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A society without cash is a society in which every person has no choice but to get the permission of someone they don’t know and will never meet each and every
by CPLX 8y ago
A society without cash is a society in which every person has no choice but to get the permission of someone they don’t know and will never meet each and every time they seek to obtain food, water, shelter, or transportation, and that permission can be revoked instantly, silently, and invisibly at any time.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tjoff 8y agoI agree, but the main point of an e-krona is exactly to try and reduce that risk. One of the proposed goals is to have non-traceable transactions. Seems unrealistic to me but that would be the holy grail.
- zzzcpan 8y agoUntraceable anonymous transactions is the minimal requirement for it not to be harmful and dystopian.
- tjoff 8y agoI agree, but unfortunately I don't believe a society being run by humans would ever implement that. The leaders will not tolerate that kind of loss of control.
- ellius 8y agoIt also probably makes counterfeiting and fraud an enormous problem.
- sparkie 8y agoIt has already been implemented (Bitcoin, Monero etc), and is improving gradually. The control freaks who would not like to tolerate it think they'll be able to tame it, but Bitcoin is like the Hydra - it gets stronger with every unsuccessful attack attempt. It's better for them to bury their heads in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist in order to not bring attention to it. When they eventually lift their heads out of the sand they'll find that the world has moved on without them.
- tjoff 8y agoBitcoin is neither anonymous nor untraceable. Replacing cash with bitcoin would be a nightmare.
- sparkie 8y agoIt's not there yet, but eventually Bitcoin will be near enough anonymous and untraceable via the use of the Lightning Network, sidechains, CT and mixing services. There's usually a cost/privacy tradeoff, and people will be able to choose their appropriate level of privacy.
- mrb 8y agoOther cryptos are fully anonymous & untraceable. For example zcash uses zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs) to conceal all elements of a transaction (sender, receiver, amount.)
- akvadrako 8y agoZcash only uses those for some transactions because the complexity is so high. It also requires connecting to the payment network via an IP address, which isn't really anonymous.
- mrb 8y ago«Zcash only uses those for some transactions» No, Zcash offers the option to always use shielded transactions, if that's what you want. The choice to use a shielded or unshielded transaction rests solely in the hands of the user. It is true that CPU and memory complexity use to be high for shielded transactions. However Sapling just activated (https://z.cash/blog/sapling-activation-complete/ https://z.cash/blog/sapling-activation-complete/) and it resolves the issue: a shielded transaction used to take up to minutes of CPU time and 3GB+ of RAM, but now can be done in 1 second with ~40MB: https://medium.com/@EthAdvisor/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-upcoming-zcash-sapling-upgrade-why-its-so-important-and-b5787cc7b68e https://medium.com/@EthAdvisor/everything-you-need-to-know-a... Furthermore, Zcash promotes the use of TOR if users wish to hide their IP address.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- stale2002 8y ago> I agree, but unfortunately I don't believe a society being run by humans would ever implement that This was already implemented for hundreds of years. It is called "paying with cash". Sure, there are some minor edge cases, like dollar serial numbers that are sometimes tracked to catch bank robbers or whatever, but cash is mostly anonymous and untraceable.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- shanev 8y agoThis is exactly what Zcash is building.
- EthanHeilman 8y agoWe have known how to do untraceable* transactions [0] since 1982. There has now been thirty years of cryptographic research building on these results. The reason it hasn't happened is not because we can't do it but because governments resist the additional privacy protections. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecash * - For some values of untracable. The privacy provided by ecash is in theory less than cash provides in practice, but certainly a massive privacy improvement over credit cards. In theory cash provides less privacy than ecash since stores could record the serial numbers on cash. However in practice they don't and thus cash in practice provides quite a bit of privacy.
- tjoff 8y agoYeah, politically unrealistic is what I meant.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- reaperducer 8y agoWe have known how to do untraceable transactions [0] since 1982.* We have known how to do untraceable transactions since 3,000 BC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money
- Aeolun 8y agoEven if they store the serial numbers on cash, there is no name linked to those numbers without you also using something like a store/coupon card.
- EthanHeilman 8y agoIn theory what could be done is (not saying anyone does this): 1. When you get cash from an ATM or Bank they record the serial numbers of the cash they gave you and attach it to your identity. 2. When you spend those funds at a store they record what you bought and the serial numbers of the cash you paid with and the serial numbers of the bills you received as change. The government could then build a graph of spends attached to your identity. With high probability they could trace how you spent that money. One problem they would run into is if you gave or received cash from a friend. However while this might cause the tracing procedure to make some errors, it would also allow it to, in some cases, infer which of your friends you exchange cash with. In any realistic scenario the government would also be intersecting this graph of spends with additional information such as license plate readers, RFID data from public transit, facial recognition,cell tower geolocation, etc... Serial number tracing would be just one data source. Probably your best bet for privacy here would be pay people begging for money to swap bills with you e.g. exchanging a twenty dollar bill for a ten dollar bill.
