The Cashless Society Is a Creepy Fantasy
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
When every transaction is trackable, everything is taxable and able to be fed into big data.
"Sorry, sir, we can't sell you health insurance. Our records show that you've been purchasing too much alcohol."
"Excuse me sir, we're from the local police. We're concerned that you've recently bought 500 rounds of 22lr ammunition (and that's a perfectly reasonable amount). Mind coming down to the station and answering some questions?"
Edit:
And of course, the ever popular.
"Hey, we noticed you bought a used car. Based on your finances you shouldn't have been able to afford it, according to our calculations, unless you've been getting paid without notifying us. We already know what you spend and how you spend it, and how much money you make. You're going to prison for tax fraud."
OH the other day in Palo Alto: "Cash will no longer be a thing in 5 years."
Sorry, we are still roughly 200 years away from achieving this authoritarian fantasy, if we are to consider the current rate of decline of payments made in cash. I wish folks would leave their suburban bubble for once and talk with real people across America, especially those living at the bottom of the pyramid.
If RMB or Euros still exist in paper form, but the USD doesn't, or any combination thereof, the economies will quickly shift to taking foreign currency as a matter of course.
If you're selling tacos or hot dogs on a street corner, you're not really caring what kind of money you're taking in, as long as it's good and honored by the people you owe money to.
Obviously for large transactions, there will be currency controls (and there already are). But for small day to day stuff? Like restaurants and dealing with food suppliers? Or hell, even hiring the neighbor's kid to shovel out snow or mow your lawn.
As long as there's some form of cash, that's what they'll use.
The thing is that once almost everything is cashless, using cash for something becomes a burden. You need to get some from an ATM, pay with it, then you have change to carry with you. I don't have a wallet with space for cash anymore, so it's loose change in pocket, that I probably won't use for weeks. If there is a food stall around that does take cards, I go there.
In fact I'd probably do a bank transfer to the kid's father's account, and let them settle it with the kid's allowance or so.
If you're paying cashless, the credit card processor and company is skimming a small percentage off the tips. With the razor margins in the hospitality/food industry, that 3% adds up to maybe your entire profit margin.
But Maestro and VPAY debit cards have a flat fee of something like 5 cents per transaction, less if your company does many.
And why would we do that, in this age of technological acceleration?
Open-loop prepaid cards have helped eliminate paper transfer channels to a degree (which is a positive step in the right direction) but we cannot ignore the 2.5B people on this planet who do not have access to modern financial services at all. For the rural farmer in Southeast Asia, cash is all he/she knows.
We're hitting some real limitations with cryptocurrency, if the second gen ones are better, good on them, let me know.
If I'm trying to pay for breakfast in a jook shop in Hong Kong, you better believe that it's going to be cash, not something the shop owner has to get online to accept.
Citation needed? This seems hard to believe unless "plenty of people" is in the ballpark of maybe a dozen.
It's where my money is, but it's not the next cash.
Australia has fully adopted contactless cards instead of cash, as others have said. [0]
However, there is a clear cut tax for transactions, GST, and though there are no rights guaranteed by the Constitution, there is a precedent where police can be called out for stalking and harassment. [1].
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12740677
[1] http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-30/police-officer-invo...
Even in a cashless society, governments (well some, anyways) still require warrants to search business records, to wiretap, to follow you around.
Inversely, even in cashful societies tracking all of this is still pretty easy. You register car purchases through the state. Your employer files taxes.
This is why a strong, independent judiciary is important!
Put it another way, what can be tracked should be tracked is the way we should be thinking about authoritarians.
If there exists a database where all transactions can be monitored and datamined, they will be monitored and datamined in the name of national security, terrorism, or money laundering.
Plus, I don't even want to think about private companies. "Sorry sir, unless you give us the right to search your financial records for suspicious transactions, we're not giving you car insurance or a mortgage. Or a job."
That should be a lot scarier than "they're taking our guns away" or the obvious continuation of capitalism. Many countries across the EU, and the US, have politicians with broad support who are promoting outright fascism. It's not very difficult to see where this road goes for members of our least accepted minorities.
On the other side of the Channel, the National Front, a far-right party with ties in its leadership to neo-nazi ideology and Holocaust denial, is showing in the polls as likely to win the first round of voting in next year's Presidential elections. While I don't follow French politics with any great detail, I do understand that they have policies of turning a blind eye to hate crime towards Muslim people and making life difficult for Muslim people and those who associate with them. Which is, IMHO, a pretty surefire way of further pushing Muslim people into secret mosques run by radicals.
Across Europe, the far right is rising with similar proposed policies - shut Muslims out of society, label them, make it mandatory to report on their actions, make it difficult to interact with them.
For things like buying second hand cards we also have a pretty good online direct deposit system where you can just transfer money online.
Cash is losing the war here, check out the graph in the following article showing the dwindling usage of cash.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/why-our-looming-cashles...
In New Zealand I haven't used cash since 2002 except for pop up stalls, and even those take cards these days. I've never used or possessed a cheque book. I did get paid by cheque for my first real job, but it's been direct credit since 2004.
