Cashless society

No doubt you’ve heard the term ‘cashless society’, right? Basically, it means a system where the usage of physical currency has been supplanted by the use of ‘cashless’ forms of payment….debit cards, electronic wallets, etc. They’ve already started experimenting with this sort of thing in parts of Europe (naturally) and this sort of thing is being hailed by the technology fans as a tremendous advancement in society…muggings and robberies will fade as people no longer have cash. Why hold someone up in an alleyway or knock over a MiniMart when there’s no cash there?

Who else lauds this move to the cashless society? Folks who feel they have an interest in keeping tabs on what you do with your money. I’m of the opinion that whether I’m buying a Slim Jim and a copy of Hustler at 3am in 7-11, or buying a duffel bag of AR mags out of the back of a van in the Domino’s parking lot, what I do with my money is no one’s business but mine.

I was in the bank today and saw this lovely sign:

This is what I would call a ‘soft ban’. A hard ban would be the outright prohibition of the use of cash. Knowing that sort of thing might actually not go over well with a large chunk of the voting constituency, the alternative is to make the transactions more and more annoying to the point where the average Joe says “Screw it, it’s easier for me to just move the money to your account using [PayPal/ACH/Debitcard/etc]”. See, they don’t actually ban the cash, they just make it more and more difficult to the point where it may as well be a ban. (Machine guns are a good example…they’re not banned, they just require a tax..and fingerprints..and background checks…and police approval..and nine months of waiting…and…and…and…to the point where they may as well be banned.)

Governments angle, of course, is tax revenue. Oh, they cloak it in ‘war on terrorism’ nonsense…can’t let those guys have a bake sale amd then move the money to Islamabad to buy RPG’s..but a happy side-effect (for the .gov) is that it’s far easier to make sure you’re claiming all the money you make for tax purposes.

Taxes aside, no one needs to be able to look at financial records and determine who bought freezedrieds, ammo, guns, bus tickets, politically-sloganed sportswear, or anything else for that matter.

There will always be that group of people (raises hand) who prefer to do cash transactions for things. When Kroger stops taking cash and only takes EBT and debit cards, or the local Conoco only takes plastic ‘for the safety of our staff’, what choices are left to you? Barter? I suppose that might work but the guy working the island at the Costco gas pumps isn’t in any position to dispense fuel for cash (or cash equivalents). You’re only real recourse will be small businesses and entrepreneurs who will fill that market void…and, reasonably, make a profit. $2.50 a gallon for gas with your debit card at Costco, or $4 a gallon in the back of the WalMart parking lot from a bunch of five-gallon cans in the back of someones pickup.

I used to work in an adult bookstore. Virtually all the transactions were in cash for a very obvious reason – no one wanted their spouse (or whoever) getting the cancelled checks or credit card statements and seeing that someone had rented movie or bought toys. Did the store owner declare all that lovely undeclared cash? Beats me. But the takeaway here is that using cash afforded a level of privacy.

The usual crowd will address these issues by saying  ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide then you shouldn’t have a problem with it’. Thats the same crowd that has schoolkids wearing see-through backpacks and want’s a backdoor to unlock your phone. ‘Reasonable’ and ‘commonsense’ limitations on privacy, of course.

Whats the privacy-minded to do? Well, the obvious answer, to me, is also the shady answer – go create a fake identity and load it up with a debit card or other electronic banking info. But…that would be wrong, You could use some anonymous electronic payment form like a prepaid debit card like you’d find in vending machines or in the gift rack at the supermarket checkout, but those actually have some limitations on how they can be used. I suppose the lowest-impact thing to do would be to vigilantly make sure that your must-be-private transactions are done with cash. And, of course, whenever possible try to be paid in cash.

Cryptocurrency? That’s definitely something that has potential, but it’s still a bit too unstable at the moment. The idea is brilliant and wonderful and, of course, of great concern to .gov who thinks that unmonitored financial transactions are the work of terrorists and bad guys and not simply people who want their privacy.

