One piece of advice I got a long time ago, from a family member in politics: Don't put your groceries on a credit card. Especially if you buy junk food or alcohol. Obviously the same goes for bars, tobacco, strip clubs, gun purchases[0], and lots of other perfectly legal things that you might not want being counted up if you ever run for office.
At the systemic level, the main benefits of going cashless are:
- Being able to track everyone's purchases (for taxation, law enforcement, and in some countries the blackmail of political opposition or assigning "social credit" ratings)
- Have realtime, near-total visibility into the movement of money, for economic management and personal profit
- Being able to cut off individuals or members of a political movement from the ability to purchase basic necessities, if they fall afoul of the party in power[1]
[0] https://www.wlox.com/2022/09/20/gop-ags-call-credit-card-com...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/trudeau-canada-freeze-bank-a...
[edit]: I should have also mentioned freedom of movement and association. You cannot buy a plane ticket or a hotel room anymore for cash - even if your bank's ATM allowed you to access enough of your cash in a single day to do so. Cards enable the granular tracking of everyone's movement, whether or not that person chooses to carry a cellphone.
...huh? "Don't use store membership cards that track your specific purchases" is one thing, but in what world does your credit card processor get info about the individual goods on your receipt?
Didn't Google start buying this kind of data to match up online purchase intent with real-world purchases?
A person with habitual transactions at a casino or liquor store could be perceived as high risk and the lender could jack up the interest rate for that person. I have no clue if lenders _actually_ do this, but they could since they do ask for your outgoing transactions.
Credit card company rolls up your behavior into a number, and passes that to a credit agency like Experian, and they pop a number out to anyone who asks.
No one is asking for outgoing transactions unless you're trying to buy a business or are getting a non-standard loan for something
The fear of having oneself audited is the main reason more people don't run for office.
Yes, some narcissistic maniacs have managed to slip through by portraying themselves as victims of witch hunts, but the average married person will not run for office if it means their spouse will find out they went to a strip club.
Everyone is susceptible to blackmail. The digital trail of expenditures is the key to letting the people with access to that data remain in power.
Personally I'd be far more interested to learn that someone running for office refuses to use a credit card to buy groceries because they fear having that information collected and used against them... than that they once spent $500 in a single month on Twinkies.
If someone wants to use your spending history against you they don't actually need your credit card bills these days, they can just make something up. Look at the insanity that people managed to create out of John Podesta's office pizza orders.
"The GoBeRmEnT Is GoNa TrAcK YoU"
Listen, you got a cell phone, and chances are that's going to give away far, far more than data that your credit card company holds on to.
They're just going to have a line -- "Food Lion, [Date] $88.23" -- not detailed list of your purchases.
Meanwhile if you use a membership card at any sort of grocery store, they absolutely will associate it with you; in many cases you have to register that card with your name and phone in order to use the points. Cash or credit, that's tracking you.
Until modern social media that -- grocery store membership cards -- were one of the best predictors of age, income, gender, etc. available.
Then, having found me, I asked what number was in there, and he proceeded to read, with exactly zero recognition, <area code> 867-5309, and I just laughed on the outside, and cried a little on the inside.
No matter how evil and corrupt a given corporation is, it could never be as bad as a government.
Boston Dynamics is no more (and honestly in many ways far less) enmeshed in the security state than any number of military suppliers. Seems like a poor argument that things are specifically bad now or getting worse on this front.
If you’d pointed at Palantir perhaps you’d have had a point.
FWIW, too, the "tinfoil hat" thing doesn't work on me. I will smugly tighten mine as I look down upon the naive proletariat being manhandled as "Do You Love Me" [1] is played over the crowd control loudspeakers.
Few Americans are aware even now of the role of IBM in mechanizing and tabulating the murder of Jews for the Nazis, and basically no Americans were aware of it then[0]. "They" who desire "symbiosis" between corporate power and government power - a better word would be fusion - are the same corporations who promoted fascism in the US and abroad throughout the 20th Century, whose continued efforts we can see daily through virtually all channels in our society.
Name one sphere of society in which corporate power has not merged with or overrun democratic governmental oversight. Name one environmental, social or economic battle that grassroots democratic movements or western governments have won against the corrosive force of corporate profiteering in the last 30 years.
