How a Cashless Society Could Embolden Big Brother
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Almost all of the solutions that are actually currently on the table already do help mass surveillance, already does give more control to the government.
If we can get the general public to use open hardware without backdoors and a cryptocurrency or similar, we might be able to come close to the privacy of cash. But is that a realistic goal? Anyone knows how to use cash in a reasonably private way. Barely anyone knows how to use digital technology in a reasonably private way. It may not even be possible (are our systems backdoored? is x86 secure?)
Taxation is always the problem hailed here. I think that fundamentally people should have the power to withhold information from the government. That action may result in negative consequences, but it should be possible nonetheless.
There is a huge distinction between choosing to disobey the law and potentially being punished for it (civil disobedience), and having literally no choice because all other avenues have become impossible.
That is what people are fighting for, that is what freedom is all about. Perfect enforcement is not desirable.
Imagine a world in which homosexuality is impossible. Not illegal, but impossible. That's what perfect enforcement would have looked like in the 50s.
Because we all know who runs the place, right? It's not like you can bite the hand that feeds you.
It never used to be that way, but government overreach and control is, well, out of control.
It always was that way. Look up William Randolph Hearst. He is sometime portrayed as a crusader. But the reality is messier, Hearst would look for dirt on people who were not doing what he wanted. Teapot Dome Scandal is just such an example.
I think the peace of mind that you and everyone you'll ever know will never get disappeared into someone's rape dungeon doesn't seem so bad. Or that you can go into business and actually win because you're doing it better, because your competitors aren't in bed with government, corruptly and systematically destroying the possibility of competition. Just also don't do stupid shit like control the expression of two consenting persons just because what they're doing is not your cup of tea. Is this really so hard to differentiate between? And does perfect enforcement really mean minds can't changed, that the law can't be changed after it's created if it's understood that actions X, Y, or Z actually aren't against the universal bill of rights for living entities?
Sure, freedom is about being able to do what you want with your life, but it also means being able to do it safely, without the fear of getting pwned. People who want to pwn will always have the upper hand if we just all agree we'd rather keep letting people do whatever the fuck they want so long as they can get away with it. "Perfect enforcement" sounds only as horrible as the culture behind it is, to me. Turning away from that is to embrace and make a home for the devil we know---corruption, physical and sexual domination of the weak by the powerful, environmental devastation, rampant species genocide, etc etc etc.
The people running society are far less likely to benign than the culture AI's (I think I have just about all of recorded history to back that one up).
It's the parable of the scorpion and the frog and we (meaning the general electorate) would be the frog.
> "Perfect enforcement" sounds only as horrible as the culture behind it is
Historically, the "culture behind it" has looked pretty damn awful once time or distance give us some perspective.
> Turning away from that is to embrace and make a home for the devil we know---corruption, physical and sexual domination of the weak by the powerful, environmental devastation, rampant species genocide, etc etc etc.
Culture frequently and reliably endorses these things and worse. Corruption, cheating, and coercion are fetishized in today's business environment -- just look at the arguments over Ben Affleck's boiler room speech on youtube -- and historically it has been worse. It's not uncommon for entire countries to get behind genocide or slavery.
If you assume, in direct contrast to extensive historical and contemporary evidence, that culture is easy to get right, to fix, or to keep fixed, then your conclusion about perfect enforcement might follow. But that assumption is so utterly absurd that I don't think even the dullest lawyer Satan could get his hands on would make it the core of their argument.
American Peculiar Institution slavery was a widening of the scope of Iron Triangle trade in the Carribean by rapacious Mercantilists.
And to your last point, there's the line from "A Man For All Seasons" - "It'd give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake."
In the real world though, power corrupts, and those with power have much more ability to harm then those without.
To reduce harm the disenfranchised, we need to raise them from poverty. To reduce harm from the powerful, we need to strictly curtail their ability to enforce their whims.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Everyone realizes perfect enforcement of crimes related to rape or murder would be "great" in the sense no one wants that. However, the risks of those crimes happening to you are very minimal today and dropping every year in the U.S. Most victims of those crimes are placed or place themselves in situations that bad things can occur, think drug violence.
In order to combat the stuff you mentioned we would essentially lose the liberty to make mistakes as a society. For example, if I want to smoke weed, and do. I'll go to prison. Today, I get a ticket.
Or let's take an even more exterem case, say I am a 16 year old male and my 16 year old girlfriend texts me a picture of her breasts. We both would be labeled paedophiles for life, and got to prison.
