11 ms·

How a Cashless Society Could Embolden Big Brother

286 points by kafkaesq 11y ago

riprowan 11y ago
How is money = free speech only when the recipient is a politician? For the record, money is just an idea shared between people, and the communication of said idea. For strong demonstrations of this, consider hawala or consensus-based cryptocurrencies. Humans have been assigning value to tokens and trading on the tokens since the dawn of civilization. Outlawing this activity is dangerous to free society. It will also make the beggar class and the poor generally even more beholden to the state.
- iofj 11y ago
  The short answer is because of taxes. You can't have both taxes and fully free exchange of money.
  - pessimizer 11y ago
    Income taxes.
    - imtringued 11y ago
      Income counts as a money exchange from employer to employee.
      - kspaans 11y ago
        Or between two businesses, or between two individuals, or by selling capital, or interest on loans, etc.
  - nstj 11y ago
    Can you elaborate?
  - kspaans 11y ago
    Sure you could! If Land Value Tax was the only tax levied (i.e. no income or consumption taxes), it would unaffected by the anonymity of money.
    - fragsworth 11y ago
      I love the concept of a Land Value Tax. I wish some government could actually try it out somewhere, as an exclusive tax.
      - zero_iq 11y ago
        Wouldn't this just cause the top 1% (who own the majority of the land in most countries) to charge higher ground rents to cover their land taxes, and make it increasingly difficult for anybody else to own land and buy out their freeholds, entrenching the wealthy elite even further?
        kspaans 11y ago
        If you added an LVT on top of current taxation systems, probably. One way to make it more revenue-neutral would be to reduce some other tax, like sales taxes. But now consider idle land that's being held speculatively. The landowner expected to sell it at a profit in the future, but now those profits are impacted by the LVT. To maintain their profits they would need to find tenants for the land in order to pay the LVT. (Or settle with less profit! :P)
        dublinben 11y ago
        >To maintain their profits they would need to find tenants for the land in order to pay the LVT. Can you expand on this point please? Why would it be necessary to earn rent from idle land in order to pay the LVT? Wouldn't unused land have a low value under a LVT system, much like it does now?
        kspaans 11y ago
- vkreso 11y ago
  Regarding value assinging I always get reminded of Rai stones from the island of Yap in Micronesia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones).
- dublinben 11y ago
  Money is protected speech when that money is a campaign contribution or expenditure.[0] Money is also protected speech when you want to (buy an advertisements to) express your opinions about a candidate.[1] This is not nearly as narrow as "money = free speech only when the recipient is a politician." [0]Emily's List v. FEC [1]Citizens United v. FEC
sneak 11y ago
I spoke at the CCC in 2011 about all the ways in which censorship-resistant payments are essential to the various pillars of a free society. https://vimeo.com/27653912 https://vimeo.com/27653912 It's still true. Without free payments, you cannot have free speech, free association, or due process.
- majewsky 11y ago
  Here's the same video on the CCC's site, where they won't track you: https://media.ccc.de/v/cccamp11-4591-financing_the_revolution-en https://media.ccc.de/v/cccamp11-4591-financing_the_revolutio...
  - sneak 11y ago
    Are you claiming that media.ccc.de doesn't store any web logs? Because it sounds like that is what you are claiming, and I don't believe it.
  - sneak 11y ago
    That webpage sends third party requests to oneandone.net, FYI - so they're tracking you exactly no more or less than Vimeo is. http://mirror.eu.oneandone.net/projects/media.ccc.de/events/camp2011/video/cccamp11-4591-financing_the_revolution-en.mp4 http://mirror.eu.oneandone.net/projects/media.ccc.de/events/... http://mirror.netcologne.de/CCC/events/camp2011/video/cccamp11-4591-financing_the_revolution-en.mp4 http://mirror.netcologne.de/CCC/events/camp2011/video/cccamp... You're telling me none of these keep web logs?
homero 11y ago
Bitcoin is the only way I can keep a little privacy anymore
- kowdermeister 11y ago
  Cash still rules, it requires no electricity, you have to physically take it away from me compared to exploiting a bug in some system. Bitcoin is not bad, but it's still in the hands of a few privileged people, who control the source code. Privacy only truly happens if you leave out middle man, like Coinbase. Now, managing bitcion 100% yourself is a pain that the general public simply won't do. Yes, you can do it, but you will find yourself at the edge of a long tail. It's fun to see how the most expensive social experiment will unfold.
  - homero 11y ago
    Yes but they're trying to ban cash
  - jaekwon 11y ago
    Tendermint. It has different security characteristics, but the nice thing is, it doesn't rely on extrinsic factors for security. It's not just BFT, it's actually antifragile.
- jacobush 11y ago
  Or DASH, rather. Bitcoin is not private.
- amalcon 11y ago
  Bitcoin is probably less private (in common use) than credit cards. Instead of having to ask the credit card companies what you're up to, anyone can just check.