Gold and silver are about as close a thing as we have to a universal currency. Trouble is, you still can’t really go into WalMart and buy a deli bucket of chicken wings with it. Oh you can convert it into a currency that will let you get your bucket of wings, but if that WalMart doesn’t take cash then what exactly will you convert it to?

I’m not sure what the solution is. I suppose it’s to simply be prepared to pay a premium to do things the ‘off the grid’ way. The more clever and morally flexible of us will, no doubt, come up with some workarounds but that has its own set of problems and issues.

For now, I suppose I’ll just have to keep an eye on how things develop.

 

23 thoughts on “Cashless society

  1. BOA has been using the practice described in the Wells Fargo flyer for years. I guess you could use Visa gift cards or a pre-loaded debit cards to get around the cashless thing. Use your bank card to buy gift cards and pre-loaded debit cards, and than use them to conduct business. These cards usually don’t have a name tied to them. If there’s a will there’s a way!!!

  2. That is part of my mentality in being in a literal foot race to aquire the dirty necessities earlier in my life. It allowed getting what is / was banned or extremely expensive later. Beating inflation or natural price increases as well as other consumer competiters helps by getting up, early birds. If durables, then life purchases are done. I can then use my debit-credit for regular comrade consumer purchases, as long as I can keep my citizen profile score acceptable to the reviewing authorities and not run afoul and become a non-person, subsequently erased.

  3. The closer we get to a “Cashless Society”. the closer we get to a Privacy-Free society…

    By the Way.
    OPSEC and Credit cards do NOT have an overlap…

  4. About two years ago I was talking to some one who was on about a family ‘do’ he had been to. After the meal in the very nice restaurant someone went to pay for it with cash.
    “We only take cards on payments of over £50.” Which would have been every meal for two or more. There was no sign up anywhere about this.
    “OK. Thank you for the free meal.”
    “You can’t do that I’ll call the Police!”
    “And tell them what? Someone had a meal wanted to pay and I told them your moneys no good?” They took the money and closed down after three weeks. People still like to pay by cash.

  5. The bombings in Austin, TX may have heated things up a bit. They tracked him down by his purchases I believe. Scary how much data is available for both good and bad operations. Then again if gov.net is so good why did it take them more than 10 years to track down Whitey Bulger?

    • No, they tracked him by his cell phone! They dump the cell towers in the areas around each bombing. Then they cross reference the cell numbers and see which number or numbers show up in the area around each bombing. Your phone is always communicating with the nearest cell tower. Its really that simple now to track someone!!!

  6. Once an acquaintance recommended using a pre paid Wal-Mart type debit card. Good for questionable websites and such. Also good for a night on the town. Just get one and put like $100 on it. You have a card to hold a tab but if it gets lost oh well. Also if the real visa with the high limit is at home your way less likely to buy a couple rounds for a group and spend a bunch of money.

    • This works, but only up to a point. Some vendors/services will not accept these. It’s a limitation, but still an option worth pursuing.

  7. And that’s the other thing with cashless. Honk off TPTB and they turn off your debit card and or freeze your accounts. Now try to buy your Slim Jim and Hustler mag….

  8. “Cryptocurrency? That’s definitely something that has potential, but it’s still a bit too unstable at the moment.”

    It’s also not “cryptographic” in any sense of the word. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite. Instead of each transaction being recorded in one database, it’s recorded on millions of processors worldwide. A nice misnomer for receiving the masses. I wouldn’t touch it with a 10’ dildo.

    Great article, though. Very prescient & lots of good stuff in there to consider.

  9. Because those prepaid cards are inactive until purchased and loaded, they can track them pretty easily. They backtrack to the store and date, pull the video, pull the cell phone records, do some correlation and then you’re looking at a no-knock raid.

    There have been mentions of these techniques in various news reports.

    I’m sure there are ways to buy the loaded cards at a significant discount, but you’ll be dealing with criminals, who will roll over with a little pressure…

    Not sure what the answer is.

    n

    • The prepaid industry is closely tied to the illegal immigrant invasion of the last three decades. If President Trump succeeds in cutting off this flow, expect the prepaid industry to dry up and your opportunity to buy prepaid cards with cash shut down.