- CydeWeys 8y agoAnd you might be leery of criticizing any of these entities lest they withdraw your ability to do any of these things. That's a serious chilling effect.
- protomyth 8y agoIts a fear that shows up in a common interpretation of Revelation 13:17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. This is one of the verses in the Bible that tends to drive a lot of the hatred for national ids and removal of cash in the US.
- mmirate 8y agoGranted, but even broken clocks are right twice a day. Just because someone wrote a pre-scientific text which, today, supports antiauthoritarianism ... does not mean that antiauthoritarianism lacks its many other merits. Those people are right to fear national ID and cashlessness; their fear being from Revelations, doesn't necessarily make them religious nutjobs (of the sort whose fears we regularly and usefully ignore). (Not to mention how even some Christians think that Revelation is the writings of a hallucinating madman.)
- gammateam 8y agoFor an example without religious polarization, you can look at Nostradamus' ramblings They are completely useless until misattributed in hindsight, until further reattributed in hindsight to something slightly more coincidentally relevant. 500 years of this so far.
- protomyth 8y agoTruthfully, my original point was that this was a worry of people before technology made it quite a bit easier to govern. I am unaware of any Nostradamus that talks about restrictions of commerce, nor am I talking about the nature of prophecy of Revelations other than restrictions on commerce seemed to be important enough in the ancient mind to specifically call out.
- KaoruAoiShiho 8y agoThat's how services work though, you can't really be self sufficient unless you're a hunter gatherer. And even then you still need to be strong enough to kill the other tribes who are contesting with you for land. Imagine going to Mars and the very air you breathe is owned by your government. For me that's not an argument against going to mars, that's an argument for working harder to build a stronger, more trustworthy society.
- intertextuality 8y agoThis is a false comparison. Physical cash, in your possession, cannot be frozen or revoked unless those entities stop accepting government fiat currency. It has nothing to do with being self-sufficient.
- simplyinfinity 8y agoBut it can be stolen. Much more so than money in your bank account
- sol_remmy 8y agoAnd that's why the ideal is a choice between cash and electronic currency. Sweden made cash (practically) illegal so now everyone has one less choice.
- kungtotte 8y agoAt this point in time I'm at much higher risk of my electronic money being stolen than my cash, and if someone steals my cash I know about it instantly. They can't skim my cash, can't MITM my cash transactions, they can't accept payment and then not deliver (more fraud than theft, but still) because the cash and the object being purchased are both right there. So I think you are wrong.
- pishpash 8y agoI think the point is even with cash in your wallet it is already a society where you have to obtain permission from unknown people to "obtain food, water, shelter, or transportation" because all of these things are delivered to you after many rounds of market exchanges which require clearing houses, escrows, the Fed, SWIFT, etc. Society has been essentially cashless for ages.
- api 8y agoShhh... politicians are likely to read stuff like that and think "what a great idea!"
- yongjik 8y agoYou already live in a society where the food, water, and shelter you freely purchase has to be certified and authorized by faceless people you've never met and will never meet. Even your labor you are willing to give has to be certified at some level. That's why you don't have to worry about salmonella in your chicken sandwich or a steel beam falling onto your head at work. You're welcome.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sparkie 8y agoAnother false comparison. There's a big difference between implementing society-wide regulations and unpersoning individuals.
- Paperweight 8y agoAnd the black market is a key safety valve for a fully-functioning capitalist economy (like it or not). Hell, even the USSR had paper cash in circulation allowing some privacy and trade between individuals. Having solely account-based money under complete regulatory control amounts to a huge increase in what is practical to put under political control. It could drastically increase the incentives to ban and regulate trade in anything of interest to special interests. E.g. the pharmaceutical industry could finally get rid of herbal medicine.
- jnurmine 8y agoIf the government wants to "unperson" someone, cash or no cash or electronic money, they will just come and collect you. You having pieces of plastic/paper and/or metal trinkets in your pocket plays will not save you from this. I understand the apparent privacy angle, but if you analyze it further, cash won't help in the presence of a malicious system. If the government cares enough about you to stop you from using e-cash/credit cards to buy or sell, they will also care enough to not let you roam free.
- pessimizer 8y ago> That's why you don't have to worry about salmonella in your chicken sandwich or a steel beam falling onto your head at work. You have to worry about both of those things. Why? Because instead of forcing the placement of every steel beam and the sale of every chicken sandwich to pass through the hands of an intermediary who both profits from and regulates the action, we just decided to regularly inspect places where problems were likely to occur, and to investigate reports of possible violations. The argument you're making would work just as well for recording all human speech at all times, and processing it for suspicious topics - which is totally currently technologically possible. Even if it weren't, why not require that all conversations be had over a telephone? That's pretty much the same as having rules about the amount of arsenic allowed in salt...