There are literally millions of laws, to the point no one can keep track. If we made "Perfect Enforcement" we would all be jailed, for crossing the street without a sidewalk, for texting a friend a picture of a statue (copy right violation), potentially for being gay, etc.
We don't live in a society where people want to protect your freedom to not be physically hurt. We live in a society which tries to ensure people don't get physically, economically, socially, emotionally, hurt. This leads to many contradicting laws, and makes it impossible to both be free and secure at the same time. If we enforced "Perfect Enforcement" there would only be a totalitarian Enforcement force that doesn't follow laws, and the imprisoned populace who at least tries to follow the laws.
That's why the founding fathers added the bill of rights. They understood this, and sadly 200+ years later it appears our society is still incapable of understanding it.
What was intended to be a pro-statist argument has been turned into an anti-statist warning, which it was never intended to be. I'm not saying the "revised" interpretation isn't valuable - it just shouldn't be argued from the authority of Benjamin Franklin (or, by extent, the intent of the founding fathers) when he was complaining that people weren't sufficiently funding the military industrial complex of the time.
[0]https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-ben-franklin-really-said
"Those who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety will deserve neither and lose both." -Unknown
That version of the quote is one Franklin never actually said, so it can't accurately be attributed to him and we can avoid having to care about what he actually meant. Because the thing in the linked post clearly isn't what anybody else means when they use that quote.
Maybe if you live in a suburb in the Netherlands and are part of a privileged socioeconomic class, these risks are low to non-existent. How about the billion plus people who don't even have electricity today? How about those who have nothing to give to the global economy because they're unemployable, cast aside, and lack technology, do they not live in risky environments and engage in risky behaviors as a matter of course through no fault of their own? Are there not entire countries of people getting pwned in every sense of the word by more powerful entities, right now, as we speak? Used up and then left to perish? No matter what the statistics, these poor victims are somebody. They're real people. "Oh, but that crime is so rare (for someone like me)"
What about slave trade? Our "low crime" existence in first world countries isn't made possible by rampant crime and resource domination on the other side of borders? From where I'm standing, it looks to me like a lot of assholes are not only getting away with murder and ecological destruction, they're getting rich off of it, despite any and all laws to the contrary.
How does making law less enforceable by embracing shadows (lack of transparency) in our age of accelerating technological change make life better for the majority (all living things)? Unfortunately the American Bill of Rights doesn't mean shit unless it applies to everyone. American business and government as a matter of course commit atrocities that are against it and nothing happens merely because those atrocities aren't (directly / provably) against Americans.
As a response to all the other children posts of this thread, I'm not saying let's maintain the status quo, plus perfect enforcement of the law. I'm saying we're entering a new age and shit needs to get revamped badly. Transparency in all things public would be a big step towards ridding our world of many evils that happen right now because powerful actors always have and will continue to act in the shadows while humanity, as a group, agrees to put up with it, er because e.g. preteens are sexting each other and as a result, the current utterly draconian and provably corrupt & massively inefficient law system has destroyed their first world lives. That really, really sucks. You know what sucks even worse? Being born or sold into sex slavery.
Simplify the law, make a universal bill of rights for all living things. Make it global. Automate and enforce it. For everyone. Obsolete the time when you could kill disenfranchised people and get away with it 'because high-priced lawyers'. It's hard for me to see how that could possibly be worse than what we have today, where the few get a nice life and all the rest are grist for the mill, to be used up.
The people you mention (the billions of global poor) get by, and live somewhat free, because of the law being less enforceable.
All of them break this or that law in order to make ends meet and survive. And those laws are compiled and passed by people who'd rather get rid of those poor altogether.
Again, to quote Anatole France: "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread".
More enforceability of the law will mean more people at the mercy of the law -- and more people in jail, undeservingly so.
Not to mention that this whole discussion presumes "ethical laws" -- which is far from the truth in most of the world, include the BS us "three strikes laws" (which can put a man, usually a poor and/or black one, in jail for life for stealing a loaf of bread if they've done 2 equally BS offences in the past), marijuana laws, sodomy laws (until recently), etc.
(1) You are comparing murder to ecological destruction. To me that seems like you're ethical code compares the two, which I have to question. Ethically, to me, creating a dam to give water and food to millions is better than murder....
I realize that's probably not the case, you were thinking of, but you should consider what you think of as right or wrong, then imagine the exact opposite. Do you want those perfectly enforced?
(2) Usually, the people you don't like are using laws to get away with ecological destruction. Perfect enforcement would only make it worse.
In a world of Fiat currency, Cashless Society is the Orwellian end game.
