This sort of thing is ginormously disturbing, but I don’t see that it’s intrinsic to electronic payments. The immediate problem is that electronic transactions should be treated like cash, but aren’t. If it were illegal for banks and payment processors to refuse transactions without a court order, then most of the problems cited would never have existed.
It’s appealing to think about solutions like Bitcoin because they don’t depend on The System getting it right. But to really work, they also depend on The System collapsing, since it won’t permit the competition as long as it exists. Most people outside of the Michigan Militia don’t actually want that, but I guess the threat of a feasible anarchist alternative might help prod the beast into action.
I’m coming late to the party but I’ve tried to read through all the comments and haven’t seen this addressed:
Most small businesses, such as local coffee shops, won’t take a card for any transaction less than $5 or sometimes even $10 because the associated fees make those transactions too costly. If you don’t have a small amount of cash on you your only choices are to pay more or go to a chain that takes plastic for any amount.
Sadly more and more people seem to take the latter option which means local businesses are being driven out in favor of multinational chains.
I didn’t mention that they confiscated the cash (when they received his body) so the county had to later write me a check for the amount. I guess they just can’t hand cash over found on someone’s remains to their next of kin.
The problem with blanket dismissal of “conspiracy theories” is that I clearly remember a time when everyone who was paying attention was aware that all of the stuff that came out with the Snowden revelations was going on, but were dismissed by people like this as conspiracy theories.
[quote=“enso, post:89, topic:76394”] I guess they just can’t hand cash over found on someone’s remains to their next of kin.
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Technically, at the time of his death. it still belongs to his estate, which, according to his will and other stipulations of probate law, you may inherit, in full or in part.
Of course some conspiracy theories, under our definition, have turned out to be true. The Watergate hotel room used by Democratic National Committee was, in fact, bugged by Republican officials, operating at the behest of the White House. In the 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency did, in fact, administer LSD and related drugs under Project MKULTRA, in an effort to investigate the possibility of “mind control.” Operation Northwoods, a rumored plan by the Department of Defense to simulate acts of terrorism and to blame them on Cuba, really was proposed by high-level officials (though the plan never went into effect).13 In 1947, space aliens did, in fact, land in Roswell, New Mexico, and the government covered it all up. (Well, maybe not.) Our focus throughout is on false conspiracy theories, not true ones. Our ultimate goal is to explore how public officials might undermine such theories, and as a general rule, true accounts should not be undermined.
Within the set of false conspiracy theories, we also limit our focus to potentially harmful theories. Not all false conspiracy theories are harmful; consider the false conspiracy theory, held by many of the younger members of our society, that a secret group of elves, working in a remote location under the leadership of the mysterious “Santa Claus,” make and distribute presents on Christmas Eve. This theory is false, but is itself instilled through a widespread conspiracy of the powerful – parents – who conceal their role in the whole affair. (Consider too the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.) It is an open question whether most conspiracy theories are equally benign; we will suggest that some are not benign at all.
Of course, his definition of a false, malicious conspiracy needs to exclude the NSA machinations based on a pre Snowden level of knowledge, while including stuff like “The International Jew”.
I want to apologize to you that I didn’t express myself clearly and thus made you think I meant disrespect to your deceased father, and for the upset that caused you justifiedly.
I didn’t mean to suggest your dad carried cash for the purpose.
I in your position, talking to a cop about my own dead father’s money could maybe not have helped myself and facetiously, disrespecting my police interviewer, answered him with the Hookers and Blow trope.
That money was going to be confiscated no matter your answer.
If you are still upset with me, well, fuck me.
Without a national payment system, we are guaranteeing the banks a profit on absolutely every transaction that takes place.
This is an absurd situation!
Visa and Mastercard already tax every transaction to the effect of 2% or so, which is then hidden in retail pricing. This is universal inflation to support the parasite class.
if we go cashless, we can’t be left at the mercy of for-profit banksters!
Cash exchange does not involve a percentage to a clearing agency or a bank or credit card company or any digital entity. A cashless economy will take “money” out of your pocket for every single transaction.
Not the best way to end poverty but then only poor people really want that.
Sure, why not? There could be many reasons for studying the Constitution, one being to get around it while providing tools to those who want to control other people – a context Sunstein seems to pop up in. Credentials don’t have much to say about intention, policy, or actual performance.
There’s plenty of evidence. Every time Sunstein’s name pops up, it’s connected with ways for some elite or upper class to control other people, as for example the cashless society. We’re talking about very detailed, very close kinds of power, such as depriving people of unsurveillable kinds of currency. And it’s to be deployed in sneaky ways (‘nudging’) to reduce the chance of being perceived and resisted.
