Pro-cash movement warns that people could be losing more than they bargained for

(Can't imagine pornhub selling gift cards at the supermarket checkout next to the App store ones)

It misses the obvious fact that an elected politician needs the privacy of cash for taking bribes.

A cashless society can only work in an authoritarian regime that simply doesn't care if the populace knows about bribes or not.

When I was in Asia using UberEats and Food Panda, "Cash on Delivery" was the recommended option by most of the locals.

It has some limits (10000 BRL when i used it) but thats more than enough for most purchases

You can see here how wrong and violent these protests were. The bouncy castle and hot tub were a danger to society!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P74pbbhCZng

[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hzfwaSVIvoA

Uhm, I dislike this weird defensiveness of newspeak. Does it suspend some rights available under normal circumstances? If yes, then it effectively suspends the constitution? Why does it feel like Simpsons nailed it so hard when Lisa proposed temporary refund adjustments and people cheered thrice out of sheer misunderstanding of the language used.

And all that before we get to the part whether giving government power to pinky swear give all that power back when invoked is kinda playing with fire on the scale comparable to Patriot Act.

Looks more like there’s a right and a wrong _cause_ to protest.

But when you think about it, this setup skips past important legal protections like due process and the presumption of innocence. It's like the government has quietly asked Visa and Mastercard to play judge and jury.

Transactional sex might not be something you want people drawing lines around with financial regulation, but usually people have a line.

or are you suggesting something more broad: that in the chain of cause and effect that eventually effects a crime, only the “last” party should ever be held responsible? e.g. anyone can sell weapons to anybody, only the person who pulls the trigger should be legally responsible? in this case presumably it’s legal to hire a contract killer, the only illegal part is the killing itself, and a skilled contractor could probably shift that final act onto the victim as well.

Nearly everyone with a credit or debit card will have one with one of the major payment networks (that just all happen to disallow these sorts of high-risk businesses). No one has the ability to pay with CCBill unless they've run into a high-risk business and have decided that's a (possibly pretty big) hurdle that they're willing to jump. And many people won't want to sign up with CCBill... the end result is that these high-risk businesses are less viable. Maybe they should be less viable, but I don't think unaccountable corporations should be making that decision for us.

Do they just have to eat it? Or can they charge higher fees to those merchants? If the latter they could quickly use that to discriminate. $100/tx fee would kill most any normal business.

Perhaps the problem is the government doesn’t provide a non-cash lowest common denominator, so people are basically forced to use Visa/MC?

There are numerous examples of companies doing something legal, that later blows up and they become the scapegoat for letting it happen.

As long as that happens, payment processors are going to protect themselves by avoiding certain industries.

I use Canada as an example because it was a vast and wanton act by the government affecting and threatening thousands of accountholders at once.

It's a shame we don't have more libertarians representing the interests of the people in the Congress.

Can only hope whomever might be the next president would have the Coglioni to reform civil forfeiture.

This is what I found to be the case too, it was really alarming; it was like MAGA was sped up and shipped to Canada despite it being supposedly a US-thing, whereas the US was dealing with Police brutality via the BLM movement, Canada just seemed to welcome it's draconian police state because it carried all those other features if you were from that 'class.'

Terrifying and sobering to say the least.

Or did Sanders et al. suddenly become the majority of the Democrats while I wasn't paying attention ?

As an outsider looking in on that debacle I have two points to make:

1: What I wanted to be addressed above all was why Canada went so much further than any other country in N. America in response to COVID, and what purpose did it serve when it's biggest trading partner (The US) was also starting to pressure it from it's border restrictions?

2: As a former street demo activist, I can tell you violence doesn't always have to resort to physical altercation; it takes many forms, and those impacts can take just as long if not longer to recover from. Financial censorship is a form of violence, you are depriving people of their own property and personal agency. It compounds further when their way of living is being stripped from them and they are unable to feed themselves or their families, thus causing further discord and strife in Society--be it in bankruptcy or divorce etc...

The vaccine-mandate is just one response to a litany of others that proved to have efficacy in combating COVID; better diets, exercise, sunlight and Vitamin D proved an even bigger boon for people's health and well being and yet those are OPTIONAL even to this day.

My point is why did it even come this? And why are so many proponents of the State being able to ruin the lives of fellow members of their class (non-elite/political class) with such fervor in Canada?

I've personally never understood the plight of Montreal as anything that mattered, most French I've encountered see their dialect as uncouth and their culture entirely divorced from their own; but after all of this I can surmise that it's they have been in a forced marriage with an abusive partner who is prone to take everything it has under the constant threat of violence as a likely POV they must have.

Perhaps not unlike Ukraine, Catalunya or Pais Vasco for a more European example that spans Centuries of needless bloodshed.

It was used to disperse people from protesting at the capitol, because the government wanted to crush people protesting without talking to them and not any imminent threat. People who were only parked in the street with signs, gathered together to demand a change in policy.

BCB is a governmental institution, composed mainly of career civil servants hired rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. They answer to the government, not a political party.

