In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously • Hacker News Board

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#511

Post by tsimionescu » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 6:30 AM UTC

throwaway22032 wrote: post #83

jaredandrews wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your last sentence sounds like civil forfeiture and I certainly think it should be outlawed. As far as cashless society winning, I dunno, I'm definitely worried about that outcome, but it's straight up illegal in my state to not to accept cash in a retail establishment and a good number of bars I go to don't accept cards at all. I use cash all the time and I find it way more convenient than a credit or debit card. My…

Agree with this. I've always found that people throw around this word "inconvenience" without even defining it. It makes no sense to me. Both paying for and accepting payment for things in person are strictly easier for me to do in cash. It's literally just handing over a bit of paper. There's always some resort to "but I don't have cash". Well duh, that's a circular argument. If you don't use cash you don't have cas…

I and everyone here accepts that cash is easy. But there is no way whatsoever it is strictly easier than contactless payments. With cash you need to (a) always remember to withdraw and tale enough with you for what you estimate you will need, (b) compute an approximate factorization of the value you need to pay into the bills and coins you have, (c) hope the business has just the right bills to be able to give you your change, and do it in a decent amount of bills (e.g. not trying to give you change for a hundred in 5$ bills).

All this compared to touching the card/phone/watch to the terminal, and perhaps putting in your pin/fingerprint/face ID.

Again, not saying cash is hard, we've all used it and you get used to it. But it's objectively harder than contactless by any definition.

Of course, cash has other clear advantages in terms of privacy, censorship resistance etc.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#512

Post by DeathArrow » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 6:30 AM UTC

jakobdabo wrote: post #13

throwaway22032 wrote: post #3

The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. In the medium to long term it's simply incompatible with any reasonable definition of freedom. Surveillance is bad enough, but a system that allows governments to arbitrarily "turn off" thousands or millions of people at the push of a button is too powerful to not be abused. Even the mere existence of such a system has a chilling effect. Which I suspect is precisel…

> The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. No, that battle is lost. Cashless is easier and more convenient, it's hard to beat that. We need more constitutional human rights. It's not okay to take or freeze somebody's money/property without any court decision. Edit: some of the answers assume that I'm against cash or that by saying "battle is lost" I mean cash is gone; My point of "cashless winning" is tha…

>We need more constitutional human rights.

We need but we can't have. Governments and lobby groups are slowly eroding the rights and freedoms.

And even if we theoretically have those rights, who is to enforce them?

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#513

Post by jjav » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 6:30 AM UTC

throwaway22032 wrote: post #3

The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. In the medium to long term it's simply incompatible with any reasonable definition of freedom. Surveillance is bad enough, but a system that allows governments to arbitrarily "turn off" thousands or millions of people at the push of a button is too powerful to not be abused. Even the mere existence of such a system has a chilling effect. Which I suspect is precisel…

> The simple answer is to reject the cashless society.

Very much this. It is disappointing and scary to see tech people, of all groups, who like this idea.

Cash is a perfect currency. It is strictly peer to peer, fully fungible, can't be blocked or censored by any party, anonymous, has no dependency on anything (still works when the electricity and internet are down).

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#514

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 6:31 AM UTC

jakobdabo wrote: post #13

throwaway22032 wrote: post #3

The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. In the medium to long term it's simply incompatible with any reasonable definition of freedom. Surveillance is bad enough, but a system that allows governments to arbitrarily "turn off" thousands or millions of people at the push of a button is too powerful to not be abused. Even the mere existence of such a system has a chilling effect. Which I suspect is precisel…

> The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. No, that battle is lost. Cashless is easier and more convenient, it's hard to beat that. We need more constitutional human rights. It's not okay to take or freeze somebody's money/property without any court decision. Edit: some of the answers assume that I'm against cash or that by saying "battle is lost" I mean cash is gone; My point of "cashless winning" is tha…

Cashless and freedom can co-habit, just allow anonymous prepaid debit cards. But no, that is not allowed, power is too sweet.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#515

Post by trinovantes » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 6:32 AM UTC

Don't think we're in a cashless society yet. There's a lot of places that are cash only (presumably to evade taxes)

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#516

Post by seanmcdirmid » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 6:34 AM UTC

DeathArrow wrote: post #510

throwaway22032 wrote: post #3

The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. In the medium to long term it's simply incompatible with any reasonable definition of freedom. Surveillance is bad enough, but a system that allows governments to arbitrarily "turn off" thousands or millions of people at the push of a button is too powerful to not be abused. Even the mere existence of such a system has a chilling effect. Which I suspect is precisel…

>The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. But you can't as long as the cashless society is forced upon you. At most you can try to take refuge on currencies which aren't controlled by governments like crypto. But since crypto is very volatile, it isn't a practical thing to do. You can try to buy precious metals or other things you can easily sell for cash if the need arises. Too bad nobody invented a stab…

> You can try to buy precious metals or other things you can easily sell for cash if the need arises.

