To be fair, apart from the privacy aspects, they’ve chosen some of the worst arguments against a full cashless society. Seriously, piggy banks and birthday cards?
I think it’s easier for us, as adults, to dismiss those things, but they bring kids joy and an opportunity to learn about the value of money and saving.
God how we would suffer without piggy banks or garage sales.
I though this whole post was sarcasm until I saw people’s comments taking it seriously. Thanks for bringing sanity to this thread.
Also have any of you heard of instant transfers or crypto currency? So cringe.
And giftcards will still exist, still traceable though.
unfortunately. god they suck so much. they’re like money, but worse in every way.
Normal life. As much as people want to deny it, it’s actually really important.
Why do garage sales have to go away, I just went to one and used zelle to send the guy money.
I was scratching my head with that one too. HOAs are doing a better job at killing the garage sale.
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No one is pushing for a “cashless society” like this post describes. It’s fear mongering.
26% in a recent poll:
A Mastodon poll with 210 responses is hardly representative.
Why do you think 210 is statistically insignificant? Is there a reason why the central limit theorem does not apply in this case?
If you’re more fixated on the samples coming from Mastodon, can you explain why you might expect cashless proponents to be even fewer in populations outside of Mastodon? IMO, a Mastodon-using population is more likely to embrace individual rights and condemn imbalances of power that favor giant corporations like banks. I believe if the same survey is carried out outside of Mastodon, the 26% will be even bigger, if different.
The same reason someone might think Linux is a wildly popular choice of OS on Lemmy. These communities are very niche.
Mastodon is not niche. Mastodon is a diverse community of nerds and low tech people, artistic brains and analytical brains, white collar workers and blue collar workers. A substantial portion of Mastodon is from Reddit refugees. Reddit is no more niche than Facebook.
The greater Mastodon venue lacks right wing conservatives, who tend to stay in their bubble of extremist networks. That does not make Mastodon “niche”. Running the same survey on a right wing Mastodon node might be interesting, but we can see from the linked poll that political affiliation is generally orthoganol on this issue.
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There is a massive difference between a business being cashless and a government enforced “cashless society” like this post describes.
Spain, Belgium, and France have banned cash transactions above a threshhold (e.g. €3k) at least 5 years ago already. Cannot pay tax using cash in Belgium. Think about that for a minute.
New recent law in Belgium: all businesses (incl. self-employed workers and even landlords renting out property) MUST accept electronic payment. Try doing that without using a bank.
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- I completely disagree that if a majority of businesses went cashless that would mean the government has no choice but to be cashless.
- I never said it “could NEVER happen.”
- What do you mean it “DID happen,” it hasn’t.
- Ad hominem gets you nowhere.
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I use my paypal card reader! Both when holding garage sales and when visiting, it’s pretty normal and a lot of people use it without blinking.
If you pearl-clutching Christians fearful of change don’t want a cashless society, maybe stop pouring all your support behind the political powers that want to see giant megacorporations flourish and crush out small businesses. The people who want to control your rmoney are not the banks nearly as much as the Walmart down the street that can now take credit card payments simply by glancing at the store as you pass.
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Get prepaid cards then
Prepaid cards are neither gratis nor anonymous in some countries.
Why are you like this though
Whoever wrote this has very little imagination. Most of this is already not true
This is some boomer facebook shit.
I have a Paypal credit card reader I keep with me because I do commissioned work on the side, it’s the size of a stick of gum, I can take a payment anywhere, I’ve paid friends for dinner or other things with a quick tap and use it at garage sales.
Not saying I WANT a cashless society, nor do I think anyone is seriously pushing this issue because if you did away with cash people will come up with something to use as cash the very same day. But I do think this weird image/article is extremely 1-dimensional and likely published in some Christian magazine to reinforce the right-wing fear that anything will ever change at all.
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What would you do if (insert hypothetical)? Oh okay. Well what would you do (insert more far fetched hypothetical).
Repeat.
But fine I’ll bite the bait. You can’t de facto bar bartering, as a significant amount if b2b is effectively bartering. Now if only corpos can do it, then I’d say we should really look into that socialist democracy stuff.
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I dunno if you live in the US, but if you do, you’re already required to pay taxes on the goods you exchange. So literally nothing would change wrt this cashless society thing because the law is already there, and you’re already not paying your taxes, and it has nothing to do with cash because in a barter you’re not exchanging cash.