  - j15t 11y ago
    Ues but not everyone can link Bitcoin addresses to individuals. Bitcoin has poor privacy in theory, but the practice of actually deanonymizing is non-trivial. Also since it is an open system, improvements are possible.
aub3bhat 11y ago
Ultimately Big Brother needs Big taxes for Big spending out of its Big wallet...
- geggam 11y ago
  Nah... they just ask the Fed to p00f money ( debt ) into existence so they can pay the bills with the no limit credit card. A little drama about the debt ceiling and everything is all better.
  - baddox 11y ago
    No, you still need taxes. The fundamental reason the US dollar has value in the global economy is that hundreds of millions of very wealthy people are forced to pay taxes in that currency.
skywhopper 11y ago
Perhaps my upbringing is coming through, but I was surprised to see no mention of the fact that Christian apocalypse predictors have been raving about the implications of a "cashless society" and the control that would give government over our lives for decades. http://endtimestruth.com/mark-of-the-beast/cashless-society/ http://endtimestruth.com/mark-of-the-beast/cashless-society/
- kijin 11y ago
  Old-school Christian conservatism has a lot in common with modern libertarianism, such as its emphasis on self-sufficiency and distrust of big government. Unfortunately, they got co-opted by savvy politicians who promised to catch sinners and wage war on other religions in exchange for a little more power.
- mjklin 11y ago
  I've heard this about bar codes, so I guess it was inevitable for it to extend to digital money. http://www.theonion.com/article/satan-to-revise-bar-code-system-4454 http://www.theonion.com/article/satan-to-revise-bar-code-sys...
  - ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
    I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, I certainly hope so, you do realize you're citing a satirical source, "The Onion"? There is a distinct difference between a business using a system to keep track of inventory and the enforcement of a digital only currency...
    - mjklin 11y ago
      So you're telling me Satan did not invent the barcode?
- driverdan 11y ago
  Crazy doomsday people have claimed all kinds of ridiculous signs of end times. It isn't very relevant to reality.
kijin 11y ago
Cash is the only payment method available today that is both distributed and truly censorship-resistant. Anyone can pay cash to anyone else in exchange for anything, without having to report to, or obtain permission from, any third party. If nobody knows what you bought in the back alley last night, nobody will ever find out. You don't need fancy chunks of metal and plastic to use cash. You don't even need electricity, much less an internet connection, to use it. A three-year-old kid can use it just as well as one-hundred-and-three-year-old great-grandma. A lot of the time, you can't even tell whether the bills are genuine or not. But that doesn't prevent billions of people around the world from exchanging cash every day. And if dollars suddenly became untrustworthy, people will just switch to another currency or fall back to crates of fish and shiny stones. Compare that to cryptocurrencies that are being touted as the future of distributed, "censorship-resistant" cash. Sure, they're distributed, but censorship is as easy as cutting off the target's internet connection (or even blocking some ports). If you're a dictator in North Africa, just flip the switch and all the rebels are suddenly broke! Cryptocurrencies also require everyone to broadcast every transaction to the whole world, and all it takes is one mistake to connect a set of addresses to a real identity. Geeks can mix their coins and hope there's no trail left, but good luck getting grandma to use it correctly. Programmers love to talk about elaborate ways to prevent double-spending and whatnot. But in order to be a plausible replacement for cash, I think virtual currencies need to solve some of these usability problems first. Spending a few satoshis needs to become just as easy as pulling some quarters out of your pocket.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  What about barter? It's way less convenient than cash, but it is a distributed payment method that can at least be used in a way that is censorship resistant (many times the thing up for barter might make the transaction hard to hide, other times not).
  - ctdonath 11y ago
    The whole point of money is it abstracts value from what is valued. Barter is laden with whether you want the thing, what you perceive as its value, and it's durability & transportability. A crate of raw tuna is quite valuable, but very hard to barter with. Some may be surprised to find ammunition & guns make for excellent cash substitutes, having a wide range of value in compact, durable, and self-protective form.
gitcommit 11y ago
Bigger worry: What if a foreign agency can shutdown the American monetary system because everything is digital?
franbulax 11y ago
Stash your cash! Use some of it to buy tangible gold and other things of value like ammunition.
gkanai 11y ago
Look at China, where WeChat Wallet and Alipay dominate cashless payments. It's very good for the Chinese government that there are 2 large cashless payment platforms that they can monitor/control.
