81–90 of 176 posts
While at the grocery store this week, they happily announced that the credit-card processing system had just come back online. It had been down for a few hours for the entire store. Having the option to pay in cash was important even if it meant a trip to the ATM.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me too, those large Tech companies in California harvesting all of your data are known for their support and donations to Right Wing candidates
You're being sarcastic, but I think you have a pretty warped perception here. Take a look at OpenSecrets' data on Google Inc in 2012 or 2014[0] for example. (hint: They have pretty graphs if you scroll down a bit). Notice that it's pretty much neck and neck for total contributions to dems/republican candidates? Facebook, who set a lobbyist spending record, has historically donated more to Republicans than democrats[1…
In 2020, Meta's contributions (90% from employees) were 91.59% to Democrats [0].
This article [1] explains how their employees make 87% of contributions to Democrats.
This article has more good info (Netflix donates 98% Democrat! Google comes in at 88%)
[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/meta/totals?id=D000033563
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/2fa73048-db90-11e8-9f04-38d397e66...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-...
What makes cash special is that compared to other assets, it puts a bit more power into the hands of the individual and a bit less power in the hands of the government. To count or seize the individuals cash, the government has to make some fuzz. Aka send men with guns. There seems to be some divide in our world between people who consider individual power a good thing and people who consider it unnecessary. Here in…
Gold-backed reserve notes and even coins made of the metal(s) can still be debased (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_currency#Debasement).
And as noted, transacting in ingots of the precious metals isn't practical. Also heavy and hard to securely store and transport.
Trying to transact in and hold a commodity is also problematic because these metals have other uses. What if you hold a bunch of gold and then we find a better non-tarnishing conductor and switch to it, and the price plummets? What if you lent platinum to a friend and suddenly we find a room-temperature superconductor that needs platinum, and the value of that platinum is now 10x'd? Or you lent platinum to a friend and before they could spend it, its value plummets for industry reasons and now they can't even do the thing that was presumably going to allow them to eventually repay you?
"Our fiat currency is valuable because, and exclusively because, our government pays its debts, has excellent regulation and enforcement, a well-understood legal system, 99% of the world's aircraft carriers, and a large stockpile of nuclear weapons" seems like a pretty decent option compared to all the others? And the Fed doing monetary policy things isn't exclusively negative. They seem to have kept us from going into a recession or having runaway inflation just this year and the three years prior. So that could've been a lot worse, I think.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'll vary from place to place, but dealing with cash can be quite an expensive exercise. There are costs to depositing it for example. Plus there's a whole layer of security that happens when you have cash on the premises. If you have employees, cash also makes it much (much) easier for theft, fraud, tax evasion, and so on. It's pretty easy for employees to skim cash if it's coming and going. If the "cash" part of t…
And yet millions of businesses have figured out how to make it work for the last thousand years. Cashless advocates are always talking about how "expensive" cash is, but never quantify it. Is handling cash more expensive than credit card fees, for example? If it were, businesses like supermarkets that operate on 1-2% margins wouldn't take cash. But they do. Some near me take cash freely, but charge extra to use debit…
Cash = chamber pot / outhouse Electronic payments = modern plumbing
People shat for millennia without modern plumbing. Installing and maintaining modern plumbing often requires external expertise who will wish to be paid for their services. In developed countries, the modern plumbing also needs to connect to public infrastructure and comply with a variety of regulations.
By choosing modern plumbing over chamber pots, we got rid of some issues pretty much entirely (monetary analogies in parentheses)...
- No one has to empty the shit bucket / shovel dirt in the hole (the business does not need to send an employee to the bank with a money bag)
- No one has to smell the shit of the previous user/customer (no one has to handle physical objects that may have had an interesting and/or disgusting journey prior [0] [1])
- Massive reduction in fecal-borne illnesses (reduced employee theft, fraud potential)
Day to day, I'm sure the outhouse is "cheaper" than toilets. I'll take all the benefits of modern plumbing.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9aM_dT5VMI [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_currency
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What Europe has since a few year though is a right to a bank account. Banks must offer basic accounts to anybody (at nondiscriminatory pricing) and unless it's used for fraud or if the fee cannot be paid isn't allowed to close it. That certainly helps.
It helps with accessibility, not with the problem that cashless is dangerous for democracy. Everytime you pay anything with something else than cash, it is recorded: the amount, the time, the place, and the nature of the thing you buy. There is no way to go to a gay bar (or another place loaded with consequences) without a trace. And this is needed for human dignity. There is way to support a controversial political…
But the rest of your point stands. Cash grants a lot more flexibility.
What makes cash special is that compared to other assets, it puts a bit more power into the hands of the individual and a bit less power in the hands of the government. To count or seize the individuals cash, the government has to make some fuzz. Aka send men with guns. There seems to be some divide in our world between people who consider individual power a good thing and people who consider it unnecessary. Here in…
It works probably better than in many other places, but which European country is that?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it is a little surprising to see such political news on HN In my experience, currencies have been of consistent interest in HN. At least, if you consider cryptocurrencies as such ;-) > But this is a none-issue > is meant to be a step against organised crime Perhaps recent developments around the world would change your mind? The Canadian trucker protests of 2022 saw political protestors get bank accounts frozen, an…
>> recently a famous politician in the UK got de-banked partly out of his political views As a person in the UK, who is fairly in touch with the media industry. This is such a non-story. I just want to do my bit to fight disinformation with the real information here : That FORMER (not current) politician is a TV personality, who works for a TV channel called GB News [1] GB News is directly managed by Paul Marshall, i…
Exactly how does your "real information" stand up to:
> BBC News
> TV, radio and online, 4 July 2023
> We reported that the former UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s bank account had been closed by Coutts because he fell below the financial threshold needed for an account. This information came from a senior source familiar with the matter after Mr Farage had put the story about his banking arrangements into the public domain, saying that the bank had political motives in closing his account.
> Mr Farage’s view was reflected in all our reporting and he has been widely interviewed across the BBC throughout. Since this original coverage, Nigel Farage submitted a subject access request to Coutts bank and obtained a report from the bank's reputational risk committee. While it mentioned commercial considerations, the document also said the committee did not think continuing to have Mr Farage as a client was "compatible with Coutts given his publicly-stated views that were at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation".
> Because of this evidence, we have since changed the headline and the copy on the original online article about his bank account being shut for falling below the wealth limit to reflect that the claim came from a source and added an update to recognise the story had changed. We acknowledge that the information we reported - that Coutts’ decision on Mr Farage’s account did not involve considerations about his political views - turned out not to be accurate and have apologised to Mr Farage.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/helpandfeedback/corrections_clarificat...
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People like you are why they report falsehoods initially, and as quietly as possible issue corrections later. The news of the correction and the resignation of the director of the bank has no effect on your desire to defend political censorship to the death.
But please talk more about that evil right wing news outlet that had no need to issue an apology to anyone, as if the messenger is more important than the facts.
I certainly would not mind similar provisions in law in the US.
I certainly would not mind similar provisions in law in the US. I agree. Every time I see a sign that says "We're cashless!" I read it as "We're racist!" If the very minimal burden of handling cash is going to ruin your business, you're not a business. You're a hobby.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet millions of businesses have figured out how to make it work for the last thousand years. Cashless advocates are always talking about how "expensive" cash is, but never quantify it. Is handling cash more expensive than credit card fees, for example? If it were, businesses like supermarkets that operate on 1-2% margins wouldn't take cash. But they do. Some near me take cash freely, but charge extra to use debit…
Are businesses allowed to defend themselves in all states in the US these days? What will happen to thieves -- will they be released by the courts? will the police even bother to come and collect them if the businesses have caught them?
A quick look at any local court docket shows that thieves still get caught, prosecuted, and imprisoned. Real life is very different from sensationalist internet blogspam headlines.