My concerns aren't exclusive to governments or corporations. The degree of co-mingingling of personnel and regulatory capture at this point makes the difference moot. Whoever has the data on every purchase you made since 2012 can silence you, threaten you, blackmail you, or force you out of a public or private position, if there's any difference between those things now. It doesn't matter if you're innocent or the law is on your side; all that matters is perception. Someone who wants you in can hide anything you did; someone who wants you out can find the smallest detail that you accidentally allowed to be recorded, and amplify it. It really makes no difference whether it's a government agency, or a corporation. Splitting hairs on that or saying I'm necessarily paranoid because my concern runs more toward government abuse is an argument about nothing more than the superficial, speculative scenario. The data is the data, and anyone who has it has power. Power is power, and it's only realized when you can wield it over people. Handing anyone your full purchasing history is giving them the power to subjugate you.
Risk minimization sounds prudent if you’re a target.
“Read about J. Edgar Hoover” is a handwave, rather than an argument, and its made worse when it supposed to support a position on the current state of affairs.
Life isn't a song, nobody in politics these days actually faces the consequences just because they were a rapist/adulterer/wearing blackface/drag/doing felony fraud/etc.
I wouldn’t conflate political shenanigans and things that make the news with systemic forces. Made up things don’t always, or even often, pass muster in court. But true information being lawfully used against you will result in no legal recourse.
after that you need some magic to deanonymize the anonymized data, but in the 90s plenty of people claimed to do that already. the famous case was infact with health insurance and burgers... but i can't recall any names.
edit: in the usa
Same reason why, if you insist on installing an app from your auto insurance company, you should not let it access location data.
And, if I had to guess, the booking of hotel rooms probably has more to do with liability rather than tracking. There are plenty of ways of getting a roof over your head without using a credit card; though IMO they are likely a downgrade.
While your statements resonate with me, it's a bit hyperbolic to say that electronic payments/banking are the only way of exerting the control you're worried about. I think there are a lot of good points in this line of complaint about centralized private financial systems, but the ones you're raising are a bit fringe.
Why is that a good thing? You used to be able to walk into the airport, pay cash at the ticket counter for a ticket, and get on the plane. Compared to the fantastic level of nonsense we put up with today?
That said, your comment doesn't deserve downvotes, because this very much depends on where you live. It's true that some of them are as crooked as you say. I can usually tell within a minute of walking into one. And if that's been your experience then I can't blame you for holding that perception. But I don't think it's true over all in America.
Granted, I don't see a lot of campaign ads, but has this ever happened? Has anyone ever run an ad like "My opponent's credit card bill shows they bought nothing but Funyuns and Jack Daniels for the entire month of August. How can you vote for this person?"
An anecdote: during COVID people had to use shopping carts in the supermarket (social distancin). Those trolleys needed a 1 euro coin inserted in them to unlock. Chaos ensued because many customers were not carrying cash- let alone coins.
The reason supermarkets offered cash back was that this allowed them to massively reduce the amount of cash held on site and thus reduce their insurance costs.
But wouldn’t this increase the amount of cash you need on hand to ensure you can make change and now give cash back?
I’m not sure they even offer cash back these days, it has been so long since I asked, and the number of cash transactions has dropped massively over the last few years.
Anything under 10 cents gets rounded down/up accordingly
It doesn't matter. Minting and transporting it, even in your pocket costs more than you'll ever get in dealing a more "precise" denomination
The US used to have a half-penny coin. It stopped being minted in 1857.
The purchasing power of the half-penny at the time was about as much as a quarter has today.
It wouldn't be crazy to get rid of all coins worth less than 25¢ and round all purchases to the nearest quarter.
Obligatory CGP Grey: https://youtu.be/y5UT04p5f7U
Think about the last time you bought some for $1.27 and paid with a $20 and they took it without blinking.
I live in a developing country where there are still a ton of small mom & pop shops that aren't willing to eat the cost of that externality. So it isn't uncommon to go to one of them and they'll go "sorry, I can't make change for that bill size". Then you suddenly have the hassle of needing to drive to another store or getting change somewhere else or whatever.
In practice you adapt: the ATM only spits out big bills so you make a purchase somewhere to start breaking them up. Go buy a soda at an international chain instead of the local corner store. That kind of thing.
But it is still a cost we all pay, since "making change" isn't free.
If that were true, then criminal elements wouldn't need to severely launder their money. It's a spectrum. Cash can be tracked, each legitimate bill has a unique serial number, and yes, at least at present I haven't heard of private actors outside of those that service law enforcement tracking it, but the reality is that if you withdraw $8k to pay for a motorcycle and hand it to a guy that sells you the motorcycle and then deposits it straight into his own bank account then yes, this is quite obviously tracked.
