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

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

#691

Post by sneak »

Nursie wrote: post #517
undersuit wrote: post #439

Earlier 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…

All protected classes are protected classes because society agreed that they should be and codified those beliefs into law.

The argument that is being made is that people who want to pay cash should be a protected class, with their ability to transact protected in law, so that every participant in society may benefit from those rights should they ever be needed.

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

#692

Post by raxxorrax »

adriand wrote: post #57

I agree that this needs to be taken very seriously. However, the author overstates his case significantly when he writes: > Doing this to someone—a small business owner in BC, a public servant in Winnipeg, a student in Halifax—who made a small donation to support the convoy is a clear abuse of power. However: > The RCMP, banking sector and federal government said Monday that account-freezing powers bestowed under the…

That is a statement, not necessarily a fact. Especially if the source is not trustworthy simply because they are part of the executive in this case.

It probably is true, but it still is not a fact until it was verified, which is not trivial.

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

#693

Post by walterbell »

bradwood wrote: post #569
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…

Yeah. Plus 2 states in one country is definitely not 'partly won"

There are a dozen EU countries whose population is smaller than the cash-mandatory population of New York City (not state).

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

#694

Post by api »

radford-neal wrote: post #297
commandlinefan wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> likely to be used in Canada against indigenous peoples Actually the emergency powers declaration specifically excludes indigenous people - that is, they can protest, but others can’t.

I think this is a misinterpretation. The exemption applies only to the new regulations regarding entry to the country, probably because there are some cross-border reserves. It is, however, very likely that these new powers will be applied selectively, not according to how disruptive protesters are, but according to whether their message is congenial to those in power.

Canada is almost a petrostate. It’s likely that oil and gas projects will be considered congenial to those in power.

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

#695

Post by 6510 »

autoexec wrote: post #635
peterbraden wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me sad, you are so confident that a government can never do the right thing, that the only solution you see is to prevent any progress, and anchor yourself to a local minima from the past. Society needs it’s members to believe that they can improve it, that they are represented by a government, and that they can influence it’s path. Anything less is an authoritarian regime. Such deep seated cynicism shows…

> Society needs it’s members to believe that they can improve it, that they are represented by a government, and that they can influence it’s path. I'll believe in the benevolent government that rejects abusing their authority for the purpose of mass surveillance when I see one. I believe people still have the power to push for small/minor changes in government so long as those changes don't threaten the powerful. An…

> I believe people still have the power to push for small/minor changes in government so long as those changes don't threaten the powerful. Anything else is pretty unlikely.

I use to think the same but apparently the anti corruption tech is getting every bit as draconian as everything else. Governments will eventually have to go full retard and be openly corrupt or they have to deal with oddities retroactively.

For example, many would love to award contracts directly without holding a proper bidding process but it gets increasingly unlikely to get away with it.

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

#696

Post by walterbell »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #514
jakobdabo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

True, even when they do exist, some companies refuse to accept prepaid cards, or they are limited to a single country.

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

#697

Post by maccard »

auggierose wrote: post #675
maccard wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could use two bank accounts? These things happen even day to day, sometimes cards fail, or a card reader acts up. I find it hard to see that the next logical leap from "one bank account in a country" is "global volatile decentralized currency with incredibly expensive transaction fees" > its less bulky remembering a string than shipping tonnes of gold across borders. Assuming you completely disregard the compu…

Card reader acting up is very different from your bank account being frozen for weeks.

Agreed, however it's also an experience that almost everyone has had, and the straightforward solution (carry two cards from two different banks) _also_ tends to resolve the issue of your bank account being frozen.

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

#698

Post by raxxorrax »

catgary wrote: post #319
mark_l_watson wrote: post #145

Excellent article and one that I wish my friends would read. Recently on a hike I mentioned how upsetting Trudeau’s actions are, and none of my friends had any idea what was happening up in Canada, except someone talked about a few things that I don’t believe are true: truckers were violent, few Canadians supported them, etc. - I think those things are not true. As other people here have pointed out, cashless society…

No, poll after poll has shown that Canadians were overwhelmingly against the truckers [1], and a strong majority supported the use of the emergency act (there was even a point where bringing in the military polled quite strongly with Canadians). There have also been a multitude of reports of violence, including at least one case where protestors attempted to burn down an apartment complex with its residents locked in…

> The survey was conducted online "among a representative randomized sample of 1,622 Canadian adults who are members of Angus Reid Forum."

You need a lot of faith if you think that can ever be a representative sample.

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

#699

Post by phoinix »

tenuousemphasis wrote: post #488
pshc wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of all the posts on HN about running your own email server. Admirable but ultimately negligible. Cryptocurrencies will provide solutions that actually scale to these problems in time, but HN’s still not ready to hear it.

It still blows my mind how antagonistic HN is to cryptocurrency, particularly Bitcoin.

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