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With the death of cash, privacy faces a deeply uncertain future

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Re: With the death of cash, privacy faces a deeply uncertain future

#51
post #8

I don't like not being able to participate in society when the bank has a technical problem or my credit card company thinks I am committing fraud. Taking away cash puts me at the mercy of these systems, which is uncomfortable. I'm also more financially responsible when I have cash, and there are never any 'pending' transactions.

> I'm also more financially responsible when I have cash

It's the opposite for me. It is much more difficult for me to keep track of cash expenses while budgeting and it is easy to forget individual transactions. So much that at this point if I ever take out cash, I consider that money spent as far as my budget is concerned.

Re: With the death of cash, privacy faces a deeply uncertain future

#52
post #8

I don't like not being able to participate in society when the bank has a technical problem or my credit card company thinks I am committing fraud. Taking away cash puts me at the mercy of these systems, which is uncomfortable. I'm also more financially responsible when I have cash, and there are never any 'pending' transactions.

> I don't like not being able to participate in society when the bank has a technical problem or my credit card company thinks I am committing fraud.

Now imagine when you are too poor to have a bank account, your credit history prevents you from getting a credit card in the first place, or you don't have a permanent address to associate with a digital payment card.

A cashless society is one that will only further exclude those on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cashless-society-poor-exclusi...

It is not something to strive for.

Re: With the death of cash, privacy faces a deeply uncertain future

#53

Has anyone found a use for cash outside financing criminal operations? Transactions are slower than sending money electronically, the paper is subject to decay, and if your cash gets stolen you have no recourse to getting it back. The fact that a hundred dollar bill is worth a hundred real dollars is insanity and proof that its value is a speculative bubble that’s being driven by anarchist fanatics and criminals.

Apparently, people doing grocery shopping are anarchist fanatics and criminals.

Re: With the death of cash, privacy faces a deeply uncertain future

#54
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Monero is a [...] untraceable digital cash that preserves privacy Not exactly. A single transaction might be untraceable but over repeated transactions it's possible to deanonymize people with a high degree of confidence. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s3EbSKDA3o the good part starts at 10 minutes.

See the Monero team's response here: https://www.getmonero.org/2018/03/29/response-to-an-empirica... Full original paper here: https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/popets/2018/3/arti...

>See the Monero team's response here: https://www.getmonero.org/2018/03/29/response-to-an-empirica...

I skimmed the response and the linked paper. It looks like the paper and the article was mostly talking about deficiency in the decoy selection algorithm, whereas the video I linked was talking about the wider problem of taint trees on repeated transactions. That aspect doesn't seem to be addressed in the response.

Re: With the death of cash, privacy faces a deeply uncertain future

#55
post #8

I don't like not being able to participate in society when the bank has a technical problem or my credit card company thinks I am committing fraud. Taking away cash puts me at the mercy of these systems, which is uncomfortable. I'm also more financially responsible when I have cash, and there are never any 'pending' transactions.

> I don't like not being able to participate in society when the bank has a technical problem or my credit card company thinks I am committing fraud. Now imagine when you are too poor to have a bank account, your credit history prevents you from getting a credit card in the first place, or you don't have a permanent address to associate with a digital payment card. A cashless society is one that will only further exc…

depends on what the replacement for cash is. If it's private credit cards that lock the marginalised out then yes. If It's some frictionless digital cash replacement like a few of the central bank currencies that have been floating around I'd welcome it. Seeing how long it took for people to receive covid relief funds, if you could just distribute money to everyone in a country instantly it'd be a step up.

Re: With the death of cash, privacy faces a deeply uncertain future

#56
post #8

I don't like not being able to participate in society when the bank has a technical problem or my credit card company thinks I am committing fraud. Taking away cash puts me at the mercy of these systems, which is uncomfortable. I'm also more financially responsible when I have cash, and there are never any 'pending' transactions.

I tip better when paying with cash.

Re: With the death of cash, privacy faces a deeply uncertain future

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't like not being able to participate in society when the bank has a technical problem or my credit card company thinks I am committing fraud. Now imagine when you are too poor to have a bank account, your credit history prevents you from getting a credit card in the first place, or you don't have a permanent address to associate with a digital payment card. A cashless society is one that will only further exc…

depends on what the replacement for cash is. If it's private credit cards that lock the marginalised out then yes. If It's some frictionless digital cash replacement like a few of the central bank currencies that have been floating around I'd welcome it. Seeing how long it took for people to receive covid relief funds, if you could just distribute money to everyone in a country instantly it'd be a step up.

> If It's some frictionless digital cash replacement like a few of the central bank currencies that have been floating around I'd welcome it.

And how will you get them to people sleeping rough?

How will you deal with their being stolen?

How will you deal with reissuing them?

And that's just the first obvious questions that spring to mind.

Re: With the death of cash, privacy faces a deeply uncertain future

#58
post #2

As long as it's framed as a way to cut off immoral right wing extremists from the financial system, Silicon Valley will enthusiastically embrace dystopian government control of currency.

And 20 years ago, neo-cons embracing dystopian government control to make sure muslims didn't use cash. It's all control. But instead of seeing it as right vs. left, its better framed as authoritarians (historic and modern left [1], Silicon Valley, FBI) vs. people who value their freedom and privacy either because its innate to their being, or because their particular group is kept under a watchful eye (gays in the 8…

Neither party values freedom or privacy. Who can I vote for who even pretends? I'm gay and largely agree with leftist ideals, but completely disagree with modern tactics by both parties. But the left controls technology, and so I criticize them more because there's more at stake.

So I'm an identitarian for criticizing Silicon Valley for constantly engaging in that kind of discourse? Are you identitarian for assuming I am one?

I criticize Silicon Valley because they are worthy of criticism. You say they aren't?

Re: With the death of cash, privacy faces a deeply uncertain future

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

depends on what the replacement for cash is. If it's private credit cards that lock the marginalised out then yes. If It's some frictionless digital cash replacement like a few of the central bank currencies that have been floating around I'd welcome it. Seeing how long it took for people to receive covid relief funds, if you could just distribute money to everyone in a country instantly it'd be a step up.

> If It's some frictionless digital cash replacement like a few of the central bank currencies that have been floating around I'd welcome it. And how will you get them to people sleeping rough? How will you deal with their being stolen? How will you deal with reissuing them? And that's just the first obvious questions that spring to mind.

even homeless people these days often have a smartphone. (and I have for a while argued that we should give every person without a residence one so they have access to basic digital services). It's for sure easier than to bring bank services to them. Also, stealing digital money is much harder than stealing cash, which is very easy to steal.

There's obviously problems with this, mostly revolving around identity, but that's true for all forms of banking. But getting someone a phone and an account and being able to trivially send them money is pretty safe and realistic to set up.

Re: With the death of cash, privacy faces a deeply uncertain future

#60
Would someone define privacy, please? I have searched far and wide and can only find scholarly articles on the various approaches to privacy but there is no commonly accepted definition. What I’ve found, however, is that people often implicitly define privacy as the right to lie. Nobody should know how much money I have and should be relying on my statement alone. True, not all governments or other institutions are worthy of the full truth. But it is also true, that any cooperation involves a level of trust hard to reach when one side reserves the right to lie without consequence.
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