For more information I suggest getting some books on Terrorist Financing for the new meta. There is a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service lady out there that wrote a whole book on it recently.
"Laundering money" means that criminals make transactions in order to use cash they have from their illicit gains within the general economy, ie get it into a bank account and being able to declare where they got the money from.
> the reality is that if you withdraw $8k to pay for a motorcycle and hand it to a guy that sells you the motorcycle and then deposits it straight into his own bank account then yes, this is quite obviously tracked.
Not at all.
It should be tracked to some degree. If the motorcycle is designed for street use (compared to track or dirt only) then there are several interested parties that need to know about some sort of transaction (insurance companies, DMV, state sales tax). There's some difference between "my insurance company knows I bought a GSXR" and "Visa knows I bought a GSXR", but less than you'd think. Even if the insurance company doesn't sell the data, you're likely to buy a new helmet with the Visa, increase browsing of motorcycle related webpages, or have some new speeding tickets.
This isn't difficult data science.
This isn't quite what you meant, but 20-ish years ago there was some crowd-tracking of Euro-bills.
The Euro was pretty new and people were excited about their banknotes showing up in other countries. Some people created a website where you could enter the serial number of your bills. Each serial number would have a tracking page in which places it showed up. It felt kinda cool to find a bill in your wallet that had visited a few other countries.
Not really? As far as they know I could have spent that $8000 on a used car from another guy who then used that same money to buy a motorcycle. It's untracked for all the time it's not in the bank's hands.
A motorcycle is a bad example, too, because there are licensing and registration requirements.
It obviously could have gone through an intermediary, but it usually doesn't for honest transactions. If one of the two people is already a person of interest to law enforcement, a warrant can be called up to figure out exactly what happened. Added to other sources of information, like the new registry of the car or motorcycle, a pretty reliable history can be constructed.
Don't think in binary. Think in continuums of likelihood. Also, this isn't a new concept. It was covered by HBO's The Wire many years ago.
I am sure this offers several advantages to the bank. That said, however, maybe I can see it being straightforward for these machines, along with ATMs, to log bill serial numbers as they’re distributed.
I have no idea if this is being done, simply, at least at my bank there’s an avenue for it to happen. I would also freely admit that it would be an imperfect system. But still food for thought.
https://www.amazon.com/NUCOUN-VC-7-Denomination-Counterfeit-...
> Money Counter Machine with CIS Technology: Equipped with one pair 200DPI Contact Image Sensors, scan and detect each counted bill like human eyes.. counts the quantity, reads the denomination and currency type, calculate the total amount at one time pass. Turn on serial number reading function to record serial number and all the counting details can be printed directly or exported to PC , very helpful for money tracking and management.
I scarcely use ATMs at this point because they won't hand out "large" bills. Inflation will be the real driver of cashless adoption, as the absurd number of $20 bills (and eventually, $100 bills) you need to pay for anything these days makes using cash too difficult for the average person.
Not having to carry a wallet anymore. Never going to the ATM. No need to pocket loose change. Quicker checkout times.
In the UK and Australia where I normally am, card infrastructure is just so entirely universal and reliable that it's not even worth considering.
I don’t have a wallet, and I don’t want one. I want efficient and secure digital currency, with easy interfaces between digital wallets. I pay for my lawn care via Cash App, most of the other small businesses have Square or something similar.
If I need anonymous currency, I will convert to crypto and then convert once or twice more across different coins. It’s good enough for my use.
Now days they can print you a new card in real time at the branch, but still I will never not have cash, and not have a backup card
I also NEVER use by debit card for anything other than ATM now, credit cards and pay it off every month... I dont even carry my debit card anymore, it is locked in the safe, and a bring it out when I need to get more cash.
Those problems do exist, I usually just go somewhere else if their card/payment reader is down.
And when we inevitably leave our card somewhere and we need to get home? Or it's blocked for some random reason? Nevermind the services that just don't take cash, or the fact that their card reader might be down, etc.
Doesn't seem tenable to leave the house without at least some cash in a back pocket somewhere.
A lot of people (esp under 30) these days are running around without any cash at all. Pickpockets and muggers, or even just panhandlers, have been suffering as a result.
I do have some cash in my car I think. I put it there a few years ago for emergencies. I haven’t touched it since then.
If I really need cash for something that I can’t get somewhere else, like a visa from the Japanese consulate, I go to the bank and withdraw cash. It’s a weird request for tellers, but I only do it once every two years or so. I’ve forgotten the pin to my ATM card.
