10 ms·
Bingo, I think you nailed it. The cashless society – which more accurately should be called the bank-payments society... is a utopia where money cannot leave –
by canadian_voter 10y ago
Bingo, I think you nailed it.
The cashless society – which more accurately should be called the bank-payments society... is a utopia where money cannot leave – or even exist – outside the banking system, but can only be transferred from bank to bank.
Such a system replaces a relationship between two parties with relationships between those parties and the bank. If either party falls out of favour with the bank, they can't do business with each other.
- jrs235 10y agoThe introduction of the revelatory "mark of the beast". No one will be able to [legally] buy or sell without it. I suspect anyone that tries to barter or trade outside of the system will be considered and labeled a criminal for operating in black markets or tax evasion.
- johnchristopher 10y agoOh but I have heard people claiming the contrary: that banks are actually using a number for transaction and it has 666 embedded into it.
- NotSammyHagar 10y agookay, if you believe stuff like that, it's hard to take you seriously. 666, the devil, he's there in your transaction? I remember when conservatives didn't like that unix has daemons. That was not particuarly a useful concern.
- ptaipale 10y agoI guess this is a sarcastic reference to the "barcodes contain 666" conspiracy theory. http://www.av1611.org/666/barcode.html http://www.av1611.org/666/barcode.html
- jbpetersen 10y agoFun fact: The SF innovation center of Visa has t-shirts which literally say "The Mark" on them. Though supposedly in reference to [this guy](https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/innovation-centers/san-francisco/the-inside-edge/innovators/mark-nelsen.html https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/innovation-centers/san-...).
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- icebraining 10y agoMultiple European countries already forbid cash payments over a few thousands euros. In my country the law is just being proposed: anything over 3000€ must be done using electronic systems (read: banks) or you risk getting a fine equivalent to 25% of the amount over the limit.
- joshontheweb 10y agoWhat is the reasoning behind this?
- Calcite 10y agoLikely anti money laundering legislation.
- icebraining 10y agoYes, and also tax evasion and fraud.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ksec 10y agoAm I the only one who find this.. upsetting? It basically means Government will know every money you have owed and spent.
- mustacheemperor 10y ago> If either party falls out of favour with the bank, they can't do business with each other. For an immediately ready example, I present Paypal Seller/Buyer disputes on eBay. I'm always a little tickled by tech people hyping the idea of a cashless society. Don't we all hate Paypal?
- ericd 10y agoPretty much. I tried using my account from France, and now my account is locked, and there are a bunch of hoops to jump through to restore access. No thanks.
- kolinko 10y agoIt's a matter of better governance though. Ideally, anti-trust government entities should monitor how companies like PayPal operate.
- petre 10y agoI don't trust the governments and nanny states. Does that qualify as anti-trust? Better governance is lack of it, lack of corrupt government officials that work hand in hand with the financial institutions that sponsor them to take our freedoms away for their mutual benefit.
- __jal 10y agoSo, "ideally", we'd 1) ban cash, so that humans need permission to interact when an exchange of value is involved; 2) improve the oversight of the permission-givers, so that the permission-giver-watchers are less arbitrary and annoying, in order to fix the problem that never existed before point 1. Other than lining the pockets of poor, underfed bankers and giving busy-bodies veto power over our interactions with others, what problem are we solving again?
- jnunoferreira 10y agoI believe that the main reasonable concern with large transactions of money is mostly buyer/seller protection, for large sums of money. When buying, say, a house/car and spending well over €/£/$ 3k (typical over-3k transaction), it is customary to have a series of formalities/assurances so that both parties are protected against fraud. These formalities require the kind of proof (that money exchanged hands) that generally only banks can provide. I fully agree that this places a big amount of power in the banks' hands, but what alternatives are there? (I'm honestly asking, are banks the lesser/only evil here?) I'm not seeing cryptocurrency fixing this, but maybe it is possible. From my limited understanding, if transactions were mapped to some contract, it would void some anonymity of the system, and it probably wouldn't be possible to get money back in case of fraud anyway, so there's that.
- swiftisthebest 10y agoBitcoin, bro.
- wolfgke 10y agoBitcoin is (without further tricks) only pseudonymous, not anonymous.
- chc 10y agoThe concern expressed above was not about anonymity, but about requiring the approval of a third party to carry out a transaction. (Although I'm pretty sure Bitcoin does that too, but with multiple third parties in the form of miners.)
- mtnygard 10y agoI've experienced that directly more than once. Trying to use a credit card online to purchase from a merchant that the banks --- all of them! --- refused to process my payment. This was for legal products from an established seller. The banks were happy to charge a big fee to send a bank wire or cashiers check. Just wouldn't deal with a credit card. It's obviously because the bank ends up on the hook for liability in the case of disputed or reversed charges. They judged that market to be too likely to result in their losses so they simply refused to let me do business with the seller I wanted to use.