If you deposit your money at a bank, or PayPal, or some online digital bank transfer service,** you do not have your money anymore.** They have your money.
Now you have some kind of contract that says they’ll give you your money on demand. But sometimes they won’t give it to you when you want it. If any judge or cop wants to see every person or business I’ve ever transacted with the bank will happily give it over.
On the other hand, cash is cash. If I possess it, then I have it. And nobody gets to know how much, or how suspicious, or with whom I’m transacting.
If you deposit money at a bank, it is covered by federal deposit protection insurance (up to some limit that varies by country but generally in the range of $100k-$250k), so you are guaranteed to be able to get it back no matter what. Even if the bank fails. Banks are subject to extremely strict regulation to protect consumers and make sure you have access to your funds
PayPal is not a bank, it’s an EMI (e-money institution), but those are heavily regulated to protect consumers. Your funds are not covered by deposit protection insurance, but as an EMI they have to keep your money in a safeguarding account at a real bank and they can’t use it themselves, so in case PayPal fails you will still get your money back. Revolut in the UK is another example of a non-bank EMI
If you deposit money at a bank, it is covered by federal deposit protection insurance (up to some limit that varies by country but generally in the range of $100k-$250k), so you are guaranteed to be able to get it back no matter what.
Time matters. Those insurance claims take months to process and they only cover bankruptcy (which is the least likely reason a bank denies you access to funds).
The copy of my ID card that the bank had on file expired. I renewed it on time but did not think to update the bank with a new copy. The bank’s way of communicating to me that their records of my card were out of date was to freeze my account. Boom, just like that, I have no money all of the sudden. I don’t recall the time of day it happened, but if it had happened on a Friday night I would not have access to my money until I appear in person at the bank Monday morning — assuming it’s even possible to get off work. At that time, I kept an empty fridge… only eating on the go. Had I not had cash on hand, getting food could have been a struggle.
Even if the bank fails. Banks are subject to extremely strict regulation to protect consumers and make sure you have access to your funds
LOL! Those so-called strictly enforced banking regs are not for us. Banks are scared shitless of AML/KYC shit hitting the fan. Banks laugh at the consumer protection variety of regs with reckless disregard. It’s a joke. I’ve reported banks in breach of consumer rights. The bank’s regulators do fuck all. One reculator responded to me and said “why don’t you switch banks”. I shit you not. That came from a regulator who’s job it was to enforce a law that the bank was breaking.
PayPal is not a bank, it’s an EMI (e-money institution), but those are heavily regulated to protect consumers. Your funds are not covered by deposit protection insurance, but as an EMI they have to keep your money in a safeguarding account at a real bank and they can’t use it themselves, so in case PayPal fails you will still get your money back.
No, that’s not how it is. PayPal has a reputation for copious extremely out of whack “anti-fraud” false positives. I was burnt by it. Paypal blocked my acct and kept my money. There are many similar complaints.
https://git.disroot.org/cyberMonk/liberethos_paradigm/src/branch/master/rap_sheets/paypal.md
What country are you in? If it’s the USA, then yeah my understanding is that regulations are a lot worse/weaker there. The stuff you described wouldn’t fly if it was a UK or EU bank I believe. SVB failing wouldn’t have happened here either (nor would it have in the USA before Trump)
Yeah PayPal are terrible lol, I’ve got some horror stories of my own
I love how in a PRIVACY Lemmy community there are people who actually, unironically argue for a dystopian cashless society.
We’re all fucked, aren’t we?
Conservatives making things up and getting mad about it
huh? anyone can dislike going cashless, since when do conservatives care about domestic abuse victims for example? conservatives generally perpetrate domestic abuse!
indeed. This was recently surveyed in fact:
This domestic abuse thing sounds to me like a “pull up yourself by the bootstrap” situation kind of myth. Are there women who can stash thousands away to prepare to flee, but cannot somehow have a bank account? That sounds so unrealistic, it seems to me more of an excuse to tell abused people they are just “not trying hard enough”.
Are there women who can stash thousands away to prepare to flee, but cannot somehow have a SECRET bank account?
^ fixed your question - an important word was missing. And now to answer it, in some countries it is impossible to open a bank account without your spouse knowing about it. If you are married, your spouse must cosign.
Sir this is a privacy sub, keep your political tribalism to the political communities.