>"Perfect enforcement" sounds only as horrible as the culture behind it is, to me.
But we know how terrible the culture behind it is. We have thousands of years of history. "The strong do as they please and the weak suffer as they must."
>And does perfect enforcement really mean minds can't changed, that the law can't be changed after it's created if it's understood that actions X, Y, or Z actually aren't against the universal bill of rights for living entities?
Whoever holds the reins of power can make of the law as they see fit. At this level of power imbalance laws don't really exist, "L'etat c'est moi".
A society in which law enforcement will be perfect (from a technical perspective) is not the same as a society in which the law is perfect.
Nor is a police having "100% capability of catching thieves, etc" the same as a police catching "100% of thieves".
The police could have all the tools on their disposal to catch anyone, but the political leaders of the police, and those influencing policy, law and enforcement, will still be the same higher-ups with self interests.
And of course any bevelonce in the use of such powers is just a regime change away from being lost -- not to mention that such powers would make it more tempting for the elite get dictatorial powers, and more difficult for the people to get rid of them.
Among other things, to quote Anatole France: "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread".
Without much turbulent political history to draw upon (compared to a place like Germany or Italy) Americans are quite naive on such matters, especially white ones (even though McCarthyism, or J.E Hoover, or Nixon are there as examples, along with many others, like the recent SWATization of police forces, ridiculous 3-strikes laws etc). Black Americans on the other hand, of who people between 60 - 80 still lived in legal segregation, and who still get show for "walking while black" among tons of similar injustices, know better.
I am absolutely not trying to espouse 100% given the current state of law / government in most countries, where the expression of the few, the powerful, expression which is contrary to the interest of the many, and quite frankly, contrary to the law as most people know it (e.g. current blatant human rights violations in America), somehow is always permitted by law and any counter-measures are preemptively disabled.
In other words, any government susceptible to corruption plus 100% law enforcement is a dead end.
If you think this is possible through any technical means, you're not reading the right science fiction. I suggest you give Watchbird by Robert Sheckley a read.[0] It will disabuse you of any notion that we can improve society through any system of "perfect enforcement."
I also have healthy respect for the idea that with new technology, new highs / quality levels are attainable. Obviously mankind needs a new system of government (or correctly implement an instance of "capitalism"). Why can't complete transparency in public communications be a feature? (that includes anything with a $ sign attached to it.)
Imagine you're cleaning / renovating your house and there's this black box in the corner of a room, you can't get inside it by any of your normal means, and the black box is dumping shit onto the floor. It doesn't care about house rules or respond to any communications you try to make. Now imagine you could, through technology, enable a way of looking inside the black box, being able to find the proof you need to be able to say with complete ethical certainty that it needs to fuck right off, and evict it. What do you do? Do you turn away from that technology, hold onto the dream that maybe the black box should be allowed to dump shit onto the floor for perfectly valid reasons that we don't know about inside? Only because that technology means other things in the house that are allowable would have to get that same lens?
I can't help but think that all this utter shit we're now getting proof of via the Panama Papers, human nature at work, selfish actions that are demonstrably "evil", it's going to continue, and worse is happening merely concealed by darker shadows. And it'll get worse as the powerful's influence expands as they get more and more tech savvy and more and more rich.
Humanity (and most life on Earth) is in a ridiculously challenging long-term pickle concerning the sustainability of life as we know it, and there's a rampant group of wealthy, powerful people that are making it harder and harder for us to get to the other side due to their selfish behavior. That shit needs to stop because humanity needs to get it together if we're even to stand a chance.
It's not even a slippery slope: as the systems are deployed those use cases are built in.
Assuming a somewhat symmetrical distribution of competence, about 50% of people will be less competent than average. Many of these people will need someone to blame for their failure, and usually it's "these guys over there don't play fair!!!". Imagine a world where these people are faced with conclusive proof that they just suck at what they're doing.
Yes it is. Otherwise why haven't we done it already?
Even if we could clearly distinguish just and unjust laws in a way that everyone agreed, how would that make a system capable of perfect enforcement any less dangerous when it's used to enforce unjust laws regardless?
Perfect enforcement is just a synonym for absolute power.
Unfortunately total government control means that you'd always be at the risk of being disappeared into the government's rape dungeon.
>universal bill of rights for living entities?
Who decides what's in that universal bill of rights? What happens to those who inevitably disagree with whats in that bill?
>Just also don't do stupid shit like control the expression of two consenting persons just because what they're doing is not your cup of tea. Is this really so hard to differentiate between?