The Complementary Law No. 179/2021 defines a four-year term for the nine members of the BCB’s Board of Governors that does not coincide with the term of office of the President of the Republic, as well as establishes the rules for the dismissal of the Board’s members.

The personal information and the information related to the operation (value etc.) transmitted in Pix is protected by banking secrecy, as governed in Complementary Law 105, and in the provisions of the General Data Protection Law.

All transactions take place through digitally signed messages that travel in encrypted form.

International institutions such as the Bank of International Settlements have recognized PIX as a successful case:

https://www.bis.org/publ/bisbull52.htm

A similar service has been prepared for years, and US Federal Reserve will launch FedNow this July:

https://explore.fednow.org/

Yes I dislike those who profit from CSAM and revenge porn, "it's just an app" doesn't change the horror of their actions. It's kind of a lowbar when it comes to principles, don't you think? Do you care about the people they hurt in their very flesh? The people who killed themselves as the result of sex exploitation?

> We think it's better for society and humanity if people think above the dislike=hurt/like=help dichotomy.

Both revenge born and CSAM are illegal, there is no dichotomy here.

The same thing has happened to conservatives. [1] [2] [3]

It's more of an establishment/anti-establishment phenomenon than a left/right phenomenon.

[1] https://nypost.com/2019/05/25/jpmorgan-chase-accused-of-purg...

[2] https://www.newsweek.com/pnc-bank-trump-mxm-news-account-178...

[3] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gofundme-freedom-convoy-under-i...

Not quite, at least in PoS protocols with off chain governance. If somebody with billions of dollars decided to attack Ethereum, the community would be able to fork the protocol and drain the malicious nodes of funds, basically burning the attacker’s capital over a short time.

In regards to 51% attacks they aren't going to happen to Bitcoin or Ethereum.

For possible flaws, to put it in terms that technical non-crypto people understand, his arguments are like saying "well Heart Bleed happened and this could happen again thus all computers are unsafe and you can never trust them to be secure" which is technically true but that doesn't mean we should abandon storing our own data and give it all to google to keep it safe for us (which we do with money today). Blockchain developers are very smart and build defense in depth against attacks, there's a reason why Ethereum has tens of billions of USD stored on it.

There are protocols for transferring cash on Ethereum (LUSD, RAI) that you can use that no one, not even nation states spending billions of dollars can stop you from using.

The tradeoff is they won't scale to the world. But then there are less secure protocols (DAI, USDC) that do scale which will be fine for 99.9% of people (who aren't terrorists or being targeted by the government).

Tech is all about tradeoffs and you can learn about them from experts in the field rather than an obviously anti-crypto YouTube video to understand them.

All of these are far more censorship resistant than any banks or traditional financial services.

I don’t have a wallet, and I don’t want one. I want efficient and secure digital currency, with easy interfaces between digital wallets. I pay for my lawn care via Cash App, most of the other small businesses have Square or something similar.

If I need anonymous currency, I will convert to crypto and then convert once or twice more across different coins. It’s good enough for my use.

In the UK and Australia where I normally am, card infrastructure is just so entirely universal and reliable that it's not even worth considering.

Those problems do exist, I usually just go somewhere else if their card/payment reader is down.

A lot of people (esp under 30) these days are running around without any cash at all. Pickpockets and muggers, or even just panhandlers, have been suffering as a result.

I do have some cash in my car I think. I put it there a few years ago for emergencies. I haven’t touched it since then.

If I really need cash for something that I can’t get somewhere else, like a visa from the Japanese consulate, I go to the bank and withdraw cash. It’s a weird request for tellers, but I only do it once every two years or so. I’ve forgotten the pin to my ATM card.

How is this different to cash? I also have Apple pay on my phone and watch.

> Or it's blocked for some random reason

I have a couple cards. Also, I've been cashless for 10 years across three countries and this has never happened.

> Nevermind the services that just don't take cash

Assume you mean card. Not a problem in many countries including Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. I travel a lot, remote, even random middle-of-nowhere merchants accept card. From a business point of view, cash-only makes zero sense. Why would a business turn away people who want to give them money?

> or the fact that their card reader might be down

Never had it happen. A couple of times the payment network has been down, and these terminals seem capable of making the transaction offline and syncing later.

If you're from a country where any of these are legitimate concerns for you, it doesn't mean cashless is bad - it means the systems are bad. And they can be fixed, again, AU, NZ, and UK (and more, I'm sure) are proof. Haven't carried cash for 10 years and it doesn't occupy a single thought.

The reason supermarkets offered cash back was that this allowed them to massively reduce the amount of cash held on site and thus reduce their insurance costs.

Anything under 10 cents gets rounded down/up accordingly

It doesn't matter. Minting and transporting it, even in your pocket costs more than you'll ever get in dealing a more "precise" denomination

An anecdote: during COVID people had to use shopping carts in the supermarket (social distancin). Those trolleys needed a 1 euro coin inserted in them to unlock. Chaos ensued because many customers were not carrying cash- let alone coins.

https://www.amazon.com/NUCOUN-VC-7-Denomination-Counterfeit-...

