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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.
This is now before the city council in NYC, as the article points out, so the topic has come up in conversation more recently (and it’s noticeable, my office is in the area profiled in the story) and it’s amazing how many people just haven’t considered the basic dynamics of that.
- ganzuul 8y agoCryptocurrency would bypass that.
- hannasanarion 8y agoNo it wouldn't. Private key hijacks and exchange hacks do far more damage than any bank network failure ever could, and they're much easier to perform maliciously.
- ganzuul 8y agoBitcoin isn't the only one out there anymore.
- hannasanarion 8y agoAre you saying that I couldn't empty your alt-coin account if I got access to your private key?
- ganzuul 8y agoThere are many more conventional ways to steal and embezzle. Not sure what your point is.
- vishnugupta 8y agoI agree with your assertion, however: > that permission can be revoked instantly, silently, and invisibly at any time This can happen with cash too, as 99% of Indians found out to their utter dismay on 8 November 2016!! [1]. Granted that this is a Black Swan event [2] and the revocation was done publicly. However, as someone who lived through this and experienced it first hand, I stopped trusting cash from that day onwards. I carry just enough with me to get by for couple of days. I don't know of any other single event that sent shockwave through 1300+ million humans literally overnight. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetis... [2] I sincerely hope so. Though it's been carried out a few times in India, thankfully not within the same generation.
- CPLX 8y agoYss but that’s an entirely different dynamic, as they can’t single you out personally in that scenario, they have to cause massive social disruption and — crucially — loss of their own credibility.
- cesarb 8y ago> However, as someone who lived through this and experienced it first hand, I stopped trusting cash from that day onwards. I carry just enough with me to get by for couple of days. I suppose you leave the rest in a bank account. That won't help if all bank accounts are frozen, as I lived through in the early 90s here in Brazil (we called it "Confisco da Poupança", see https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano_Collor#Medidas_do_Plano_Collor_I https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano_Collor#Medidas_do_Plano_...).
- yholio 8y agoA country willing to destroy it's hard currency would have absolutely no problem seizing the bank accounts of it's citizens. So these types of events are not really arguments for or against cash, it's all dumb luck if you get to keep one or the other. In stable countries with a functional rule of law however, bank credit is seriously inferior to cash for all purposes except convenience and security.
- jopsen 8y agoCan't we build trustable payment providers?
- candiodari 8y agoA system can never be more trustworthy than the people controlling it. The problem with that is simple: A perfectly trustworthy American military would be as trustworthy as Trump.
- hannasanarion 8y agoThe government is not a monolith though. It would take a lot more than Trump to do serious damage to the credibility of the Treasury department.
- candiodari 8y agoThe flipside of that is that there are many people, frankly, way worse than Trump in government that can't be dislodged by an election.