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Thankfully, there is a good amount of space between money under mattresses and a government controlled economy. Your comment is a giant straw man. Canadian and

Thankfully, there is a good amount of space between money under mattresses and a government controlled economy. Your comment is a giant straw man. Canadian and EU systems are private ones and the government has little or no power to directly intervene, short of law enforcement. The idea that eliminating paper is some sort of boogeyman from Revelations is about as silly as the idea that holding on to your Glock allows you defend your rights against a corrupt government. Neither actually offer any type of protection against these particular issues. Unless you are wandering around with $20K in cash everyday, your bank account is still subject to the very things you seem to be afraid of. The only thing that changes in a mostly cashless society is your access to your bank account. If the government is going to freeze your account, it matters little if you have a chip card or need to go to the teller. Thankfully, we in the west have moved most of the management of this to the private sector, and require things like warrants before any real action is done. That can and is an issue at times, but has little effect on the day to day implementation of one method over another.

tomcam 9y ago
Were there any facts in your answer? Where did the parent mention Revelations?
- run4yourlives2 9y ago
  I'm not sure what you are looking for. OP linked a cashless society to being the cause of government control. This is false. Government can exert control already in a cash-based society to a sufficient degree. It's more a style of the government in question than the tech used.
  - EGreg 9y ago
    You missed the part where I said a government id is required to make a purchase, so there is a single point of failure aka disconnection. This is not true in the USA or other countries where you can have cards from many different banks so if one blocks you, you pay with another. And cash certainly represents a way of paying with no such restrictions.
kuschku 9y ago
Sadly, I think the solution in the US and some parts of the EU is even worse than the chinese one. Try buying Cuban cigars without cash anywhere. Your VISA or MasterCard will mysteriously fail to allow this purchase – because, due to the embargo, these companies just refuse to allow transactions containing the words "cuba", "iran", etc. VISA and MasterCard also have additional rules of their own, and if you have a society that is cashless, they can just cut you off, too. This is giving a for-profit entity (which, by its own nature, does not care about you, just about taking your money) far too much power. Sweden is having that problem: You can’t do anything without a debit card anymore, banks have high fees just to get cash from your account, but the only debit cards you can get are from VISA or MasterCard. This wouldn’t be an issue if there were many competitors, or even local competitors, or if the systems were open.
- run4yourlives2 9y ago
  I'm Canadian, so not only can I buy Cuban cigars, I can buy them in a store down the street with my debit card. (A real debit card that connects directly to my account, not just a prepaid credit card.) Regardless though, making an illegal purchase isn't a very good reason to argue for cash; in fact you may have more luck changing the dumb laws if people are truly hurt by them. The US definition of a "debit card" is massively different than the Canadian one. For us, our bank card is the debit card. The same one I use to take money out of my account at an ATM is the same one I can use to buy a $1 coffee. Why some banks do charge outrageous fees, thanks to the free market there is a healthy market and many banks in Canada are now fully virtual or offer next to no fees. Just because a system is poorly designed in one locale does not mean the idea itself is flawed, just that it should be implemented in an improved way.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    > in fact you may have more luck changing the dumb laws if people are truly hurt by them. But that’s the point. Cuban Cigars are legal in Germany. You can legally buy them. But every payment processor that’s located in the US can not process such a transaction. Relying on foreign companies for most basic needs means you lose a lot of sovereignty.

tomcam 9y ago

Were there any facts in your answer? Where did the parent mention Revelations?

run4yourlives2 9y ago
I'm not sure what you are looking for. OP linked a cashless society to being the cause of government control. This is false. Government can exert control already in a cash-based society to a sufficient degree. It's more a style of the government in question than the tech used.
- EGreg 9y ago
  You missed the part where I said a government id is required to make a purchase, so there is a single point of failure aka disconnection. This is not true in the USA or other countries where you can have cards from many different banks so if one blocks you, you pay with another. And cash certainly represents a way of paying with no such restrictions.

kuschku 9y ago

Sadly, I think the solution in the US and some parts of the EU is even worse than the chinese one. Try buying Cuban cigars without cash anywhere. Your VISA or MasterCard will mysteriously fail to allow this purchase – because, due to the embargo, these companies just refuse to allow transactions containing the words "cuba", "iran", etc. VISA and MasterCard also have additional rules of their own, and if you have a society that is cashless, they can just cut you off, too. This is giving a for-profit entity (which, by its own nature, does not care about you, just about taking your money) far too much power. Sweden is having that problem: You can’t do anything without a debit card anymore, banks have high fees just to get cash from your account, but the only debit cards you can get are from VISA or MasterCard. This wouldn’t be an issue if there were many competitors, or even local competitors, or if the systems were open.

run4yourlives2 9y ago
I'm Canadian, so not only can I buy Cuban cigars, I can buy them in a store down the street with my debit card. (A real debit card that connects directly to my account, not just a prepaid credit card.) Regardless though, making an illegal purchase isn't a very good reason to argue for cash; in fact you may have more luck changing the dumb laws if people are truly hurt by them. The US definition of a "debit card" is massively different than the Canadian one. For us, our bank card is the debit card. The same one I use to take money out of my account at an ATM is the same one I can use to buy a $1 coffee. Why some banks do charge outrageous fees, thanks to the free market there is a healthy market and many banks in Canada are now fully virtual or offer next to no fees. Just because a system is poorly designed in one locale does not mean the idea itself is flawed, just that it should be implemented in an improved way.
- kuschku 9y ago
  > in fact you may have more luck changing the dumb laws if people are truly hurt by them. But that’s the point. Cuban Cigars are legal in Germany. You can legally buy them. But every payment processor that’s located in the US can not process such a transaction. Relying on foreign companies for most basic needs means you lose a lot of sovereignty.