stegosaurus 11y ago
'Could'? Why do media outlets persist in tiptoeing around these issues? A tiny, tiny minority of cashless systems are private and censorship-resistant. Almost all of the solutions that are actually currently on the table already do help mass surveillance, already does give more control to the government. If we can get the general public to use open hardware without backdoors and a cryptocurrency or similar, we might be able to come close to the privacy of cash. But is that a realistic goal? Anyone knows how to use cash in a reasonably private way. Barely anyone knows how to use digital technology in a reasonably private way. It may not even be possible (are our systems backdoored? is x86 secure?) Taxation is always the problem hailed here. I think that fundamentally people should have the power to withhold information from the government. That action may result in negative consequences, but it should be possible nonetheless. There is a huge distinction between choosing to disobey the law and potentially being punished for it (civil disobedience), and having literally no choice because all other avenues have become impossible. That is what people are fighting for, that is what freedom is all about. Perfect enforcement is not desirable. Imagine a world in which homosexuality is impossible. Not illegal, but impossible. That's what perfect enforcement would have looked like in the 50s.
- AckSyn 11y ago
  > Why do media outlets persist in tiptoeing around these issues? Because we all know who runs the place, right? It's not like you can bite the hand that feeds you. It never used to be that way, but government overreach and control is, well, out of control.
  - pm24601 11y ago
    > It never used to be that way, but government overreach and control is, well, out of control. It always was that way. Look up William Randolph Hearst. He is sometime portrayed as a crusader. But the reality is messier, Hearst would look for dirt on people who were not doing what he wanted. Teapot Dome Scandal is just such an example.
- dota_fanatic 11y ago
  Devil's advocate: Imagine a world in which theft, rape, slavery, and child abuse are impossible (more than once / for any meaningful period of time). Have you read any of Iain Banks's Culture series? I think the peace of mind that you and everyone you'll ever know will never get disappeared into someone's rape dungeon doesn't seem so bad. Or that you can go into business and actually win because you're doing it better, because your competitors aren't in bed with government, corruptly and systematically destroying the possibility of competition. Just also don't do stupid shit like control the expression of two consenting persons just because what they're doing is not your cup of tea. Is this really so hard to differentiate between? And does perfect enforcement really mean minds can't changed, that the law can't be changed after it's created if it's understood that actions X, Y, or Z actually aren't against the universal bill of rights for living entities? Sure, freedom is about being able to do what you want with your life, but it also means being able to do it safely, without the fear of getting pwned. People who want to pwn will always have the upper hand if we just all agree we'd rather keep letting people do whatever the fuck they want so long as they can get away with it. "Perfect enforcement" sounds only as horrible as the culture behind it is, to me. Turning away from that is to embrace and make a home for the devil we know---corruption, physical and sexual domination of the weak by the powerful, environmental devastation, rampant species genocide, etc etc etc.
Shivetya 11y ago
Physical currency is privacy, it is freedom of commerce, it is property rights. Giving up physical currency means giving up all your freedoms at once. Simply because government can tell you what your money is worth at any instant, where you can spend it, and if you can spend it or are required to do so to not lose it
rtpg 11y ago
I agree with the sentiment of the title, but does the article really support it? Operation Choke Point (which, in the end, was just the gov't saying "hey, these industries are dangerous") helped stopped Alexander's donations. But it's not like it's easy to collect online payments in a cash-only society, right? This is like saying "how the internet can embolden wiretapping". The gov't action only increased through the technicality of increased technology. The fact that Visa and MC responded to Sheriff Dart's letter is disturbing, to say the least, though. Though saying the circuit decision is a first amendment decision might be a stretch: It reads to me more like a mix of that and one about abuse of public office. So.... this article brings up issues that I think are extremely important though. Visa and MC as payment processors basically reserve the right to not service people. Is there a legitimate case for forcing them not to discriminate? Do we need net neutrality for payments? Someone will say "Bitcoin solves this!" but it doesn't, at least not until the US government accepts tax payments in USD. The biggest issue with "payment processor purity" would be the question of how does that work with money laundering laws? There might not be a conflict: if payment