Yes, unfortunately it is. Many, if not most people (and virtually every government), on the planet earth not only have no problem controlling the expression of two consenting persons, they are happy to do so with the threat of force. Who decides what a government with absolute power should or shouldn't do. Is it you? Is it the mullah in Pakistan? Is it the point heads in Washington DC?
>Sure, freedom is about being able to do what you want with your life, but it also means being able to do it safely, without the fear of getting pwned.
No, that's the opposite of freedom. In a free society, you have a risk of getting pwned. In a Totalintarian society (like the one you describe), your lack of freedom makes you pwned by definition. In a free society, people are free to make bad choices. Any sort of society that is oppressive enough to preemptively prevent behavior must have total control over all behavior - the very antithesis of freedom.
If you think about it, neither is perfect security --- since that's how perfect enforcement can be carried out. Imagine using a locked-down, unjailbreakable ("provably secure"), DRM'd device under the control of the corporations which the government obliges to design such that it behaves in a particular manner, and you can't do anything about it. That's why the whole encryption debate worries me, and not exactly in the "governments can spy on you" sort of way. "Unbreakable" perfect crypto is good only if you're the only one in control of it, and even then it's not completely awesome --- imagine accidentally locking yourself out of your car/house/etc. and having to get a locksmith to essentially hack their way in for you. That's not possible with perfect crypto. More ironically, if government systems were more secure, Snowden could not have happened...
Maybe a little insecurity, a little imperfection, is a good thing after all, because it enables freedom.
As much as possible, we should be taxing consumption, not income, savings, and growth. Where it is necessary to tax income and growth, we should be looking specifically at the largest, wealthiest corporations and their major beneficiaries, not average individuals.
Since most intellectual and "brand" property must also be registered, I am sure the same can apply to that.
But a consumption tax which is collected by the merchants provides the government with the least information. All they learn is that Walmart reported selling $8,500,000 worth of auto parts this quarter, not who your employer is or what specific customers bought what specific products.
> As much as possible, we should be taxing consumption, not income, savings, and growth.
These two desires are in complete opposition to each other, because the poor by necessity spend a much larger proportion of their income than the rich. What you are proposing is impossible.
I don't see any tenable path towards implementing this kind of taxation scheme. Consumer spending is the driving force of the US economy, and higher taxes on spending would cause serious reductions in spending in favor of saving (which goes untaxed). So you'd see huge collapses in goods and services industries, with people putting off big purchases until after the inevitable collapse of the new taxation scheme. Meanwhile entire companies are dying and millions becoming unemployed.
My effective total taxation rate under your proposed scheme would go from ~45% to under 10%. I save most of my income, and housing is more than half of the money I do save. I don't live in luxury housing or anything, and since you're discounting income, you thus couldn't charge me any more in taxes on my housing than my neighbors who earn significantly less (and couldn't afford to pay huge taxes on expensive housing).
Since the poor spend most of their income, and the rich don't spend most of it, you are in any case taxing a higher portion of the income of poor people (with consumption taxes).
It's actually very simple. You collect a fixed percentage as a consumption tax (e.g. 33%) and then send everyone a tax refund in a fixed dollar amount (e.g. $10,000/year). Then everybody who spends less than $30K/year pays no or negative tax and for everyone spending more than that their effective tax rate starts at 0% at $30K/year and increases progressively to 33% the more they spend.
This also has the useful consequence of not requiring minimum wage laws or social assistance programs because the refund exceeding the tax paid takes care of that at the low end.
Plus now you're relying on businesses to collect your revenue instead of the IRS, and so you're going to see rampant sales tax evasion.
You mean like all the social assistance programs that sending everyone a $10,000 check every year would make redundant?
Your argument seems to be that if the government wants to spend more money then they have to set a higher tax rate. Of course they do. How does that in any way dispute that a system of flat consumption tax + fixed refund is inherently progressive?
> Plus now you're relying on businesses to collect your revenue instead of the IRS, and so you're going to see rampant sales tax evasion.
Businesses already collect income tax. Waitresses reporting their tips is basically on the honor system. Contractors get paid under the table all the time.
Moreover, VAT solves this easily because each component of the supply chain will insist that its supplier has paid the appropriate VAT, otherwise it won't be deductible from the VAT owed by the purchasing business.
In a way, isn't this the drug trade in rural Massachusetts? Or in Baltimore in "The Wire"? It's a jury-rigged cash substitute.
I suspect that not only is cashlessness impossible, but that some sort of scrip money will be needed to meet unfunded liability.
