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Cash don't prevent a dictatorship. But having your entire population tracked when they pay and a way to shut down the money of anything because it has no cash

Cash don't prevent a dictatorship. But having your entire population tracked when they pay and a way to shut down the money of anything because it has no cash fallback helps a lot setting one up.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
How so? Look at modern dictatorships, or ones masquerading as democracies (Venezuela, North Korea, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Cuba, etc). They all use and allow cash. How did sticking to cash help them prevent their situation? You can't function in a moderns western country without a bank account anyway: rent, salary, utilities, all are fully wired now (I can't go pay my utilities at the counter in cash or get my salary in cash), so even if you buy your groceries and weed with cash, the government can just lock your bank accounts making you broke overnight, and unless you got close friends and family to shelter you indefinitely, you're a few weeks/months away from homelessness deepening on how much you got saved under the mattress. If the government wants to track you, they'll do it whether you use cash or not. Just look how effective the KGB and Stasi were at tracking people when cashless payments weren't even invented yet. Your clutching at straws at this point trying to prove that cash plays such a big parts in preventing authoritarian regimes. What helps prevent authoritarian regimes is a separation of powers in government and an accountable political class. The nordic countries have more or less given up cash, yet I doubt they're at the risk of political authoritarianism and have the lowest corruption index in the world. If you feel like your country is at the risk of becoming an dictatorship, maybe focus more on how you can become more like the nordics instead of sticking to cash.
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  > How did sticking to cash help them prevent their situation? The contrapositive is not true.

Cash don't prevent a dictatorship. But having your entire population tracked when they pay and a way to shut down the money of anything because it has no cash fallback helps a lot setting one up.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

How so? Look at modern dictatorships, or ones masquerading as democracies (Venezuela, North Korea, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Cuba, etc). They all use and allow cash. How did sticking to cash help them prevent their situation? You can't function in a moderns western country without a bank account anyway: rent, salary, utilities, all are fully wired now (I can't go pay my utilities at the counter in cash or get my salary in cash), so even if you buy your groceries and weed with cash, the government can just lock your bank accounts making you broke overnight, and unless you got close friends and family to shelter you indefinitely, you're a few weeks/months away from homelessness deepening on how much you got saved under the mattress. If the government wants to track you, they'll do it whether you use cash or not. Just look how effective the KGB and Stasi were at tracking people when cashless payments weren't even invented yet. Your clutching at straws at this point trying to prove that cash plays such a big parts in preventing authoritarian regimes. What helps prevent authoritarian regimes is a separation of powers in government and an accountable political class. The nordic countries have more or less given up cash, yet I doubt they're at the risk of political authoritarianism and have the lowest corruption index in the world. If you feel like your country is at the risk of becoming an dictatorship, maybe focus more on how you can become more like the nordics instead of sticking to cash.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago
> How did sticking to cash help them prevent their situation? The contrapositive is not true.