processors know who you are, that might be enough. But seriously, Choke Point would have failed any first ammendment challenge if banks wanted to challenge it. But they didn't, because banks believed what the gov't was telling them, and also don't like high-risk, low-reward businesses. Private enterprise is at the source of these issues! Instead of worrying about Big Brother, I'd say this article is more about how the government _should_ intervene to ensure 1st amendment rights in a cashless society. A side note that I feel is lost in these discussions: cashless societies (or mixed cash/cashless, if you will) enable lots of people (like adult entertainers, but also everyone on Patreon, for example) to live a life they couldn't with cash-only universes. Even if cash is always there, we should work to make cashless better than ever if possible.
MikeNomad 11y ago
GOV absolutely knew what the consequences / ripples of Choke Point would be. They knew that it would generate support amongst the Vice Hating Crowd, allowing GOV to address the two things they need most: / An easier way to issue debt with less scrutiny (Federal Reserve Notes are quite specific debt instruments that we circulate, while GOV's debt load is approaching untenable). / A more comprehensive way to track gun sales. Many people do not trust various levels / types of government, and see gun ownership as a necessary... hedge. Thankfully, the US has the option of The Four Boxes of Governance: Soap, Jury, Ballot, Ammo. Ultimately, laws and freedoms are maintained at the point of a gun. And it is the Ammo Box, in the hands of The People, that allows the other three boxes to be used.
strooper 11y ago
Every digital transaction is trackable throughout it's lifecycle. Every transaction can be traced back to the origin even it changes hands several times. An ideal government can make a good use of this feature to enforce law for greater good, while a practical government, in reality, enforces whatever suits the powerful ones the best.
- pixl97 11y ago
  'Greater good' is a dangerous idea in itself. Centralized management rarely realizes that the local maxima and global maxima often differ greatly.
geggam 11y ago
Welcome to Bartertown.
known 11y ago
"Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws." --Rothschild in 1744
- ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
  And in 1913 the Rothschild backed consortium gained control of the US's money supply. "It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning" -Henry Ford
- tome 11y ago
  It's unclear that this quotation is historical https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/7887/did-rothschild-say-this-famous-quote-if-yes-what-did-he-mean-by-it https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/7887/did-rothsch...
joesmo 11y ago
While the ability to censor people has increased tremendously, our government's perverted interest in puritan idiocy seems unchanged for hundreds of years. I just can't believe that who someone decides to have sex with is still something the government insists on controlling. What a sick society we live in and then have the audacity to call everyday natural actions "vice". No, vice is that sheriff's sick obsession with other people's sexual activities and his insistence on controlling them for his own sick pleasure. Vice is indeed the public's willingness to accept and get pleasure based on other people's pain. It's just amazing how much Americans love hurting each other simply for the sake of suffering.
cm2187 11y ago
For those of you who have parents/grand-parents who lived in Europe during WW2, you should ask them what they think about the value of have some money somewhere the government doesn't know anything about (whether it is cash or in a foreign country). This is not a theoretical argument. Germany was a democracy before the war. France too. Italy too.
- ams6110 11y ago
  If you're going to do that, better be sure it's in something with hard value, e.g. gold or silver because government can simply do something like declare that the current currency is invalid and must be exchanged for new, thus forcing everyone with hidden stashes to come forward or take the loss.
peter303 11y ago
I find it amusing the "share everything" generation goes the other way and posts detailed diaries of their expenses online.
mikerichards 11y ago
The Atlantic almost used an euphemism for what the effects of a cashless society would be like. I guess they didn't want to use the term "Big Government". That might upset the "When I say Big Business, I mean bad" crowd. The government is already using this to punish its enemies (political and otherwise). You'll be a slave if this ever comes to pass. But the real problem is that you have 40% of Democrats (or more) identify as being socialists now. If you're a socialist then you just accept this, because Big Brother/Big Government is what you want. You want Bernie Sanders to bring in Big Government to punish. The Republicans and Libertarians are spineless. They should be attacking people like Cass Sunstein on a daily basis. Everyday the collectivists like him should be called out and exposed for the totalitarian wannabes that they really are.
brunoqc 11y ago
People don't care about privacy with a cashless society, they fear they'll have to pay taxes like they should.