I don't live in a high-marginal rate system, but in the US, taxes aren't high enough to be a real problem except in a very few cases.
It still confuses me that any normal person believes that any sort of prohibitionism is good policy. In fact, I don't think they do - I think that prohibitionism is pernicious snake oil sold to those in search of a Utopia.
One need only look and it's obvious that it can never work.
We are at the mercy of corporations which push much of the technology to their financial benefit and also the large policing agencies which want the easy route to surveillance of the general population. All of this together with the main-stream-media are an enormous barrier to to cross in order to inform people of what could become if things continue on the current path.
Unfortunately, they got co-opted by savvy politicians who promised to catch sinners and wage war on other religions in exchange for a little more power.
http://www.theonion.com/article/satan-to-revise-bar-code-sys...
There is a distinct difference between a business using a system to keep track of inventory and the enforcement of a digital only currency...
For the record, money is just an idea shared between people, and the communication of said idea. For strong demonstrations of this, consider hawala or consensus-based cryptocurrencies.
Humans have been assigning value to tokens and trading on the tokens since the dawn of civilization. Outlawing this activity is dangerous to free society. It will also make the beggar class and the poor generally even more beholden to the state.
But now consider idle land that's being held speculatively. The landowner expected to sell it at a profit in the future, but now those profits are impacted by the LVT. To maintain their profits they would need to find tenants for the land in order to pay the LVT. (Or settle with less profit! :P)
Can you expand on this point please? Why would it be necessary to earn rent from idle land in order to pay the LVT? Wouldn't unused land have a low value under a LVT system, much like it does now?
I think you're right that introducing LVT could lower the already low values of unused land. Perhaps its introduction would mean a glut of sales of land: fire sale! (Win-win again, according to my armchair-economics analysis. :P)
Not necessarily, although that is certainly how it works in many residential situations.
The general idea is removing the marginal disincentive for high-value _use_ of the land. Property taxes mean for every dollar you spend making something more awesome, you get taxed more. Instead, we should encourage awesomeness on the margin, and discourage people who use land that could be awesome in the least awesome ways.
That's only a win-win if you don't value nature very highly. LVT sounds like it would force even faster destruction of invaluable biospheres like rainforests.
We already do this a little bit in some states of the US with homestead taxing
If we assume that all rents are at their market maximum (e.g. landlords are making minimal but still positive profit) then adding a tax to all will simply raise that equilibrium.
[0]Emily's List v. FEC [1]Citizens United v. FEC
You don't need fancy chunks of metal and plastic to use cash. You don't even need electricity, much less an internet connection, to use it. A three-year-old kid can use it just as well as one-hundred-and-three-year-old great-grandma.
A lot of the time, you can't even tell whether the bills are genuine or not. But that doesn't prevent billions of people around the world from exchanging cash every day. And if dollars suddenly became untrustworthy, people will just switch to another currency or fall back to crates of fish and shiny stones.
Compare that to cryptocurrencies that are being touted as the future of distributed, "censorship-resistant" cash. Sure, they're distributed, but censorship is as easy as cutting off the target's internet connection (or even blocking some ports). If you're a dictator in North Africa, just flip the switch and all the rebels are suddenly broke! Cryptocurrencies also require everyone to broadcast every transaction to the whole world, and all it takes is one mistake to connect a set of addresses to a real identity. Geeks can mix their coins and hope there's no trail left, but good luck getting grandma to use it correctly.
Programmers love to talk about elaborate ways to prevent double-spending and whatnot. But in order to be a plausible replacement for cash, I think virtual currencies need to solve some of these usability problems first. Spending a few satoshis needs to become just as easy as pulling some quarters out of your pocket.
The only widely-accepted currency with those properties.
People are free to exchange anything for anything. You want to pay for something in blueberry scones? Go right ahead. The problem is finding someone to accept that payment. We use cash because it's convenient and has inherent value due to its ability to pay taxes.
>but censorship is as easy as cutting off the target's internet connection
Couldn't agree more. Cut off the internet, or refuse the sale of a cell phone or similar device and people will be forced to exchange their Bitcoins via pieces of paper. What a breakthrough.
then the tracking is useless for tracking your purchases. Therefore, cash is anonymous.
On today's Earth, this group of people is vastly smaller than the number of people who can carry out cash transactions in person, not just because of poor adoption, but because of a fundamental UX problem.
