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Comment by actually_a_dog | Hacker News Reader

If the US government actually wanted to (mostly) eliminate cash, they could just stop printing currency, and wait for what's in circulation to wear out. That would take about 23 years [0]. As it is, though, only about 8% of all USD exists in physical form [1], anyway, making the USD largely a digital currency already.

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[0]: https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/how-long-is-the-life-spa...

[1]: https://money.howstuffworks.com/currency.htm

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That would be reported by the news and people would care. Whereas here we get this reaction: "they seized his money and say he is suspected of being a drug dealer, well then i have nothing to worry about - i am not a drug dealer."

I think the most common reaction is going to be "this guy carried my mortgage worth in cash on his person to the airport, I don't think I'm going to have that problem".

Until the time they go buy a $5000 used car.

Also, it's not just cash they go after. There are plenty of "State v. Diamond Necklace" or "State v. Various Electronics Valued at Approx. $1000" cases out there.

Works even better in the EU. 20K in cash on an economy flight? Criminal! No other way. No way you saved up all of that, you poor pos!

It's better to have a clear law, even if it's wrong, so you can carry 19K in peace, then be randomly and unpredictably harrassed by authorities.

Eh, people would care for about 5 minutes, just like everything else. Remember when basically every American adult with a credit history had their entire credit files stolen? How many people do you hear talking about that now?

That is materially different than having your cash stolen from you by a seemingly random person at the airport. One results in a very small probability of it affecting you in any way, the other is someone stealing from you.

I think they are replying to the currency printing hypothetical not the 125,000-dollars-stolen-from-me hypothetical.

I thought they were comparing people’s reactions to news about equifax’s data breach exposing people’s social and other identifying info to news about the government stealing from people via civil asset forfeiture.

@zamadatix is correct.

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