286 points by kafkaesq 11y ago

How is money = free speech only when the recipient is a politician? For the record, money is just an idea shared between people, and the communication of said idea. For strong demonstrations of this, consider hawala or consensus-based cryptocurrencies. Humans have been assigning value to tokens and trading on the tokens since the dawn of civilization. Outlawing this activity is dangerous to free society. It will also make the beggar class and the poor generally even more beholden to the state.

iofj 11y ago
The short answer is because of taxes. You can't have both taxes and fully free exchange of money.
- pessimizer 11y ago
  Income taxes.
  - imtringued 11y ago
    Income counts as a money exchange from employer to employee.
    - kspaans 11y ago
      Or between two businesses, or between two individuals, or by selling capital, or interest on loans, etc.
- nstj 11y ago
  Can you elaborate?
- kspaans 11y ago
  Sure you could! If Land Value Tax was the only tax levied (i.e. no income or consumption taxes), it would unaffected by the anonymity of money.
  - fragsworth 11y ago
    I love the concept of a Land Value Tax. I wish some government could actually try it out somewhere, as an exclusive tax.
    - zero_iq 11y ago
      Wouldn't this just cause the top 1% (who own the majority of the land in most countries) to charge higher ground rents to cover their land taxes, and make it increasingly difficult for anybody else to own land and buy out their freeholds, entrenching the wealthy elite even further?
      - kspaans 11y ago
        If you added an LVT on top of current taxation systems, probably. One way to make it more revenue-neutral would be to reduce some other tax, like sales taxes. But now consider idle land that's being held speculatively. The landowner expected to sell it at a profit in the future, but now those profits are impacted by the LVT. To maintain their profits they would need to find tenants for the land in order to pay the LVT. (Or settle with less profit! :P)
        dublinben 11y ago
        >To maintain their profits they would need to find tenants for the land in order to pay the LVT. Can you expand on this point please? Why would it be necessary to earn rent from idle land in order to pay the LVT? Wouldn't unused land have a low value under a LVT system, much like it does now?
        kspaans 11y ago
vkreso 11y ago
Regarding value assinging I always get reminded of Rai stones from the island of Yap in Micronesia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones).
dublinben 11y ago
Money is protected speech when that money is a campaign contribution or expenditure.[0] Money is also protected speech when you want to (buy an advertisements to) express your opinions about a candidate.[1] This is not nearly as narrow as "money = free speech only when the recipient is a politician." [0]Emily's List v. FEC [1]Citizens United v. FEC

sneak 11y ago

I spoke at the CCC in 2011 about all the ways in which censorship-resistant payments are essential to the various pillars of a free society. https://vimeo.com/27653912 https://vimeo.com/27653912 It's still true. Without free payments, you cannot have free speech, free association, or due process.

majewsky 11y ago
Here's the same video on the CCC's site, where they won't track you: https://media.ccc.de/v/cccamp11-4591-financing_the_revolution-en https://media.ccc.de/v/cccamp11-4591-financing_the_revolutio...
- sneak 11y ago
  Are you claiming that media.ccc.de doesn't store any web logs? Because it sounds like that is what you are claiming, and I don't believe it.
- sneak 11y ago
  That webpage sends third party requests to oneandone.net, FYI - so they're tracking you exactly no more or less than Vimeo is. http://mirror.eu.oneandone.net/projects/media.ccc.de/events/camp2011/video/cccamp11-4591-financing_the_revolution-en.mp4 http://mirror.eu.oneandone.net/projects/media.ccc.de/events/... http://mirror.netcologne.de/CCC/events/camp2011/video/cccamp11-4591-financing_the_revolution-en.mp4 http://mirror.netcologne.de/CCC/events/camp2011/video/cccamp... You're telling me none of these keep web logs?