How is this different to cash? I also have Apple pay on my phone and watch.
> Or it's blocked for some random reason
I have a couple cards. Also, I've been cashless for 10 years across three countries and this has never happened.
> Nevermind the services that just don't take cash
Assume you mean card. Not a problem in many countries including Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. I travel a lot, remote, even random middle-of-nowhere merchants accept card. From a business point of view, cash-only makes zero sense. Why would a business turn away people who want to give them money?
> or the fact that their card reader might be down
Never had it happen. A couple of times the payment network has been down, and these terminals seem capable of making the transaction offline and syncing later.
If you're from a country where any of these are legitimate concerns for you, it doesn't mean cashless is bad - it means the systems are bad. And they can be fixed, again, AU, NZ, and UK (and more, I'm sure) are proof. Haven't carried cash for 10 years and it doesn't occupy a single thought.
Of course there's no difference in regard to the risk of getting physically lost.
I was referring risk of carrying a single value store (independent of type).
I also have Apple pay on my phone and watch.
Not sure how that's less cognitive overhead than a physical wallet, but as you like.
From a business point of view, cash-only makes zero sense. Why would a business turn away people who want to give them money?
Margins are thin. Apparently the overhead is significant for some merchants. Such that in my part of the planet, it's not uncommon for street merchants (and small shops) to only take card payments above a certain minimum amount.
Meanwhile, the card-only places turn away customers all the time.
If you're from a country where any of these are legitimate concerns for you, it doesn't mean cashless is bad - it means the systems are bad.
Mmm - from first principles, and given that one system is orders of magnitude more complex (and subject to far many more points of failure) than the other - is may very well be an intrinsic liability of that system.
Either way - do as you like, and nice chatting.
My favorite question that many of the people on this site love to ignore, what about natural disasters? Do you believe CC terminals still work when the rest of the infrastructure has failed?
Cash is far from on the way out, you’re being naive.
I also don't live in a place where natural disasters (like hurricanes) are very common. I imagine people in Florida or coastal Texas would have a very different view on things.
People have calculators that tend to work and be accurate outside a POS. Many people can do basic math and add tax, and you hand them cash. Is this hard to believe? It comes from an era where a POS didn’t exist.
> I'm guessing your saying FEMA help won't come very soon
FEMA, National Guard, etc, stand up critical infrastructure first. This means hospitals, not storefronts. They also only bring in limited food. They feed some, no where near all.
> come very soon, it will be everyone for themselves in the city
hardly, for one National Guard is patrolling. You’re purposely being reductive here.
> I also don't live in a place where natural disasters (like hurricanes) are very common. I imagine people in Florida or coastal Texas would have a very different view on things.
So you, knowing you lack experience, blatantly state cash is on the way out when you now state there are some uses? What is your point exactly? Because a few people don’t need cash in the US clearly nobody needs it?
Chargebacks are supposed to be expensive because they're a deterrent to businesses acting in ways that will lead customers to attempt chargebacks. And then they usually have an element of manual review which costs $ as well. Chargebacks being expensive is a feature not a bug. And they're an easy consumer protection option that isn't even a possibility with cash.
The UX of those two things is similar enough that nobody really cares, until it bites them in the ass, that is.
If you order something that then arrives broken and the company refuses a return, you can do a chargeback.
If you had mailed cash or a check you'd have no recourse except the courts.
Nit: you mean a positive feedback loop: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback
And there's just so much nonsense involved, like a cashier discovering they're $25 short at the end of their shift, and how do you deal with that. Unlike digital transactions, people are constantly making mistakes with cash, which one side or the other is losing out on.
And then obviously theft as well -- if there's no cash in a cash register, there's less incentive to hold up convenience store clerks at gunpoint. (You can still steal merchandise, but it's a lot bulkier and harder to handle.)
Maybe that's nice because you can pay your taxes with money you made selling drugs.
Maybe it's bad because you don't know what kind of activity you're supporting when you accept a stranger's money. It could be that refusing to accept their money makes them unable to set up the mining operation that would poison your drinking water.
Bit unfortunate too that paying with cash just adds a tax onto the poor since the fees are basically priced into goods sold at stores, typically regardless of whether or not cash is used.
But yeah, nice to have the option to use both!
I also know that credit cards have their advantages, but what are the main benefits of going fully cashless (at the individual and systemic level)? Is it mostly crime related shenanigans?