- type-2 8y agowhat about cryptocurrencies? they're cashless too
- mrb 8y ago«that permission can be revoked instantly, silently, and invisibly at any time» Yes, "permission" is the right vocabulary to use in this instance. In fact, the opposite, being "permissionless", is exactly one of the main selling points of cryptocurrencies: no authority can prevent a user from sending or receiving bitcoins, or ether, etc. This is why cryptocurrencies should be seen as competing with cash, and not with permissioned systems (credit cards, Paypal). This is also why, IMHO, countries moving toward a cashless society will inevitably lead to more people—the underbanked and the unbanked—slowly using cryptocurrencies more and more over time, not by choice but by necessity.
- tridentlead 8y agoUnless big brother cuts off your connection to the wider web Edit spelling
- StavrosK 8y agoYou don't necessarily need a connection. It can work just as well with a QR code signature that the recipient uses later to broadcast the transaction.
- Casseres 8y agoWithout the network, another recipient wouldn't know about that transaction and thus be susceptible to a double-spend, right?
- onetimemanytime 8y agoGreat point! You have the money for as long as you can withdraw it (mistakes, liens etc etc)
- bouncycastle 8y agoWant to share about my experience about the "permission" part. I once travelled to Beijing and had dinner in a fancy dumpling restaurant. When I went to pay the bill, my European bank instantly flagged the transaction and blocked my card from further use. I had no idea what happened until I called the bank later that evening (had to wait until they opened). So yeah, what you said happened to me - revoked instantly, silently, and invisibly at the most unexpected time. And even though I didn't do anything wrong.
- samontar 8y agoThat’s anti-fraud to stop someone from stealing your card and using it elsewhere. You can usually pre-empt that by informing the bank of travel.
- bouncycastle 8y agoAnti-fraud may been the reason on that day, but who knows what will be the reason tomorrow (eg Capital Controls as it happened in Greece). The main point is that I still had to get permission. It's kind of like when I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to go outside the house unless I informed my parents, which was like getting permission implicitly. When using cash, you do not have to inform the bank anything.
- XorNot 8y agoNo you have to visit a money exchanger in advance, exchange some money into local currency, then go to your destination. Which...is the same thing you need to do anyway to use your card in China.
- uiri 8y agoIf you're in the US or Europe, you'll probably get a better rate by exchanging cash into local currency at your destination.
- 8y ago
- gammateam 8y agoIf only there was some sort of peer-to-peer version of electronic cash that would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.
- mort96 8y agoIf only there was some sort of peer-to-peer version of electronic cash that would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution, yet had some recourse for fraudulent transactions, didn't require downloading hundreds of gigabytes of blockchain, processed more than a handful of transactions globally per ten minutes, and where you didn't lose all your money if you accidentally deleted the wrong file or your hard drive broke or got lost.
- gammateam 8y agoLightning + Watchtowers Its coming For some of the other things, best practices prevent much of that. I could imagine a common practice where base layer transactions to open a channel use a joint account that requires X of Y signatures, where X-n keys are yours, and the remainder being a friend or actual intermediary business which only facilitates avoiding user error. After the channels are open it having no say in how things are transmitted. I also imagine this being seamless. Each element of a computer's boot sequence were all major stepping stones at one point, and now computers don't even show you the list of things its doing anymore. I see this technology going that way once UX designers figure out how to get paid in this space.
- yes_man 8y agoNot to be pedantic but a person can in return also revoke their obligation to abide by these rules (like paying for food at the cashier or board a train without a ticket) at any time. So essentially there always exists a choice to not play by the rules if the regulators of this cashless society decide to cut you out
- root_axis 8y agoNot really a practical option if you have any moral or safety concerns regarding living life as a thief.
- j1vms 8y agoExcept that eventually a growing number of participants will start to barter where they can, and then someone will come up with the idea of a issuing some liquid token to facilitate things when bartering is not possible.
- jeofken 8y agoThis is the truth! I am native or Sweden and I hate, from the bottom of my heart, having to use my bank card for visits to restaurants, stores, etc. It is better when staying staying away from Stockholm, Göteborg, & Malmö.
- fiblye 8y agoFurthermore, a society that relies on digital payments is a society that would collapse with a week long blackout. A couple targeted power plant attacks would be enough to completely destroy the economy. That's terrifying.
- jordanbeiber 8y agoSo, basically you are saying war would destroy the economy. I agree. Cash or no cash.
- d21d3q 8y agoWhar happens in case of war, when data centers are destroyed or just access to internet is limited? Can you imagine massive desire to switch back to cash/gold/stones?