homero 11y ago

Bitcoin is the only way I can keep a little privacy anymore

kowdermeister 11y ago
Cash still rules, it requires no electricity, you have to physically take it away from me compared to exploiting a bug in some system. Bitcoin is not bad, but it's still in the hands of a few privileged people, who control the source code. Privacy only truly happens if you leave out middle man, like Coinbase. Now, managing bitcion 100% yourself is a pain that the general public simply won't do. Yes, you can do it, but you will find yourself at the edge of a long tail. It's fun to see how the most expensive social experiment will unfold.
- homero 11y ago
  Yes but they're trying to ban cash
- jaekwon 11y ago
  Tendermint. It has different security characteristics, but the nice thing is, it doesn't rely on extrinsic factors for security. It's not just BFT, it's actually antifragile.
jacobush 11y ago
Or DASH, rather. Bitcoin is not private.
amalcon 11y ago
Bitcoin is probably less private (in common use) than credit cards. Instead of having to ask the credit card companies what you're up to, anyone can just check.
- j15t 11y ago
  Ues but not everyone can link Bitcoin addresses to individuals. Bitcoin has poor privacy in theory, but the practice of actually deanonymizing is non-trivial. Also since it is an open system, improvements are possible.

aub3bhat 11y ago

Ultimately Big Brother needs Big taxes for Big spending out of its Big wallet...

geggam 11y ago
Nah... they just ask the Fed to p00f money ( debt ) into existence so they can pay the bills with the no limit credit card. A little drama about the debt ceiling and everything is all better.
- baddox 11y ago
  No, you still need taxes. The fundamental reason the US dollar has value in the global economy is that hundreds of millions of very wealthy people are forced to pay taxes in that currency.

skywhopper 11y ago

Perhaps my upbringing is coming through, but I was surprised to see no mention of the fact that Christian apocalypse predictors have been raving about the implications of a "cashless society" and the control that would give government over our lives for decades. http://endtimestruth.com/mark-of-the-beast/cashless-society/ http://endtimestruth.com/mark-of-the-beast/cashless-society/

kijin 11y ago
Old-school Christian conservatism has a lot in common with modern libertarianism, such as its emphasis on self-sufficiency and distrust of big government. Unfortunately, they got co-opted by savvy politicians who promised to catch sinners and wage war on other religions in exchange for a little more power.
mjklin 11y ago
I've heard this about bar codes, so I guess it was inevitable for it to extend to digital money. http://www.theonion.com/article/satan-to-revise-bar-code-system-4454 http://www.theonion.com/article/satan-to-revise-bar-code-sys...
- ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
  I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, I certainly hope so, you do realize you're citing a satirical source, "The Onion"? There is a distinct difference between a business using a system to keep track of inventory and the enforcement of a digital only currency...
  - mjklin 11y ago
    So you're telling me Satan did not invent the barcode?
driverdan 11y ago
Crazy doomsday people have claimed all kinds of ridiculous signs of end times. It isn't very relevant to reality.

kijin 11y ago

Cash is the only payment method available today that is both distributed and truly censorship-resistant. Anyone can pay cash to anyone else in exchange for anything, without having to report to, or obtain permission from, any third party. If nobody knows what you bought in the back alley last night, nobody will ever find out. You don't need fancy chunks of metal and plastic to use cash. You don't even need electricity, much less an internet connection, to use it. A three-year-old kid can use it just as well as one-hundred-and-three-year-old great-grandma. A lot of the time, you can't even tell whether the bills are genuine or not. But that doesn't prevent billions of people around the world from exchanging cash every day. And if dollars suddenly became untrustworthy, people will just switch to another currency or fall back to crates of fish and shiny stones. Compare that to cryptocurrencies that are being touted as the future of distributed, "censorship-resistant" cash. Sure, they're distributed, but censorship is as easy as cutting off the target's internet connection (or even blocking some ports). If you're a dictator in North Africa, just flip the switch and all the rebels are suddenly broke! Cryptocurrencies also require everyone to broadcast every transaction to the whole world, and all it takes is one mistake to connect a set of addresses to a real identity. Geeks can mix their coins and hope there's no trail left, but good luck getting grandma to use it correctly. Programmers love to talk about elaborate ways to prevent double-spending and whatnot. But in order to be a plausible replacement for cash, I think virtual currencies need to solve some of these usability problems first. Spending a few satoshis needs to become just as easy as pulling some quarters out of your pocket.

maxerickson 11y ago
What about barter? It's way less convenient than cash, but it is a distributed payment method that can at least be used in a way that is censorship resistant (many times the thing up for barter might make the transaction hard to hide, other times not).
- ctdonath 11y ago
  The whole point of money is it abstracts value from what is valued. Barter is laden with whether you want the thing, what you perceive as its value, and it's durability & transportability. A crate of raw tuna is quite valuable, but very hard to barter with. Some may be surprised to find ammunition & guns make for excellent cash substitutes, having a wide range of value in compact, durable, and self-protective form.