> Money Counter Machine with CIS Technology: Equipped with one pair 200DPI Contact Image Sensors, scan and detect each counted bill like human eyes.. counts the quantity, reads the denomination and currency type, calculate the total amount at one time pass. Turn on serial number reading function to record serial number and all the counting details can be printed directly or exported to PC , very helpful for money tracking and management.

I am sure this offers several advantages to the bank. That said, however, maybe I can see it being straightforward for these machines, along with ATMs, to log bill serial numbers as they’re distributed.

I have no idea if this is being done, simply, at least at my bank there’s an avenue for it to happen. I would also freely admit that it would be an imperfect system. But still food for thought.

A motorcycle is a bad example, too, because there are licensing and registration requirements.

It obviously could have gone through an intermediary, but it usually doesn't for honest transactions. If one of the two people is already a person of interest to law enforcement, a warrant can be called up to figure out exactly what happened. Added to other sources of information, like the new registry of the car or motorcycle, a pretty reliable history can be constructed.

Don't think in binary. Think in continuums of likelihood. Also, this isn't a new concept. It was covered by HBO's The Wire many years ago.

It should be tracked to some degree. If the motorcycle is designed for street use (compared to track or dirt only) then there are several interested parties that need to know about some sort of transaction (insurance companies, DMV, state sales tax). There's some difference between "my insurance company knows I bought a GSXR" and "Visa knows I bought a GSXR", but less than you'd think. Even if the insurance company doesn't sell the data, you're likely to buy a new helmet with the Visa, increase browsing of motorcycle related webpages, or have some new speeding tickets.

This isn't difficult data science.

Didn't Google start buying this kind of data to match up online purchase intent with real-world purchases?

A person with habitual transactions at a casino or liquor store could be perceived as high risk and the lender could jack up the interest rate for that person. I have no clue if lenders _actually_ do this, but they could since they do ask for your outgoing transactions.

"The GoBeRmEnT Is GoNa TrAcK YoU"

Listen, you got a cell phone, and chances are that's going to give away far, far more than data that your credit card company holds on to.

They're just going to have a line -- "Food Lion, [Date] $88.23" -- not detailed list of your purchases.

Meanwhile if you use a membership card at any sort of grocery store, they absolutely will associate it with you; in many cases you have to register that card with your name and phone in order to use the points. Cash or credit, that's tracking you.

Until modern social media that -- grocery store membership cards -- were one of the best predictors of age, income, gender, etc. available.

I wouldn’t conflate political shenanigans and things that make the news with systemic forces. Made up things don’t always, or even often, pass muster in court. But true information being lawfully used against you will result in no legal recourse.

Same reason why, if you insist on installing an app from your auto insurance company, you should not let it access location data.

Why is that a good thing? You used to be able to walk into the airport, pay cash at the ticket counter for a ticket, and get on the plane. Compared to the fantastic level of nonsense we put up with today?

That said, your comment doesn't deserve downvotes, because this very much depends on where you live. It's true that some of them are as crooked as you say. I can usually tell within a minute of walking into one. And if that's been your experience then I can't blame you for holding that perception. But I don't think it's true over all in America.

Chargebacks are supposed to be expensive because they're a deterrent to businesses acting in ways that will lead customers to attempt chargebacks. And then they usually have an element of manual review which costs $ as well. Chargebacks being expensive is a feature not a bug. And they're an easy consumer protection option that isn't even a possibility with cash.

The best part about living in a society with institutions based on trust instead of non-trust, is that it's trivially easy to eject bad actors from the system.

In 1985, when I was a child, my father would care around $300 on him effectively at all times. Credit cards were still new, and checks were a limited option, most places you still needed cash. That's the equivalent of $850 today. I rarely carry more than $200 on my person today (less than the cost of a fancy dinner for two in San Francisco). The only reason I'm able to do that is because the vast majority of my transactions settle on a bank card.

You can argue that the change is surveillance, but the stark decrease in untraceable value I carry on my person is clearly an incentive for robbery that has been lost. It's also likely a major reason for the near-elimination of pick-pocketing in western society.

Pretty interesting parallels to biology too, like in some birds there's the race towards sexually selecting ever fancier tail feathers that might cause more female birds to ooh and aah perhaps, but hurt your chances of flying away from a hawk, and lead to an overall reduction in fitness in the species as the hawks start finding more success and expanding their population size at the expense of yours.

They didn't do this as a fashion statement - being able to escape with whatever gold you could carry was a means of survival against a brutal communist regime.

My own great grandparents escaped during the partition of my country by bartering my great grandmother's gold bangles and earrings for safe passage.

The government can and will try to quash dissidence. That doesn't mean you have to make it completely easy for them and hand over complete control on a silver platter.

Some countries have constitutions, armed citizens, some police who believe in the rule of law, and would like to maintain at least an appearance of due process.

https://secure.runescape.com/m=itemdb_rs/top100?list=2&scale...