Privacy famously being a non-political topic.
It doesn’t have to be and shouldn’t be. When a specific political entity makes anti-privacy plans, then it’s different ofc, but don’t bring politics into non-political posts.
This post is political. It is about how an aspect of society is organized and its effects. This is literally what politics are about.
You’re right to a point. It is somewhat political in nature, but not in the my party vs your party kind of way.
Who said anything about a party, conservatism is an ideology
Some restaurants deliberately stopped accepting cash to exempt homeless people from patronage. Imagine being so gross that you change your policies to bar people from getting food.
Imagine being so gross that policies are changed to bar you from getting food.
I live in New York City. The current way to pay for buses and subways is with a Metrocard. You can buy them at some stores and check cashing places, or at most subway stations. You can pay with cash or a card. Now, at great cost, they are introducing a ‘better’ system where you pay for your rides with a credit card or smart device. They are planning on getting completely rid of the Metrocards. Soon, they will be able to trace anyone’s movements.
trace anyone’s movements
There’s literally a GPS enabled mind control device in almost everyone’s pocket.
This same lame comment gets posted on every fucking internet post about Privacy. Stop it.
Not everyone uses a compromised phone with the GPS turned on all the time. Plenty of us put in effort to mitigate cell phone tracking, and anyone can leave their phone at home to completely eliminate tracking where they go.
FYI there are a number of privacy-focused Android distributions, and lots of options on Apple iOS to disable what can track you. Stop being complacent and protect your own privacy instead of hand-waving away the entire premise of Privacy.
Can’t wait for crypto to be fully adopted
So that everyone can see everything, instead of just the banks.
Hmm why are comments that mention Monero getting down votes?
Because Lemmy has an irritional hate towards crypto. Calling it “dead” and a “scam” while the price is breaking records and being officially adopted by several world governments.
and being officially adopted by several world governments.
Monero? Or which one?
BTC. The price already passed ATH ($70k) and has had ETF approval in the US several months ago, Canada; China coming soon. ETH is up for consideration next. And then there’s the fact that several small countries like El Salvador that have already accepted it as their official currency.
But you already knew all of this, so why am I even wasting energy on trolls like you? You people fucking suck. Quit talking shit just cause you’re even worse investors than me.
Quit talking shit just cause you’re even worse investors than me.
What? I asked one question.
False dichotomy. Many, even most, of the examples given here could be accomplished in a cashless society (not that I’m actually advocating for one, but this is just factually incorrect).
Grandma slipped me a secret credit chip connected to an illegal bank account in Panama, with $5 in it. You want a soda or something?
How would you accomplish these things without cash?
I’m not sure how you would accomplish a secret credit chip, with or without cash, sorry.
Assuming we’re talking about granny slipping her grandchild a few bucks though, what’s stopping her? Nobody’s proposing a system where under 18s are cut out of the economy. Everybody gets a bank account the moment they learn to crawl. Granny just sends the money to her favourite grandkid of the month.
None of this is hypothetical BTW, before you start trying to come up with scenarios why this doesn’t work. This is literally the system in Norway.
Well you can’t give someone cash if there is no cash.
Obviously nanna can transfer money to the kids.
The real question is what is the difference?
My kids have an account with an index fund. When I log in there’s a qr code you can scan which takes you to a payment gateway.
Well one happens while grandma is hugging the kid. It involves perceiving and interacting with a physical object, which uses parts of the brain that are hundreds of millions of years older than the parts you’re using when you see a notification on your phone.
Also there’s the fact of the secrecy, which isn’t there when all transfers are recorded for possible analysis later.
Quite a bit is different actually.
Creating a QR code and scanning involves the same interaction though.
If the children are young enough, nanna can transfer money to some account the parents control. If the parents are fine, that’s fine. However, what if the parents are addicts (drugs, gambling, whatever)? Or what if they are so deep in debt that every cent on their accounts immediately gets turned to whoever the owe to? In that case the kid can’t even buy themselves lunch on their own.
I don’t think this is a great argument for the prevalence of cash?
What about kids who’s nannas don’t give them money?
Better to build a society that identifies kids as risk like this rather than prattling on about cash and hoping for the best.
don’t worry, the politicians will never block themselves from receiving suitcases full of money
They don’t receive suitcases of money. Their wives law firms get steady business from a network of donors. Their kids get past the fancy school acceptance filters despite being block heads. They’re invited to speak at an overseas conference where they do one event and then 30 days of vacation. Their fake biographies of overcoming hardship get sold out and given out for free by their political party. They can trade stock with insider knowledge.
