5 ms·

Disagree. I'm old enough to have experienced a largely cash-based society that was also virtually without any tracking. The government would know you exist, yo

by fleddr 4y ago

Disagree. I'm old enough to have experienced a largely cash-based society that was also virtually without any tracking. The government would know you exist, your school/work, and pretty much nothing else. The default was freedom, and it being up to the government to prove you're malicious, not the other way around. What I do in my private life and whom I transact with is my business, and not that of the government or 5,000 companies. If you think I'm cheating, come with a well documented warrant based on evidence. That was the mentality. Now we're cheering as we're accelerating into a digitized, centralized super authority that can wipe you out, or even an entire category of people, with the push of a button. You can't do that with cash. You'd have to actually visit thousands of people, do research on all, obtain a warrant, arrest them, process them, etc. All of this is absolutely about fundamental rights. I have no need for any mixers, but the attitude "guilty until proven innocent" isn't very pro-freedom.

gamblor956 4y ago
You must be in your 90s? And white? Because what you describe has not been a reality for minorities, ever, and certainly not within the lifetime of most people alive today. Cash bills have had serial numbers for decades. The Western governments have had the technical ability to track cash transactions for decades.
- fleddr 4y ago
  I'm in my 40s, thank you very much. So that would be the 80s. My dad got paid in cash. You spent in cash. You give cash to friends, family. None of it was tracked. The government had no idea how much cash you had. Nobody had any idea what you spent it on or whom you gave it to. Absolutely unhinged to bring "white" into this. The entire world ran on cash decades ago. Especially in the developing world this is still partly true today. What exact point are you trying to make? Do you even know how a serial number on cash works? It doesn't tell you anything about transaction history as those are not logged. Even if you did do that, payments are anonymous so you can't track it back to a person. There were no cameras. The point of a serial number on cash is not tracking, it's flagging. When a bank got robbed and you know the serial numbers of the bills, you can monitor if somebody spends them.
  - amanaplanacanal 4y ago
    The bank secrecy act, which required financial institutions to start tracking and reporting to the government large or suspicious cash transactions, was passed in 1970. So unless your dad completely avoided banks, you are misinformed about what privacy he had. On the other hand, if he really did use cash for everything, you could do the same thing today. Nothing has changed on that front.
    - notch656a 4y ago
      When the bank secrecy act was passed, the cutoff was $10,000 (inflation adjusted ~$70,000) Since then, some of the fines for violating currency reporting have been adjusted for inflation. But curiously, the reporting cut off was not inflation adjusted and remains at $10,000. In 1970, thus, a 'large' transaction was one that exceeded the median family annual income. In 2022, a 'large' transaction is a beat up honda civic.
- notch656a 4y ago
  Before the advent of automated cash machines who was writing down serial numbers of notes? Maybe tellers at banks after large deposits or suspicious deposits. Maybe secret service or the fed. I doubt anywhere near 1% of transactions had the serial number recorded. I'm sure that shit gets automatically recorded every time it enters the bank now, along with any automated machines you use, so a completely off the cuff guess for me is 30% of cash transactions today may have their serial numbers recorded. Not quite as bad as bitcoin, but probably often enough it's easy enough to trace back to you.
  - gamblor956 4y ago
    That was kind of the point. US and Europe have had the technical ability to trace cash, but not the resources or werewithal to do it unless they were dealing with money laundering or counterfeiting. That being said, the federal government does track money more granularly now--cash payments to businesses usually get dropped off at the bank on a nightly or weekly basis, and banks do scan all bills they receive and compare them against a list of flagged or counterfeit bills. And for the most part, minorities using large amounts of cash were always subject to additional requirements to "prove" their identity and the provenance of the money. The legacy of this is that banking amongst minorities is a lot lower, especially in the black and Latino communities.
- __d 4y ago
  I started working in the 70s. Through until the 90s, I was paid in cash. The company didn't track which bill serial numbers went to which employee. That was the same for pretty-much everyone in Australia until the 90s, when we started to get paid directly into bank accounts. But, I worked at a bank at that time, and I can tell you that our tellers and ATMs didn't track serial numbers then either: we had no record of which bills went to which customer. And that was true regardless of your age, gender, religion, ethnicity, etc. I appreciate that this has probably changed since then, but ... that's kinda the point: it used to be private.

by fleddr 4y ago

gamblor956 4y ago

You must be in your 90s? And white? Because what you describe has not been a reality for minorities, ever, and certainly not within the lifetime of most people alive today. Cash bills have had serial numbers for decades. The Western governments have had the technical ability to track cash transactions for decades.

fleddr 4y ago
I'm in my 40s, thank you very much. So that would be the 80s. My dad got paid in cash. You spent in cash. You give cash to friends, family. None of it was tracked. The government had no idea how much cash you had. Nobody had any idea what you spent it on or whom you gave it to. Absolutely unhinged to bring "white" into this. The entire world ran on cash decades ago. Especially in the developing world this is still partly true today. What exact point are you trying to make? Do you even know how a serial number on cash works? It doesn't tell you anything about transaction history as those are not logged. Even if you did do that, payments are anonymous so you can't track it back to a person. There were no cameras. The point of a serial number on cash is not tracking, it's flagging. When a bank got robbed and you know the serial numbers of the bills, you can monitor if somebody spends them.
- amanaplanacanal 4y ago
  The bank secrecy act, which required financial institutions to start tracking and reporting to the government large or suspicious cash transactions, was passed in 1970. So unless your dad completely avoided banks, you are misinformed about what privacy he had. On the other hand, if he really did use cash for everything, you could do the same thing today. Nothing has changed on that front.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    When the bank secrecy act was passed, the cutoff was $10,000 (inflation adjusted ~$70,000) Since then, some of the fines for violating currency reporting have been adjusted for inflation. But curiously, the reporting cut off was not inflation adjusted and remains at $10,000. In 1970, thus, a 'large' transaction was one that exceeded the median family annual income. In 2022, a 'large' transaction is a beat up honda civic.
notch656a 4y ago
Before the advent of automated cash machines who was writing down serial numbers of notes? Maybe tellers at banks after large deposits or suspicious deposits. Maybe secret service or the fed. I doubt anywhere near 1% of transactions had the serial number recorded. I'm sure that shit gets automatically recorded every time it enters the bank now, along with any automated machines you use, so a completely off the cuff guess for me is 30% of cash transactions today may have their serial numbers recorded. Not quite as bad as bitcoin, but probably often enough it's easy enough to trace back to you.
- gamblor956 4y ago
  That was kind of the point. US and Europe have had the technical ability to trace cash, but not the resources or werewithal to do it unless they were dealing with money laundering or counterfeiting. That being said, the federal government does track money more granularly now--cash payments to businesses usually get dropped off at the bank on a nightly or weekly basis, and banks do scan all bills they receive and compare them against a list of flagged or counterfeit bills. And for the most part, minorities using large amounts of cash were always subject to additional requirements to "prove" their identity and the provenance of the money. The legacy of this is that banking amongst minorities is a lot lower, especially in the black and Latino communities.
__d 4y ago
I started working in the 70s. Through until the 90s, I was paid in cash. The company didn't track which bill serial numbers went to which employee. That was the same for pretty-much everyone in Australia until the 90s, when we started to get paid directly into bank accounts. But, I worked at a bank at that time, and I can tell you that our tellers and ATMs didn't track serial numbers then either: we had no record of which bills went to which customer. And that was true regardless of your age, gender, religion, ethnicity, etc. I appreciate that this has probably changed since then, but ... that's kinda the point: it used to be private.