gitcommit 11y ago

Bigger worry: What if a foreign agency can shutdown the American monetary system because everything is digital?

franbulax 11y ago

Stash your cash! Use some of it to buy tangible gold and other things of value like ammunition.

gkanai 11y ago

Look at China, where WeChat Wallet and Alipay dominate cashless payments. It's very good for the Chinese government that there are 2 large cashless payment platforms that they can monitor/control.

stegosaurus 11y ago

'Could'? Why do media outlets persist in tiptoeing around these issues? A tiny, tiny minority of cashless systems are private and censorship-resistant. Almost all of the solutions that are actually currently on the table already do help mass surveillance, already does give more control to the government. If we can get the general public to use open hardware without backdoors and a cryptocurrency or similar, we might be able to come close to the privacy of cash. But is that a realistic goal? Anyone knows how to use cash in a reasonably private way. Barely anyone knows how to use digital technology in a reasonably private way. It may not even be possible (are our systems backdoored? is x86 secure?) Taxation is always the problem hailed here. I think that fundamentally people should have the power to withhold information from the government. That action may result in negative consequences, but it should be possible nonetheless. There is a huge distinction between choosing to disobey the law and potentially being punished for it (civil disobedience), and having literally no choice because all other avenues have become impossible. That is what people are fighting for, that is what freedom is all about. Perfect enforcement is not desirable. Imagine a world in which homosexuality is impossible. Not illegal, but impossible. That's what perfect enforcement would have looked like in the 50s.

AckSyn 11y ago
> Why do media outlets persist in tiptoeing around these issues? Because we all know who runs the place, right? It's not like you can bite the hand that feeds you. It never used to be that way, but government overreach and control is, well, out of control.
- pm24601 11y ago
  > It never used to be that way, but government overreach and control is, well, out of control. It always was that way. Look up William Randolph Hearst. He is sometime portrayed as a crusader. But the reality is messier, Hearst would look for dirt on people who were not doing what he wanted. Teapot Dome Scandal is just such an example.
dota_fanatic 11y ago
Devil's advocate: Imagine a world in which theft, rape, slavery, and child abuse are impossible (more than once / for any meaningful period of time). Have you read any of Iain Banks's Culture series? I think the peace of mind that you and everyone you'll ever know will never get disappeared into someone's rape dungeon doesn't seem so bad. Or that you can go into business and actually win because you're doing it better, because your competitors aren't in bed with government, corruptly and systematically destroying the possibility of competition. Just also don't do stupid shit like control the expression of two consenting persons just because what they're doing is not your cup of tea. Is this really so hard to differentiate between? And does perfect enforcement really mean minds can't changed, that the law can't be changed after it's created if it's understood that actions X, Y, or Z actually aren't against the universal bill of rights for living entities? Sure, freedom is about being able to do what you want with your life, but it also means being able to do it safely, without the fear of getting pwned. People who want to pwn will always have the upper hand if we just all agree we'd rather keep letting people do whatever the fuck they want so long as they can get away with it. "Perfect enforcement" sounds only as horrible as the culture behind it is, to me. Turning away from that is to embrace and make a home for the devil we know---corruption, physical and sexual domination of the weak by the powerful, environmental devastation, rampant species genocide, etc etc etc.

Shivetya 11y ago

Physical currency is privacy, it is freedom of commerce, it is property rights. Giving up physical currency means giving up all your freedoms at once. Simply because government can tell you what your money is worth at any instant, where you can spend it, and if you can spend it or are required to do so to not lose it