Not that I think society should be cashless but why couldn’t you donate to homeless people and do garage sales in a cashless society?
Pretty much everyone has a phone here, including beggars and homeless people. It’s a necessity these days.
My country is basically cashless (as in almost no one uses cash and quite a few stores don’t accept it at all) and we just send money with an app that almost everyone uses. It’s easier than cash, bank transfers, and cards. It’s also instant.
Hell, I have even gotten some money from my grandparents that way a few years ago.
It might be theoretically possible where there is cell service, but keep in mind that a lot of homeless people do not have and are unable to get bank accounts. De-banking can be and is used as a tool to control people generally. Being cashless might be benign if you are in a situation where the banks, financial apps, and governments can be trusted not to weaponize their absolute control over everyone’s money, but in many places they cannot.
What kinds of places have untrustworthy banks and are becoming cashless?
Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Spain. Banks in those places will freeze your account easily, like a doc on file expiring.
US banks are more trustworthy with your money than European banks, but US banks are less trustworthy with your data. Exceptionally, there is a pitfall where you can lose your money: dormancy. I recall a woman in California who had a safe deposit box that she did not access for a number of years. The bank declared it “dormant”, drilled it, and gave the property to the state’s unclaimed assets, who then auctioned off her stuff.
I was thinking of the US and Canada https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/05/more-americans-are-joining-the-cashless-economy/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-banking
Sure ok. If you don’t trust US and canadian banks your best bet is probably to go off grid and live in the wilderness. Good luck.
Yes, US Banks, famously the picture of honesty. If you know one thing about the US banks it’s how honest they truly are. If you know two things the other is probably the depression or the 2008 financial crisis, don’t worry about that though, they’re as trustworthy as the CIA which has definitely stopped all those nefarious things they did as soon as Alan Dulles died.
Not being from the US or Canada I don’t know the first thing about your banks or the CIA. That said, it just seems ridiculous to me that a bank would control you through the management of your money.
Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and Paypal famously colluded to block donations to wikileaks. That control was exercised at an international level.
In a cashless society, everyone would have a bank account.
Nobody wants to cut off people from the economy. Whether you want a cashless society or not.
Nobody wants to cut off people from the economy
They do though.
We aren’t at the point as a society to be fully cashless. Maybe someday it could work but I think that day is very far away. Look how fucked up even the most basic parts of society are. We can’t even get societies and cultures to live together in peace or something that resembles balance and harmony. Lack of privacy and security is holding back the star trek future. Trying to make these good intentioned theoretical changes in society before society is humanly ready will fuck us all.
I think humanity is a lot further behind than most think. … And it almost feels like social life and community is getting more and more primitive, wild, and fragmented as time goes on. These different future paths are marketed from and for them, the corporations and greedy, not for the benefit of us.
Some places are basically cashless already though, look at Sweden
For people who think that Crypto will solve these issues, it won’t. In a mass-adoption scenario, a few coins will be accepted as currency while the rest remain mostly useless for commerce. Those orgs behind those coins and their exchange platforms will then become just like the banks of old. Any attempt at democratizing Crypto is illusory, it’s a fantasy.
For people who think that Crypto will solve these issues, it won’t. In a mass-adoption scenario, a few coins will be accepted as currency while the rest remain mostly useless for commerce.
That argument is entirely dependent on what the “few coins” hypothetically turn out to be. For example, regarding privacy, Monero is private by design.
Those orgs behind those coins and their exchange platforms will then become just like the banks of old. Any attempt at democratizing Crypto is illusory, it’s a fantasy.
Are you arguing that it is inevitable that exchanges, or some other entity, will inevitably gain majority control of the networks of decentralized currencies?
No government would ever allow coins like Monero to become main forms of currency. The potential for abuse and tax evasion is just too high. They would sooner ban them outright. No legitimate business would accept them then.
Accepting random alt coins would also come with the expense of having to track them and their wallets separately, exchange costs, volatility, etc, so over time just a few will become generally accepted by businesses.
And yes, the most likely consequence of long-term crypto usage is that users will centralize into a few trusted platforms who will get the Lion’s share of tokens and power.
