[pipio21]

"Among all its services, it is perhaps its promise of a cashless economy, a recurring dream of the internet age..."

I will correct that a cashless economy is a recurring dream of central bankers and their more fervent supporters, like "The economist" or Keynesians or whatever.

I prefer the old model in which companies compete against each other instead of having a panopticon company that knows all your private conversations, control all your money transactions, knows when you are, who you are with and by the way, censors you, etc.

When I have been(living) in China I came to the realization that central planning is a retarded idea, responsible for China 5 century standstill. You really appreciate freedom when you have lost it.

But it seems central planning is all the rage now. We have to let "expert" economist academics to tell us what to do with our money, forget the open web to become citizens of facebook (or Google or Microsoft) land, and let those companies control our computers, so we don't watch videos or books that panopticon does not give us rights to access, and copy dictatorship regimes in our policies because people in power envy it.

[wmf]

To be fair, central-bank-hating cryptocurrency enthusiasts also dream of a cashless economy. It sounds like you're kind of projecting.