That's a giant step in logic that I can't understand yet. How come more cashless societies seem less authoritarian then ones that societies that use cash? E.g. Britain compared to Russia. Sweden is one of the most cashless societies and they seem far from expressing authoritarian traits. I bought a greg's using a contactless card and I haven't felt this strange grip of authoritarian fear. I guess it is better to say
"Having no cash means you can speculate a authoritarian's fantasy easier"
The gist of that law is that in Sweden a bank is not allowed to close your account, or disallow you to open one except in very specific circumstances. Essentially you have to either use your bank account for something illegal, or lie to the bank. I've never once read about a case where a bank has closed the account of anyone, while it still probably happens, it's not something anyone is afraid of.
I believe this is because of a critical fact about scandinavian countries:
People trust the government, and by exchange, the government makes themselves trustworthy to the people.
It seems to me that people in the US has a deep distrust for the government. This may be because the government there is less trustworthy to start with, but I think it also goes the other way around. It creates an "us vs them" mentality which makes politicians and government workers have less respect for the people they serve.
I do agree with some of the points of the OP though. We shouldn't need some bank AND credit card company to stand between us and payments to other people and the government. Before we make the switch to cashless, we should have some kind of cryptocurrency. I don't care if it's created by the government, and that new currency is injected by them according to their monetary policy. I don't care if the government can see how much I have in that currency, as long as only they can. All I care about is being able to settle payments without being dependent on a bunch of private, opaque bank and payment companies, and their opaque infrastructure.
If you had said, "The government acts in a trustworthy manner, and the people, in turn, trust their government", then our viewpoints would be in alignment.
This is specious logic. Stricter regulations on banking and accounting are being introduced, and even if they weren't, that wouldn't be an argument for doing nothing about cash.
And yeah, america-centric article is america-centric. The author should try living in a place with low cash use for a while. Their concerns are real, but unlikely to carry much weight with the public when held up against a) the inconvenience of cash and b) the reality that it's mainly used not by valiant freedom fighters but by common criminals.
On other hand everything is traceable, you can call tax office and ask who is get paid what, if you want to know where the person lives: just hitta.se them by name, you will also get avg income for household there.
- [1] https://www.izettle.com/ - [2] https://www.getswish.se/
The benefit is lower prices. Credit cards have high transaction fees, and the contracts generally prohibit the merchant from adding those to the cost of the transaction. So everyone, regardless of payment method, pays higher prices if the store accepts credit cards.
Nightmare. And scary as hell. And when it's not "official" c/d cards, its the shop points or the we're-not-a-bank-honest-guv quasi-debit-cards; it's impossible to catch a bus in London now without a tracking device^W^Woyster card.
Luckily for me I've only returned to this decadent backwater for a brief period before I head back to the glorious freedom (for once not a sarcasm in sight) of the ex-USSR. I feel disgusted that I had to write that.
Edit: And I think I'd like to add that despite the pain, I don't plan on getting any kind of card and may end up regaining a bank account but only as another means of converting my bitcoin to whatever the locals call cash.
Edit 2: And another thing. I tried to book a driving test in the UK. Wasn't able to do it online, even to book and pay later, without using a (non-government) bank account and (foreign) clearing house. Apparently a postal method is available. Our governments themselves are starting to require banks and credit/debit in order to interact with them.
Needing one, and it is really very close to need, is the concern. Interactions between me and my fellow citizens, or between me and my government (but I repeat myself), should not require a chaperone.
First, corporations only pay in direct deposit, check, or debit card. Of those three, only checks and debit cards can be used by the unbanked.
Secondly, while you can choose a check, the only method through which the unbanked can receive actual USD, you can't cash it very easily. However, the unbanked can't simply submit a photo of them through an app on their iPhone. They have to walk to "check cashing" businesses, which abound in our inner cities. These businesses exist by taking a cut of the paychecks of the people too poor to afford a proper bank.
Finally, there is the debit card option. Debit cards for pay were originally intended to eliminate predatory check cashing businesses. The cards were supposed to prevent the type of ridiculous costs imposed by check cashing businesses.
What occurred next was fairly predictable. Instead of a direct rate, companies charged small fees such as withdrawal fees, card replacement fees, and account fees, which accrue over time to roughly the same amount as going to the check cashers. Since the debit cards are often more convenient, many people choose that option, and the corporation takes the cut that used to go to the "unscrupulous" check cashers.
Later I'll tell you about bail bondsman and private prisons...
I pay cash nearly everywhere, card is for online only. I'll be a long way towards the back of the cashless adoption!
Paying cash on the bus substantially slows down the bus. It makes sense to get rid of that transaction.
It's[+] my city and it can damn-well run the way I want it to. And that doesn't include 100% surveillance.
[+] Was, sadly. I like London. But it's shit.
Edit: Formatting.
Further edit: In fact I've lived in London most of my life and experience suggests a scenario which is distressingly common: Are you one of those cunts who tuts and sighs[ø] when a little old lady gets on the bus and takes (horror of horrors!) more than 10 seconds to pay her fare and find a seat? FUCK YOU. You don't deserve the air you breathe.
[ø] For those who live outside the M25, this is the London equivalent of a near-violent argument between strangers.
"Single to X please"
"No"
"I'll pay you, whether personally or your employer, an entire £10 (the fare's about £1.50) to take me to X"
"No"
"£20?"
"No. Go somewhere else (there was nowhere near this particular bus stop to buy one and I'd have missed that bus even if there was) and buy a card so we can follow you everywhere you go"
It's fucking scary. Or would be if I lived permanently in this shithole. Haha!
Recent events rather than persuading me to get bank account and card have entrenched my position not to get one. Things should not be like this and fuck any and everyone who's OK with it.