Instead of banning cashless businesses because it's discriminatory to the unbanked perhaps they should focus on reducing discrimination in the banking sector and providing a publicly run electronic payment system.
Cash serves an important purpose. It is a safety valve in case of such extrajudicial overreach. Yeah, because it's private, it also enables some bad stuff (tax dodging, drug trade), but the same can be said about not requiring ID verification to use the internet.
"In August 2014, U.S. Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer introduced a bill that would limit law enforcement's ability to restrict access to the banking system as a response against Operation Choke Point.[12]"
So it was stopped by Congress, another part of government.
The existence or non-existence of cash wouldn't have made a difference to the ability of pay day lenders or firearms dealers to continue operating because I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be able to get access to cash to conduct their business unless they had bank accounts!
My point is that a government supplied electronic payment system would make no difference to the ability of a government to engage in anything more or less nefarious than they can already do, and the legislative process is capable of dealing with that (and if it's not, cash won't save you either).
In a society that permits cash, the government's reach is still long, but not nearly as complete.
Unless you always expect governments to be perfectly benevolent and well-attuned to the needs of all social groups, it seems prudent to fight for cash to remain a valid payment choice.
> ... a government supplied electronic payment system would make no difference to the ability of a government to engage in anything more or less nefarious than they can already do
Evidently it can do so in a society with cash also, eg. Operation Choke Point.
I'm pretty sure the US can do the same if the system is run by the government. That kind of thing only happens there because it's run by private companies.
You know... I'm a Brazilian. Our constitution has something around 200 pages. The reactions of US people about their government working is really surprising and hard to understand to me.
Anyway, I'm sure that e.g. your postal service does not discriminate between legal business, because there's a rule forbidding it (that one I know that exists). Why do you think such a rule won't work for financial transfers?
There is no evidence such a law would be created, we can not even get net neutrality.
There is not a lot of evidence this law would be followed, corruption happens all the time, especially in background type things like electronic transactions.
Electronic transactions aren't anonymous, and the US certainly doesn't need more surveillance.
They already supply a payment system (cash), it's just not electronic. Last time I checked we're not hurting for lack of competition in the "minting currency" industry, and in fact when this was competitive (ie. before the Federal Reserve was formed) the US was a total shit show and it couldn't get anything done.
It's not quite the same as a postal savings system because the customer still holds their primary transaction account with a private bank. If, instead, customers have their primary transaction account with a government run service (the reason it's called a postal savings system is because historically this was the post office) it would mean that the government is essentially giving retail access to the central bank transaction clearing service.
The point is that there are many benefits for businesses to not accepting cash payments, especially if they're maintaining the service for a decreasing portion of their customers.
Also, if customers had access to a government run cashless payment system (the same privilege that private banks enjoy) then they might find themselves less interested in carrying cash in the first place.
They are technically wholly unnecessary in the 21st century for the purposes of sending/receiving/keeping a running total of funds in an electronic database entry ascribed to an entity.
Or are you going to propose yet another wildly unworkable cryptoscam?
I would propose the federal government offer an inalienable electronic money account as a constitutionally guaranteed right.
This is where
> inalienable electronic money account as a constitutionally guaranteed right.
this comes in. It should be impossible to take away someone’s ability to electronically send and receive money.
Mandate the USPS (federal government) to offer electronic money accounts to everyone.
The benefit of a service mandate on private businesses is that it avoids having to set up a government retail-facing firm. Starting a public option is re-inventing the wheel. Either it stays starved of funding so it sucks, or it gets momentum and existing firms complain about unfair competition from the government.
Yes, and the government’s hesitation in properly compensating them (and choosing to avoid owning/operating them) is a major source of myriad problems. The government tasked them with a huge responsibility, gave them insufficient funds, and watched as they flail about teetering on the edge of failure.
>Most states mandate carrying car insurance and also have an assigned risk pool of last resort for people who cannot get a policy normally.
This is not comparable.
> The benefit of a service mandate on private businesses is that it avoids having to set up a government retail-facing firm. Starting a public option is re-inventing the wheel.
The government should have a retail facing firm, we are its customers. And it already does, with locations everywhere. Called USPS. And it already is tasked with identity verification duties for passport issuance. The only thing left is to bolt on the backend of an online bank. Go ahead and just buy a mid size ine one if that makes it easier, they are not very expensive.
These people often don't have a bank in their neighborhood.
Anyways, extending this idea to also include an ECH account attached to the payment account is probably not difficult to accomplish and is probably where federal reserve efforts could improve outcomes without forcing banks to take on customers.