Does it matter who sets the exchange rate when the more pressing concern is who controls your ability to participate in the network in the first place? You can set your own exchange rates, too, if you're really serious about it. It will be $10 for this wad of marijuana, not $15 like this other guy says, thank you very much.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardware_wallet
> and whose internet connection cannot be arbitrarily blocked or filtered by governments and corporations.
I am not aware of even one instance where bitcoin or anyother protocol has been successfully blocked.
> On today's Earth, this group of people is vastly smaller than the number of people who can carry out cash transactions in person, not just because of poor adoption, but because of a fundamental UX problem.
Yet. There is no reason why cant UX be n00b-friendly or may be it already is. Low adaption is probably due to either people are unaware or there is lot mis-information. Anycase, adoption is steadly increasing.
> Does it matter who sets the exchange rate when the more pressing concern is who controls your ability to participate in the network in the first place?
Its not. None can control participation. Thats why dark markets deal in bitcoin.
> You can set your own exchange rates, too, if you're really serious about it. It will be $10 for this wad of marijuana, not $15 like this other guy says, thank you very much.
Considering there are zillion laws regulating money flow between any given two parties, I doubt it would look as appealing as a widely-accepted crytocurrency.
It's still true. Without free payments, you cannot have free speech, free association, or due process.
http://mirror.eu.oneandone.net/projects/media.ccc.de/events/...
http://mirror.netcologne.de/CCC/events/camp2011/video/cccamp...
You're telling me none of these keep web logs?
They knew that it would generate support amongst the Vice Hating Crowd, allowing GOV to address the two things they need most:
/ An easier way to issue debt with less scrutiny (Federal Reserve Notes are quite specific debt instruments that we circulate, while GOV's debt load is approaching untenable).
/ A more comprehensive way to track gun sales.
Many people do not trust various levels / types of government, and see gun ownership as a necessary... hedge. Thankfully, the US has the option of The Four Boxes of Governance: Soap, Jury, Ballot, Ammo.
Ultimately, laws and freedoms are maintained at the point of a gun. And it is the Ammo Box, in the hands of The People, that allows the other three boxes to be used.
Operation Choke Point (which, in the end, was just the gov't saying "hey, these industries are dangerous") helped stopped Alexander's donations. But it's not like it's easy to collect online payments in a cash-only society, right? This is like saying "how the internet can embolden wiretapping". The gov't action only increased through the technicality of increased technology.
The fact that Visa and MC responded to Sheriff Dart's letter is disturbing, to say the least, though. Though saying the circuit decision is a first amendment decision might be a stretch: It reads to me more like a mix of that and one about abuse of public office.
So.... this article brings up issues that I think are extremely important though. Visa and MC as payment processors basically reserve the right to not service people. Is there a legitimate case for forcing them not to discriminate? Do we need net neutrality for payments?
Someone will say "Bitcoin solves this!" but it doesn't, at least not until the US government accepts tax payments in USD.
The biggest issue with "payment processor purity" would be the question of how does that work with money laundering laws? There might not be a conflict: if payment processors know who you are, that might be enough.
But seriously, Choke Point would have failed any first ammendment challenge if banks wanted to challenge it. But they didn't, because banks believed what the gov't was telling them, and also don't like high-risk, low-reward businesses. Private enterprise is at the source of these issues!
Instead of worrying about Big Brother, I'd say this article is more about how the government _should_ intervene to ensure 1st amendment rights in a cashless society.
A side note that I feel is lost in these discussions: cashless societies (or mixed cash/cashless, if you will) enable lots of people (like adult entertainers, but also everyone on Patreon, for example) to live a life they couldn't with cash-only universes. Even if cash is always there, we should work to make cashless better than ever if possible.
The government is already using this to punish its enemies (political and otherwise). You'll be a slave if this ever comes to pass.
But the real problem is that you have 40% of Democrats (or more) identify as being socialists now. If you're a socialist then you just accept this, because Big Brother/Big Government is what you want. You want Bernie Sanders to bring in Big Government to punish.
The Republicans and Libertarians are spineless. They should be attacking people like Cass Sunstein on a daily basis. Everyday the collectivists like him should be called out and exposed for the totalitarian wannabes that they really are.
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning" -Henry Ford
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/7887/did-rothsch...
Bitcoin is not bad, but it's still in the hands of a few privileged people, who control the source code. Privacy only truly happens if you leave out middle man, like Coinbase. Now, managing bitcion 100% yourself is a pain that the general public simply won't do. Yes, you can do it, but you will find yourself at the edge of a long tail.
It's fun to see how the most expensive social experiment will unfold.
Bitcoin is the transparent currency, not the anonymous currency.