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Comment by cattown | Hacker News Reader

Use cash. Get cash out at the ATM, keep it in your wallet. Spend it at local businesses. Even if you can’t do it all the time do it as much as you can. Start today and stick with it.

Otherwise this is what we’ll be stuck with everywhere all the time. There won’t be a choice anymore if you don’t exercise that right. We’re already far down this slippery slope.

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And advocating for mass individual consistent behavioral change is less than useless. If you want change you need political organization. The sum of public opinion is more influenceable than the sum of everyone's actions. Unfortunately, in the US it's not so simple as "vote for the party that's against this" as we only have two and neither are. Which means if you want to be effective you should throw your lot in with an advocacy group. In this case probably the EFF, maybe the ACLU?

Many people (not the EFF or ACLU, lol) saw it coming years ago and put in a monumental effort to try to turn to tide, only to be relentlessly repressed and dehumanized by bolsheviks and idiots.

I wish you would put content in your post. Who are you referring to, what monumental efforts, who repressed them, and how?

Ah yes the Bolsheviks, famous for simping for big companies. It's funny how all the fake bull shit people think is happening in Communist China is actually going to happen in the EU and the United States in the next 10 years.

> advocating for mass individual consistent behavioral change is less than useless.

Again, the trend is to sound smart by saying it's hopeless. We behave much differently than prior generations in many ways. Heck, look at the rise of neo-right wing politics, the manosphere, YOLO investing, etc. Look at smoking, recycling, etc. Look at people using social media, when cell phones weren't universal for their parents

It doesn't require politics.

>we only have two and neither are.

Both sides are not the same. One side wants to criminalize protests, the other side actually respond to protests. So vote for the side that will listen to protests.

is that so?

it is still impossible to speak about such things here without getting flagged, so all I'm going to say is that I and many other people still remember the events that happened between February 2020 and March 2023.

>between February 2020 and March 2023.

Not sure what you're referring to, but I remember that thing that happened in January 2020, when an insurrection happened. MANY people will never, ever forget that.

Not to nitpick, but the insurrection was in 2021

They're not the same, but they are in agreement about expanding the surveillance state and cracking down on protests. They don't agree on which protests to crack down on, with the exception of anti-war or anti-genocide protests which both deem unacceptable.

I don't agree with that at all. What protests are Democrats cracking down on? And don't try to go back to the 1960's to try to make a point.

> What protests are Democrats cracking down on? And don't try to go back to the 1960's to try to make a point.

They're quite consistent. Under Biden we cracked down on anti-genocide protests just like under Trump.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/may/01/columbia-unive...

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2024/05/02/police-shoot-rubber...

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestine-gaza-war-univers...

The Democrat stronghold and seat of power, New York, prohibits any organization boycotting Israel from receiving State contracts or funding. Cuomo was pushing for a redefinition of antisemitism to include opposition to Israel's actions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#New_York

When it comes to military activity and foreign financial interests neither will put up with public dissent. The tide on this specific issue seems to be turning, but their genocide defense will no doubt fuel a rise in antisemitism that will hurt jewish people worldwide for decades to come.

> Spend it at local businesses.

The ones that still take it, anyway.

I completely agree with you, but you cannot stop this train. Cash will continue to exist only as a loophole to be exercised by rich and connected individuals. Everyone else will be robbed by police for having "suspicious amounts of cash."

A reason to use cash is that transaction fees (like CC fees), over time, tend to eat up all the original money being transacted.

On the other hand, cash is a germ superhighway.

Taking out cash from ATM has higher fees often than using the credit card to pay

only if you make a withdrawal for every purchase. ATM fees, when they exist, are flat - just withdraw the maximum amount allowed. keep some of the cash at home if you're worried about walking around with >$100.

Oh really?

I live in India so we have UPI which has 0 fees online payment and the bank also takes literally 0 fees at all for most use-cases.

I guess I must be living in paradise in this department and yet I still prefer digital payments simply because they feel good

Its on the contrary here, our parents advocate us to keep cash around us in case some businesses don't accept UPI and we generally deny them

I have never seen a shop which only accepts UPI and not cash, like ever. I think cash is even written into the law that you will be legally charged if you don't accept cash.

There is this one case where some people don't accept half broken notes but banks do and they will give new ones for old tore notes and also one / two other case of my small city not accepting 10 rupees / 20 rupees coin but usually its on very rare occasion and they could still be legally charged if I wanted to for not accepting it but even its being accepted 99.9% here nowadays. Its just on rare occassion that happens and it doesn't hurt having some extra cash in hand anyways so it literally doesn't matter much

How does clutching to colored pieces of paper solve any problem? IMO, it only reinforces the pathology which is the cause of many of our problems.

You can't be tracked.

Some countries almost completely cashless now. No escape from big brother

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