      Pro Tip: purchase gift cards with cash at mom-and-pop stores whose video recording systems reside within the store. Big box stores upload video to the Cloud, where it is stored forever and data-mined for identities. Target’s loss prevention systems make Big Brother look like a piker. Wear a wide brimmed hat. Sunglasses are a nice touch.

  10. WHY are you at WFB? I dumped those users years ago. Open an account at a credit union. Credit unions service their members-not the share holders of a bank. Service fees are cheaper, loans are easier to get, and the federal rules are different for credit unions. I think that you will be much, much happier. As for cash, if a store keeper won’t take my cash, then he doesn’t get my business. Seek out friendly business people who value you as a customer.

  11. The U.S. government spends more time fighting citizen privacy rights then fighting ‘real crime’ like murder – robbery – rape. In all cases, the government’s position is ‘you gotta give a little and get nothing in return’. Really makes you wonder who works for who.

  12. Small towns in the upper midwest still have some mom & pop type places that won’t take your cards, cash only. Which is another reason to like it here.

  13. The .gov is desperate to switch to cashless transactions. Mostly for tax purposes. (Citizen control is just a happy byproduct.) They estimate the gray market here in the US to amount to 3x the documented (taxes paid) type. That is a HUGE incentive driving them. The fact that a large percentage of those transactions will go away if they have to be recorded/tracked/become public gets ignored by them in their calculations. The term “unintended consequences” is not in any .gov worker’s lexicon. (I suspect it is a requirement of .gov employment to have that mental blind spot.)

    My take is that if the hidden economy is that much larger, the .gov is doing something wrong.
    BTW, the result of going cashless will be the crash of the economy. You can’t stop that much money moving around without serious consequences. That’s the un/con I mentioned. Current politicians will become rare birds as a result of the blowback from that insanity, most likely.

    • Yup. This is exactly how black markets are created. Nothing ‘new’, really. It’ll all just go ‘underground’.

      One more reason to buy junk silver in my opinion.

  14. Another reason that there is a push to go cashless is that there are a few companies getting fees for every transaction; I’m sure they are lobbying for it. I’m seeing an increasing number of companies that give discounts for using cash due to the fees (and increasingly, restrictions on what you can sell).
    Note that some stores, particularly big ones, give complete sales information to their payment processor; other ones only give a dollar amount and time – if the cashier has to enter a dollar amount and swipe the card on a separate unit, then they aren’t sending anything other than that to their payment processor. if this is the case, the only way for anybody to find out what you’ve been buying is to go through store records. I really like it when they have an old style register where they punch in prices by hand – then even their records don’t show what I bought.

  15. Forgot to mention. There are other soft limits on cash – I chose my local bank due to their willingness to deal in cash, but now, after several years with them, they are keeping less on hand in each branch office. They say it is due to a change in insurance regulations, but I wonder…

    Sweden has led the push for a cashless society; they are now concerned because the payments all run through a couple of private companies; critics are now gathering strength: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/03/being-cash-free-puts-us-at-risk-of-attack-swedes-turn-against-cashlessness
    Others have realised that a cashless system requires communications and electricity; when you lose either, you have a problem. I haven’t seen any of the supporters of a cashless society address this problem.

    • “Others have realised that a cashless system requires communications and electricity; when you lose either, you have a problem. I haven’t seen any of the supporters of a cashless society address this problem.”

      There is no current technology fix for this problem. Lose the grid for a not too long time, and society may die just from the lack of money to keep it functioning. Lack of power is guaranteed to kill it eventually, but lack of money will ensure it dies a lot quicker and nastier.
      Just look at the turmoil we had here when the EBT card system went down for a few days.

  16. The credit card companies are the major push behind this whole cashless mentality.The fees collected for every transaction runs into the billions $$$. The thought process about it being a safer world not worrying about cash is a lie.What do you do when the power goes out, what if the merchants transaction machine fails and they’re the only game in town. The system will get compromised it’s just a matter of time. Not to mention no more craigslist, no yard sales, no more control because you don’t have it to control it. Don’t buy into it as it is a big lie.

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