Cash, nudging and totalitarianism

[Skybird]

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Politicians want it. That alone is a very solid reason to absolutely mistrust it and to not wanting it. And yes, in the end it is about totalitarianism, growing debts to the infinite, and conditioning of the life stock, eh: population.

Say No no total control and absolute vulnerability, say Yes to freedom and self-responsibility. Pay cash. Boycott cashless businesses. If you think you do not owe it to yourself, at least you owe it to your children. That little coolness you think is so important for you to gain when paying with a card or smartphone, is being paid for with so much more than just money.

[Rockstar]

I'll admit, I'm one of those who for the most part is a cashless consumer. The only time I find myself using greenbacks these days is when the local backwater municipality cant' afford the system to take an online or credit card payment.

Too me the immediate concern it isn't about using the data against people like me who are low on the totem pole of life trying to make ends meet. But rather when people in power use the information against those seeking it. Similar to how I think the FISA courts may have been recently abused. It can divide a nation along party lines, create politicians for life, encourages nepotism, and cause the good 'ol boy network (a.k.a. 'deep state') to thrive.

It will make Abraham Lincoln out to be a liar as it slowly whittles away at "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." It will change slowly and with the medias help the populace will remain completely oblivious and unconcerned. Personally I think we are divided as planned we bicker and gossip amongst ourselves like old women all too often to be concerned about anything which truly matters.

Very far into the future well after my lifetime the paranoia sets in the mind of the leaders. That's when the little guy gets caught up in the purges.


Then again, it could be we'll all wake-up and see that it was just a bad dream.

[Eichhörnchen]

This topic was being discussed on the radio last week.... someone asked at the end, perhaps flippantly, whether it would not eradicate buskers? This would mean a complete end to people earning small amounts of money in this way.

Also, what would it mean for charities when those millions of collection boxes beside shop tills became redundant?

[Skybird]

My biggest concerns are twofold.

First, ending cash money eradicates the last reminder for people that money (value, buying power) does not rain down from the sky, but has to be "made": by being produced, by creating something, but transforming something existing, by "work", by saving instead of consuming. In such a state the government then could unleash a debt increase that is truly infinite (until the whole economy collapses), because money then is taken as natural as oxygen when taking a breath of air. But if you allow this, you destroy, you annihilate and eradicate the only standard by which the economy can standardise different items, products, services and goods. And without such a standardised value that is out of reach for corrupt politicians wanting to arbitrarily attach price tags like Chavez in Venezuela, business men cannot properly calculate, cannot plan for the future, can not differentiate between good and bad investing, and where to allocate ressource wisely due to future demand, and where such allocations would be misallocated (=wasted). In the end, all value standards and relations between different price tags of things and services , must collapse, once their corruption and deformation have gone beyond a certain treshold level. We have been there. Its nothign new.

You cannot spend your way out of debts. Saving does not mean to spend, nor does it mean to already consume the future results of productivity, nir does it mean to have a year where you increase your debts a bit less than you did the last year before. Saving means to not consume what you have right now - what yiu have not in credit money, in lend money, but in cahs money, in real property that yiuz actually own. Only this is "saving". - I can only chuckle helplessly when politicians in Germany start to increase spending when they see the debts the newly make in a year have risen slightly less than the year before - they then already say that the state has money. It hasn't. And who pays for the state'S debts? Any idea...?!It is established psychological fact that people who only pay by credit card, due to the lack of feedback and oversight provided by seeing notes and coins in their wallets, easier and more severly slip into debts that let them drown, than people who use credit card transactions less or not at all. Think of it as a vital tactile feedback, think of it as a viosual remind of that you lost money, and that you only have so and so much left.With credit cards, the incentive is higher tio accept debts. And a good ammount of the banking business indeed wants you to make debts. It starts with small household money, and ends with debts for paying for your university education, debts so high that the next thirty years you can only care for serving them, making you extremely exploitable and weak. And this is where banks and politicians want you to be.Second, if you must pay everything with digital money, you leave a trail of traces that allow others to learn EVERYTHING about you. your habits. Your likes and dislikes. Your diseases. Your risk-taking. Your social preferences and antipathies. Nothign stays hidden. You get completely unlocked, you allow the state to known more about you then you are aware of yourself . These informations get combined. They get completed by making conclusions basing on them. Your health status, your social enbgament, your political opinion. And that all is sensitive data that can be used against you - on a basis that endagers your mere existence. And this also brings an ammount of tailored nudging, of tailored reward and punishment, an ammount of manipulating your behaviour that is beyond any tyranny and dictatorship we have ever had so far in mankind's historxy. And you cannot escape it. You cannot resist when there is nothing left anymore to which you can resist.You cannot resit to oxygen when you breathe.
And a last, third reason now comes to mind. If you have no cash money, credit card companies have gained a power position thta makes them indispensable. They then can dictate the fees as they like.
And all your buying power (your "money") you then are forced to keep in a format where you are highly vulnerable to cybercrime, may it be viurtual robbery, may it be cyber warfare by a hstile state. You cannot save your "money" from thisk you cannot hide it, you cannot evade hostile actions. You are forced to stay xposed and helpless.

People, come to your senses, here is so much more at risk than just your supposed comfort and coolness. I still wait to learn one, just one serious, valuable, important argument in favour of cashless societies that is such that it could justify all these dangers and enpormous risks. All I have heard abiout it so far, were lies, unimportant minor things, alibis, strawman arguments. Not one argument that I could respect and see as valid - not one. And lets not be mistaken: politicians want cashless societies because they already plan for the abuse of them: to have some states finance other states, to have one population financially maintain another nations'S population, to be unhindered in promising the blue down from heaven at next elections without needing to care for how to pay for it. The crime is intended, the crime is already fixed and pre-planned. It is not just a possebility - it is the intention for cashlessness. The older I get, the more I become aware of how fragile and precious a moment in history I live in. Never before was life so easy and comfortable, and never again will life be as good and free again after this era. I have lived through the most likely climax of this era, and now already must witness its decline again. Earlier generations could not imagine the ammount of wealth and freedom and peace in our lands that we enjoy today, and future generations will envy us for our relative freedom and peace and possibilities. I am quite convinced that the future not necessarily always turns for the better. We probably have had the best there ever was to be.

And we carelessly throw it away...??? Really...???

[mapuc]

It's none of their business to know what I use my money for.

They know how much there goes in to my bank account each month and They do know how much I withdraw each month. This change from month to month
Thereafter they do not know what I buy
Except when it comes to medicin-
Even if I use some of the money to this-they know I have used some of them for my medicin.

The rest they don't know.

Markus

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by mapuc

It's none of their business to know what I use my money for.

They know how much there goes in to my bank account each month and They do know how much I withdraw each month. This change from month to month
Thereafter they do not know what I buy
Except when it comes to medicin-
Even if I use some of the money to this-they know I have used some of them for my medicin.

The rest they don't know.

Markus

^ In case of cash payment only.