Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 325 posts

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#251

Post by CamperBob2 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #241
CamperBob2 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. There's a force continuum at play. Truckers take over the city and make life a living hell for thousands of innocent residents? Lock their bank accounts and starve them out, and (ideally) prosecute the perpetrators alongside anyone who donated to them. Soldiers raping and killing civilians? Blow them to kingdom come if possible (it's a war, after all). Otherwise, identify them, convene a tribunal after the w…

Still hugely disproportionate. If someone is non-violent protesting in a location they arent allowed to be, the appropriate response it to arrest and move them, not lock their bank accounts and starve their families.

Deliberate sleep deprivation is torture. It isn't "non-violent protest." This isn't a matter of opinion.

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#252

Post by wvenable »

purpleidea wrote: post #146
wvenable wrote: post #72

A little context for Americans: Canada implemented chip and pin debit cards across the country in the 90s. Pretty much overnight, paying by check(cheque) disappeared and nearly all businesses took debit cards. So Canadians have been used to paying by card for decades now. COVID put the nail in the coffin of any remaining cash-only businesses.

Canadian here, lots of business only take cash. We care about our privacy, although it's rare to find say a grocery store or gas station that doesn't accept cards too.

I haven't shopped at a cash-only business in years now. The last time was the little snack stands at parks but post-COVID even those take cards now.

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#253

Post by s1artibartfast »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #251
s1artibartfast wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still hugely disproportionate. If someone is non-violent protesting in a location they arent allowed to be, the appropriate response it to arrest and move them, not lock their bank accounts and starve their families.

Deliberate sleep deprivation is torture. It isn't "non-violent protest." This isn't a matter of opinion.

nonsense.

Locking someone in a cell and keeping them awake for the purpose if inflicting suffering is torture. Making noise so that someone in the freedom of their own home has to put ear plugs in is not.

conflating them ignores the clear differences and stretches the meaning of the word. You might as well say an ice cream display in the super market is torture.

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#254

Post by friend_and_foe »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #58
arresin wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is cash embarrassing for you?

Clunky, annoying, inconvenient, borderline useless. Cash only place is a good way to lose my business, especially since the odds I have cash on me are close to zero. Also one of the most expensive options for me as a consumer since I have to use my time to find an ABM, pay the ABM fee, etc. Also one of the most expensive options for me as a merchant, since I have to physically go to a bank and jump through hoops to d…

I'm the opposite. And I live in an opposite world.

Cash is the only way I pay in person. I have a prepaid card and amazon gift cards for online purchases. If I'm in a store, I have cash. If you don't take cash you don't get my business. I live in an area where many of not most businesses have a cash discount or outright don't take cards. I closed my bank account a while back.

To me, it's embarrassing that there are places that call themselves businesses that don't take money.

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#255

Post by mattmanser »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #109
mattmanser wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's fees for handling cash as well. They're just less obvious. In the old days, those armoured vans used to have to go to stores every single day at peak times (Xmas, etc.). Plus you've got to pay for bags of change to be delivered. You've got to pay for a safe, insurance for your safe, plus a hard limit that safe is allowed to hold. If you're going to go over you need to request an on demand pickup from the cash…

I worked in a smaller, independent guitar store for a few years in the 90s. We received enough cash and checks that once a day someone would have to walk over to the “night deposit” slot and toss a bag in. Our cash handling cost was equal to my salary for the 30 minutes it took me to make that walk, plus the risk that I would get mugged ($0 lost over a few years.) Often the owner would rake out enough to cover his sp…

Your bosses' bank would have been charging him a cash processing fee. Easy to forget!

A quick Google and found Danske UK's small business fees, 80p per £100 (or 0.8%). Without all the other costs associated that I mentioned that your boss took a lot of risks not handling. Obviously stores that 90% of transactions actually happen in can't take those risks.

And that 30% for a $5 is totally made up, that's not the fees charged.

I'm not from the US or Canada, but UK, so the first Google result is Square's fee that say 1.4% + 25p, so on £5 that's 32p, or about 6%.

Obviously that's for small transactions.

https://squareup.com/help/gb/en/article/5068-what-are-square...

Obviously bigger chains won't be paying anywhere near that much.

My point was cash has processing fees, and gave people some context for that.