That’s exactly what gigolo chains were designed for. Police would confiscate your cash, but not your jewelry, so carrying around jewelry allowed you to post bail fairly easily (also why bail bondsmen deal in lots of jewelry). The use of gold jewelry as backup money is also common in India where people are less confident in the local currency.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#517

Post by Nursie » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 6:34 AM UTC

undersuit wrote: post #439

drsnow wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a matter of principle.

As a small business owner, why do I need to deal with the extra expense of accepting handicapped customers? I need to build a ramp, take preemptive measures to make it accessible in the weather, take time to wait for them to wheel across the office, take time to teach my employees how to be accommodating of them, all sorts of extra costs in staffing or just plain time. And all for a fraction of a percentage of my cus…

And if we put 'black people' in there you could make me look like a racist too! Wow.

There are many reasons your allegory doesn't apply - 'people who want to pay cash' are not a protected class. Serving people with disabilities doesn't put me at risk of theft either, nor does it increase my banking costs.

You're going to have to show some pretty good evidence of a positive social outcome to make this persuasive, because it is adding a big burden to business. (And unbanked figures in the US are not that - US society is very backward in its attitudes to banking and payments, and in giving access to banking to everyone)

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#518

Post by Nursie » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 6:34 AM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #389

Nursie wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few people will ever hit this. Ever. As a result most are unlikely to care very much. They'll think of those that do care as crackpots.

Ah yes, the fallacy of quantitative supremacy and human fungibility, that illusory phase of statistics kindergarten. Imagine a fictional universe where Steve Jobs was cancelled in his early career. "But it was only one person". How many human lives would have been impacted if Steve Jobs had been deleted from technology history? 2021 smartphone adoption is north of 3 billion humans. > Very few people will ever hit thi…

Ah yes, the fallacy of thinking that because HN cares, the general public will inconvenience themselves.

The fallacy of thinking that software engineers as a profession will base what work they are willing to do on any form of ethics rather than getting paid.

And finally the fallacy of thinking that because I predicted what I think will happen that I also think it should happen.

The post I replied to, to remind you, claimed that people would change their ways when they were suddenly the focus of their payments being banned. But most won't be subject to that. Most will rightly or wrongly think that only affects bad people, and given that, most won't change their behaviour. Software engineers in general will do what they're paid to, very few make any sort of principled stand, if they do someone else will be hired.

Are you contending that human beings are generally very good at inconveniencing themselves and changing behaviour in the face of a small minority having their rights or liberties infringed? Because if so I'd like some of your happy pills.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#519

Post by jjav » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 6:35 AM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #206

stickfigure wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Incorrect, the battle is partly won... Not in the slightest. You can mandate that people accept cash, but you can't force people to pay with it. The writing is on the wall; barring some sort of major social upheaval, cashless will be more dominant in the future. It's just too convenient. So let's figure out what kind of benign future we actually can build. "Everyone decides to use cash again" just isn't going to ha…

> The writing is on the wall; barring some sort of major social upheaval, cashless will be more dominant in the future. It's just too convenient. In classic HN fashion, everyone disagreeing with this is focused on their own solipsistic perception of the relative merits, technical and otherwise, of cash versus electronic payments. But convenience always wins. The not-yet-evenly-distributed future is represented by App…

> We need better legal protections for electronic payments and banking.

I can comfortably predict that can never happen. Electronic payments offer governments perfect and absolute surveillance and blocking ability. No government on earth will vote their fingers off that pie.

The only freedom-compatible answer is to insist on cash.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#520

Post by Nursie » Wed, Feb 23, 2022, 6:35 AM UTC

14 wrote: post #399

ransom1538 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol. I did some homework on this idea. Check this out: https://purse.io/earn/btc

That is actually pretty neat thank you for sharing. But I am a little confused after watching the video on it. It seems like you pay less for items with your bitcoin, do the people ordering hope that one day the bitcoin will increase in value and make money that way? Or is it just a way to buy bitcoin with items vs cash? Or a way to convert gift cards to bitcoin and that is the cost of business? I'm going to check it…

As a bitcoin holder you're getting yourself a discount on purchases through sites like that because the people doing the amazon purchases are using stolen cards or stolen accounts.

People who have bought through sites like these have often found amazon refuses to honour warranties etc on the purchased goods, and when they've dug a little deeper it's been because the real cardholder or account holder has flagged the transaction as fraudulent.