise for an organisation so either way you're paying a money handling fee.

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

#558

Post by Daz1 »

standardUser wrote: post #79
medler wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the only argument against getting rid of cash is that it would make it harder to commit crimes, that sounds like a good reason to get rid of cash. I like cash because I like my privacy but cash making it easier to do crime is an unfortunate side effect, not an end in itself.

Many people see laws against victmimless activities to be a direct curtailment of basic human rights. Even in our own lifetime we've seen completely arbitrary changes to which substances and banned or not banned, so we should be extremely wary of future, similarly arbitrary changes (that we can easily get around using cash).

There is no such thing as a 'victimless activity' so your point is moot.

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

#559

Post by neom »

thesz wrote: post #556
neom wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Canadian law are you referring to?

Invoction of Emergencies Act during and after protest convoy and related banking regulation changes.

That's hardly "changing the law" - that was invoking an existing law in the face of a valid national security risk. Granted law makers voted to extend the law slightly, never the less, the law has always existed in Canada.

I would never want to live in a Canada where payment processors are blind to transactions and the government couldn't freeze accounts of extremists/terrorists.

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

#560

Post by raverbashing »

scarface_74 wrote: post #129
raverbashing wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I swear money handling cost will be reduced by one simple thing that some countries like Canada and Ireland have done (and can be improved): ditch the smaller coin denominations (and maybe add higher denomination coins like $2 like EU and UK have) Anything under 10 cents gets rounded down/up accordingly It doesn't matter. Minting and transporting it, even in your pocket costs more than you'll ever get in dealing a mo…

That doesn’t stop theft by employees or robberies.

You don't have to tell me that ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9563474
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