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#256

Post by adamiscool8 »

throw0101b wrote: post #233
adamiscool8 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stuff they were protesting was very real, and those measures specifically caused disruption to hundreds of thousands of people's lives and sleep for months on end. The government turning to wartime measures so that privileged Ottawans living in some of the most affluent areas around the nation's capital can withstand a few honks for a few weeks is absolutely preposterous.

> The government turning to wartime measures […] The Emergencies Act has nothing to do with war: * §3 For the purposes of this Act, a* national emergency is an urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature that (a) seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it, or, (b) seriously threatens the…

>The Emergencies Act has nothing to do with war

War is the obvious example that meets 3(a) and 3(b), because the Emergencies Act replaced the War Measures Act, which was designed to give the government wide latitude for authoritarian actions desired in wartime.

>The Act mandates an inquiry be called after any invocation, and the inquiry in question found that the use of the Act was justified:

The inquiry in question (led by a longstanding party member) found reluctantly:

* I do not come to this conclusion easily, as I do not consider the factual basis for it to be overwhelming. Reasonable and informed people could reach a different conclusion than the one I have arrived at. [1]

In part, because the definition you cited is not the entry point for the federal proclamation, which is actually at s.16 of the act:

* §16 In this Part, declaration of a public order emergency means a proclamation issued pursuant to subsection 17(1); public order emergency means an emergency that arises from threats to the security of Canada and that is so serious as to be a national emergency; threats to the security of Canada has the meaning assigned by section 2 of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Act.

Even though the Canadian government was told by CSIS at the time:

* Canada's intelligence agency didn't believe the self-styled Freedom Convoy constituted a threat to national security according to the definition in its enabling law [2]

And comparatively, the last time this level of power was invoked domestically it was in response to separatist terrorism culminating in the murder of a government official. [3]

>Was the "health or safety of Canadians" at risk? Did it "exceed the capacity or authority of a province" (Ontario under Ford)?

The criteria is not just "at risk" but "seriously endangered". The commission's report, in my opinion, takes a tortured approach to justifying the meeting of this threshold.

[1] https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/public-order-emergenc...

[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/convoy-protest-emergencies-...

[3] https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/october-cr...

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#257

Post by sys_64738 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #131
mandmandam wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument was used (a lot) to decry suffragette protests and desegregation protests. I for one am glad that women and black people didn't take it too seriously. You may want to read some MLK - he had some very clear words about the liberal who demands civility in the face of oppression.

So MLK and the suffragettes blockaded the town square and blew truck horns all night. Got it. Oh, wait, no, they voluntarily sacrificed their freedom and were arrested, beaten, and tortured for their beliefs. I guess you're confused.

Not forgetting being executed by the government. Trumpers from the 1950s and 1960s.

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#258

Post by sys_64738 »

nick_ wrote: post #63
Dig1t wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were peacefully protesting, how were they criminals?

They were blowing freight truck horns at all hours of the day and night. Tens of thousands of people's lives and sleep were disrupted for weeks on end. 90% of the stuff they were protesting literally wasn't real. Obviously there is a fine line between legitimate, legal protest and it should be taken very seriously. IMO that particular protest pushed that line too hard.

This is the very essence of what real protesting is. It's meant to inconvenience people and be in their face. What do you think the word protest even means?

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#259

Post by shrimp_emoji »

threeseed wrote: post #104
olalonde wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AML/KYC mostly.

No. We shouldn't make it easer for criminals to conduct terrorism, human trafficking, fraud etc just to make it slightly more economical for startups to compete with Visa/Mastercard.

To rephrase: we should make it harder for everyone to do stuff because of the tiny minority criminals we want law enforcement to catch (and whose job we need to make easier by way of crime-preempting hacks in every system criminals might use because otherwise it would be too difficult for law enforcement to do their job).

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#260

Post by [deleted] »

NeoTar wrote: post #185
matthewdgreen wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in a smaller, independent guitar store for a few years in the 90s. We received enough cash and checks that once a day someone would have to walk over to the “night deposit” slot and toss a bag in. Our cash handling cost was equal to my salary for the 30 minutes it took me to make that walk, plus the risk that I would get mugged ($0 lost over a few years.) Often the owner would rake out enough to cover his sp…

Add to the cost of handling cash: - dealing with fake notes, - mistakes in handling notes and change (mistaking a ten for a twenty, etc.) - theft from the store (not just mugging on the way to the safety deposit box) - employee theft, - reduced transaction capacity; cash transactions can take much longer (customers finding the cash, employee counting it, employee making can age) - requirement to ‘cash up‘ at the end…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN