A truly cashless society is impossible to create. Nature abhors a vacuum. Capital is for capitalists. Others will use other, old, familiar means of exchange; the media will be visible or not. Attempts to keep good neighbors from good-will sharing of their time and energy will fail. Noone can pile up enormous stores of caring to stand on and crow.
In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
541–550 of 849 posts
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#542Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
As stated in the original article posted to HN, the potential for change is not with those few who break the law, it's with the much larger group who believe in due process and social contracts. When trust is lost in a system, it affects many more people than the few humans who unexpectedly set a precedent in policy and become an exhibit in history books.
> Are you contending that human beings are generally very good at inconveniencing themselves and changing behaviour
When trust is lost in a system, it creates an opening for other systems, with different properties.
People don't choose inconvenience, but the failure of one system can motivate action beyond stable equilibria. People can then consider alternatives which may offer more convenience in some dimensions, less convenience (but other benefits) in other dimensions, and new properties which are not comparable between the two systems.
Most importantly, the loss of trust in one system creates an economic opportunity for competing systems, including investments that can change the calculus of convenience.
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair enough. I acknowledge people have different viewpoints on this issue. Believe it or not, my wife is actually a proponent of cash transactions. She has not been able to convince me of the benefits either. We've agreed to disagree. She carries the cash, and to my benefit she spots me whenever we encounter a merchant that doesn't accept credit cards since I don't carry cash.
> She has not been able to convince me of the benefits either. … > She carries the cash, and to my benefit she spots me whenever we encounter a merchant that doesn't accept credit cards since I don't carry cash. I’m having trouble understanding these sentences written together in such short succession. Are you being serious?
If the only benefit of cash is dealing with cavemerchants, that's covered by keeping some money around for such cases. It's not something you'd normally do so the thought is perfectly congruent.
The only real advantage to cash is avoiding government overreach. It is most definitely not convenient in any way
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#544How are there so many comments that don't seem to understand you can have both. YOU can keep using cards for literally everything. Cash just need to exist and businesses should be forced to take it. That doesn't mean YOU have to use cash. YOU can live happily without it and use cards but the less well off should still have the right to use cash. But just because they may sometimes use cash that doesn't mean that YOU…
As a small business owner, why do I need to deal with the extra expense of taking cash? I need to hold a float, take security measures to protect it, take time to count up, take time to go to a physical bank to deposit, all sorts of extra costs in staffing or just plain time. And all for a fraction of a percentage of my customer base. It just doesn't make sense and I don't see why I should carry that burden.
So cash not only grants people freedom and anonymity, it also creates local jobs instead of moving money as arbitrary transaction fees into the pockets of a credit card duopoly? Sounds terrible.
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't have limited rights. You need to work on understanding that rights are not granted. Rights are inherent. Enumeration of rights is only to emphasize the importance
> We don't have limited rights. You need to work on understanding that rights are not granted. That's a definition you accept, which is not a useful definition to me. There are rights that are not inherent and sometimes the legal and moral mix. eg I don't have the right to take an organ from a human who has not yet suffered systemic death, unless they have gone through a process that includes giving consent to that p…
False and here's why:
There are rights which are fundamental. Saying "definition", as if it is a flexible description does not satisfy the reality. These rights are defined by the fact that they are inherent.
Your example is a perfectly described granted right. You have been granted the right to something which is not yours and you have no other right to take.
The distinction is important. There is no moral hazard nor wrong committed in preventing someone from harvesting organs without permission. There is a wrong perpetrated when someone has been restricted in their speech or movement.
The usefulness, as you say, lies in the treatment of these things as distinctly different in nature
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#546Exactly correct. Anyone who is applauding this, just imagine the opposite political party in power using this against you or organizations you support. This is why no one should have been happy when executive orders became the norm in the US and congress did nothing. This is how you lose a senate and gain a Caesar, and look what happen to Rome eventually… Debanking someone who can now no longer pay for thier own defe…
I'd have no problem with the opposite political party using the same powers under similar circumstances.
Fair enough?
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#547Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, beca…
>US society is very backward in its attitudes to banking and payments, and in giving access to banking to everyone
ironic
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a small business owner, why do I need to deal with the extra expense of taking cash? I need to hold a float, take security measures to protect it, take time to count up, take time to go to a physical bank to deposit, all sorts of extra costs in staffing or just plain time. And all for a fraction of a percentage of my customer base. It just doesn't make sense and I don't see why I should carry that burden.
So cash not only grants people freedom and anonymity, it also creates local jobs instead of moving money as arbitrary transaction fees into the pockets of a credit card duopoly? Sounds terrible.
No, it increases costs on business, which reduces the number of jobs available.
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#549Another day, another answer to "What is Bitcoin good for?" Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30435383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30408611
Bitcoin increases the chances of a dystopian authoritarian future happening, precisely because for the most part the use cases where it actually works better than the regular banking system are when someone is trying to evade the law. Proponents like to imagine that people using it to evade the law will mostly be using it to evade unpopular laws such as laws that restrict civil rights, but I thinking they are being w…
If they didn't give a fuck when those crimes were committed using fiat, why would they care when it's done using crypto?
Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
#550Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't have limited rights. You need to work on understanding that rights are not granted. Rights are inherent. Enumeration of rights is only to emphasize the importance
As soon as some rights are violated, you don't have them any more. The language of "granting" could be changed to "respecting" and it would be an improvement indeed. But rights are only natural and inherent to the extent that people are free to exercise them in absence of interference.
They can be obstructed or denied, yes. This does not mean you do not have that right. It means it is being denied you.
That's the nature of rights and it's important to consider rights in this fashion because it shapes our ideas about what is acceptable in terms of obstruction and denial