rtpg 11y ago

I agree with the sentiment of the title, but does the article really support it? Operation Choke Point (which, in the end, was just the gov't saying "hey, these industries are dangerous") helped stopped Alexander's donations. But it's not like it's easy to collect online payments in a cash-only society, right? This is like saying "how the internet can embolden wiretapping". The gov't action only increased through the technicality of increased technology. The fact that Visa and MC responded to Sheriff Dart's letter is disturbing, to say the least, though. Though saying the circuit decision is a first amendment decision might be a stretch: It reads to me more like a mix of that and one about abuse of public office. So.... this article brings up issues that I think are extremely important though. Visa and MC as payment processors basically reserve the right to not service people. Is there a legitimate case for forcing them not to discriminate? Do we need net neutrality for payments? Someone will say "Bitcoin solves this!" but it doesn't, at least not until the US government accepts tax payments in USD. The biggest issue with "payment processor purity" would be the question of how does that work with money laundering laws? There might not be a conflict: if payment processors know who you are, that might be enough. But seriously, Choke Point would have failed any first ammendment challenge if banks wanted to challenge it. But they didn't, because banks believed what the gov't was telling them, and also don't like high-risk, low-reward businesses. Private enterprise is at the source of these issues! Instead of worrying about Big Brother, I'd say this article is more about how the government _should_ intervene to ensure 1st amendment rights in a cashless society. A side note that I feel is lost in these discussions: cashless societies (or mixed cash/cashless, if you will) enable lots of people (like adult entertainers, but also everyone on Patreon, for example) to live a life they couldn't with cash-only universes. Even if cash is always there, we should work to make cashless better than ever if possible.

MikeNomad 11y ago

GOV absolutely knew what the consequences / ripples of Choke Point would be. They knew that it would generate support amongst the Vice Hating Crowd, allowing GOV to address the two things they need most: / An easier way to issue debt with less scrutiny (Federal Reserve Notes are quite specific debt instruments that we circulate, while GOV's debt load is approaching untenable). / A more comprehensive way to track gun sales. Many people do not trust various levels / types of government, and see gun ownership as a necessary... hedge. Thankfully, the US has the option of The Four Boxes of Governance: Soap, Jury, Ballot, Ammo. Ultimately, laws and freedoms are maintained at the point of a gun. And it is the Ammo Box, in the hands of The People, that allows the other three boxes to be used.

strooper 11y ago

Every digital transaction is trackable throughout it's lifecycle. Every transaction can be traced back to the origin even it changes hands several times. An ideal government can make a good use of this feature to enforce law for greater good, while a practical government, in reality, enforces whatever suits the powerful ones the best.

pixl97 11y ago
'Greater good' is a dangerous idea in itself. Centralized management rarely realizes that the local maxima and global maxima often differ greatly.

geggam 11y ago

Welcome to Bartertown.

known 11y ago

"Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws." --Rothschild in 1744

ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
And in 1913 the Rothschild backed consortium gained control of the US's money supply. "It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning" -Henry Ford
tome 11y ago
It's unclear that this quotation is historical https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/7887/did-rothschild-say-this-famous-quote-if-yes-what-did-he-mean-by-it https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/7887/did-rothsch...

joesmo 11y ago

While the ability to censor people has increased tremendously, our government's perverted interest in puritan idiocy seems unchanged for hundreds of years. I just can't believe that who someone decides to have sex with is still something the government insists on controlling. What a sick society we live in and then have the audacity to call everyday natural actions "vice". No, vice is that sheriff's sick obsession with other people's sexual activities and his insistence on controlling them for his own sick pleasure. Vice is indeed the public's willingness to accept and get pleasure based on other people's pain. It's just amazing how much Americans love hurting each other simply for the sake of suffering.

cm2187 11y ago

For those of you who have parents/grand-parents who lived in Europe during WW2, you should ask them what they think about the value of have some money somewhere the government doesn't know anything about (whether it is cash or in a foreign country). This is not a theoretical argument. Germany was a democracy before the war. France too. Italy too.

ams6110 11y ago
If you're going to do that, better be sure it's in something with hard value, e.g. gold or silver because government can simply do something like declare that the current currency is invalid and must be exchanged for new, thus forcing everyone with hidden stashes to come forward or take the loss.

peter303 11y ago

I find it amusing the "share everything" generation goes the other way and posts detailed diaries of their expenses online.

mikerichards 11y ago

The Atlantic almost used an euphemism for what the effects of a cashless society would be like. I guess they didn't want to use the term "Big Government". That might upset the "When I say Big Business, I mean bad" crowd. The government is already using this to punish its enemies (political and otherwise). You'll be a slave if this ever comes to pass. But the real problem is that you have 40% of Democrats (or more) identify as being socialists now. If you're a socialist then you just accept this, because Big Brother/Big Government is what you want. You want Bernie Sanders to bring in Big Government to punish. The Republicans and Libertarians are spineless. They should be attacking people like Cass Sunstein on a daily basis. Everyday the collectivists like him should be called out and exposed for the totalitarian wannabes that they really are.

brunoqc 11y ago

People don't care about privacy with a cashless society, they fear they'll have to pay taxes like they should.