Sweden is a mostly cashless society. Let me try to respond to those points
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In case of domestic violence, you go to the police.
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You can still give individual people money with things like Swish. Yes, even “homeless” people have swish and they use it. Kids of all ages can have swish.
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It costs 0(for individuals) or 10-30 cents(for companies) to transact on swish and minimum transaction is basically 10cents(1sek).
There are privacy issues and it is kinda controlled by banks. Maybe eventually things like digital euro can improve on that in the future. You can have an anonymous digital payment system with near 0 fees, it is just that the governments arent incentivized to do it. Thats where cryptocurrency could fit, if it wasnt a pump and dump, to the moon hellhole.
I think the only one that doesn’t really hold up is 1. There’s a lot of coercive control tied up with domestic violence that would make it hard for a victim to call the police for help.
Having said that, in the UK you can open a bank account with a new company in a matter of minutes then transfer money to it and be out of the situation before any paperwork turns up showing what you did.
Many of our banks have specific provisions in place to help victims of domestic violence. Including one that’ll set you up with a safe account and an emergency fund that doesn’t need to be repaid. https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/tsb-launches-emergency-flee-fund-for-domestic-abuse-victims-how-are-other-banks-helping-arSND8h82lGJ
In case of domestic violence, you go to the police.
What a bizarre disconnect from reality. You have waaay too much confidence in police power (and assumptions about actionable evidence), capability, and motivation, and no idea about battered women living in fear of the next attack, which a restraining order does not necessarily stop, if you can get one, especially if the next attack is a bullet. A cop who checks on a battery victim will be told “that big bruise on my cheek is from falling down the stairs”.
Domestic violence victims need options. You’re advocating for taking options away. That’s fucked up.
Speaking from going through it myself; in the USA, Police often don’t help you if you’re dealing with domestic violence/rape in a marriage. My ex’s military commander refused to help me too…
so don’t get married. It’s your fault for perpetuating bronze age bullshit.
In the modern era a marriage isn’t really what it was in the past. You can get divorced if things don’t work out and there’s no “we must wait until marriage to have sex and then we must have children” rule for most people.
So marriage nowadays is really just either a celebration of love, or a practical move for tax or other reasons.
Domestic abusers however, ruin all that. But domestic abusers can ruin your shit even without de jure shared control of finances because they can still coerce you into giving bank auth details.
Yeah in a lot of western countries we now get the ick about all the women-as-chattel-property connotations it’s always had. Watch people scramble to re-invent the meaning of the father of the bride giving her away.
As far as I can tell, marriage is the ugliest and worst chapter of contract law, because that’s basically what a marriage is, it’s a contract. One that people tend to sign without reading or even realizing who all the named parties are. And the standard terms most people agree to aren’t all that great. “You can get divorced” yeah that process isn’t a garden trowel to the spleen, is it fellas?
If it didn’t already exist, and someone were to try to invent the modern concept of marriage from the ground up, we would drive them out to the middle of nowhere and leave them for dead.
Then your country hasn’t modernized its laws. In mine the law says that both partners have equal rights and responsibilities to each other.
My country is in the process of regressing its laws, in fact. I think they’re going to outlaw literacy next year.
Normally I’d ask if you’re American, but I suppose many countries nowadays are going down the same path
In case of domestic violence, you go to the police.
This was such an oddly specific “worry” that it kind of plays the hand of the target demographic as well as the intention of the snippet. Along with the weird bits about birthday cards and ice cream, it just screams propaganda for midwest Christian-leaning grandmothers and housewives.
Right-wing, conservative Christian housewives who hand-wring about everything ALL put away stashes of money to hide from their 1-dimensional husbands who are usually somewhere on the abusive spectrum. I lived much of my life out in the outskirts of cities where the rednecks nest and breed, there are some very predictable stereotypes out there. One of the most common talking points on the far-right Christian slice of America is the perpetual warning that the Anti-Christ is going to take control of all the money and bring the entire planet under his control, and he will enact a one-world currency, take away everyone’s cash and guns and then everyone will have to get some chip in their wrist and that will be the Mark of the Beast, blah blah blah, fear-mongering and superstition and mindless worry.
Nobody will ever take away physical money entirely because the moment you do, people will invent one. So if you don’t want unregulated Nuka Cola bottlecaps being traded for goods and services in your country, you need to maintain an official currency.
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