[kevincox]

If you give me the choice between being able to buy a loaf of bread and having my payments private I'm feeding myself ten times out of ten.

I'm not saying that privacy isn't important but I don't think it is the main problem compared to people being unable to use currency.

[mcv]

But that's the point: people will not be able to buy a loaf of bread if they don't meet with the system's approval.

Look, I switched to completely contactless payment through my phone since Covid, and it's so convenient I'm not going back. And it's hard for me to imagine people who don't have access to a bank account or smartphone, but those people do exist, and they may eventually become unable to buy a loaf of bread, and that's a problem.

[cmroanirgo]

Due to government tactics, a lot of australians are now deliberately using cash a) for the privacy b) as a statement against orwellian mechanisms.

I find it really sad when people are blaise about something that once gone, can't be put back. A social credit system, & everyone talking about it as an inevitable thing, have already bought into the propaganda.

I find it inevitable that with sentiments like that, that i'll be forced to live in a car & eventually the gutter & arrested regularly because of my nuisance factor. All because of the convenience.

[imtringued]

There are anonymous payment services. Just mandate the use of those in the laws.

[perf1]

Is this meant as a joke? Because almost the whole world is working on outlawing or "regulating" these and they aren't even anonymous most of the time. Not being controlled and centralized is threatening enough.

[mdp2021]

> anonymous payment services

Could you please expand? In this area, the only ones available I found have a surcharge of ~5..10% (you buy a 100€ card through 105€..110€). Note: I am not certain of the amount, it has been a while since I used one.

And in Europe electronic payments cannot by law be anonymous over 150€.

[imtringued]

>But that's the point: people will not be able to buy a loaf of bread if they don't meet with the system's approval.

...

Seriously, your argument is that privacy violations will cause people to starve? not the fact that there is a currency monopoly and you can't issue your own currency and start your own regional economy from scratch if the currency is concentrated in the hands of rich people and hence cannot be used and you must constantly borrow new money into the system which eventually gets saved by the rich forcing you to go to the bank and ask them permission over and over again? The dystopia you are imagining is already there. The only thing you're losing is privacy which is solved by GNU Taler.

[MiguelX413]

That is not that they're arguing at all, they are arguing that those who are locked out of the system by the government or banks or corporations will be starved by a cashless system. They would either be locked out by not having a bank account or device to participate in the system with, or by having their accounts suspended.

[soco]

Were you able before to issue your own currency and start your own regional economy from scratch? Where and when?

[mcv]

Local alternative currency systems[0] have existed for a long time in many cities. They're small and fringe, but they exist. Amsterdam, for example, has NOPPES[1]. But these systems are not threatened by electronic payment systems.

[0] LETSysteem, or Local Exchange Trading System

[1] https://noppes.nl

[leereeves]

That's not a real choice because governments will abuse it. If you don't have private, permissionless payments, you face the risk that the government will stop you from buying bread.

Don't believe it? Here are some other programs governments have abused: The US put people on the no fly list for refusing to become FBI informants [1]. Canada froze bank accounts of protestors. China abused their COVID tracking app to stop protests. [2]

It's important to remember past government abuses so we don't give them more tools for future abuses.

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/us/supreme-court-case-no-...

2: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/business/china-code-prote...

[thisgoesnowhere]

This is such a childish nonsense response to a nuanced well articulated argument.

[tboyd47]

I'd feed myself nine times and eat leftovers on the tenth.

Privacy isn't the most important thing in the world but it's shortsighted to just throw it out the window. You don't need it 'til you need it.

It's okay to be friends with people who can't keep a secret but you need to have at least one friend who can.

[mdp2021]

> Privacy isn't the most important thing in the world

For you. It very strongly depends on the cultural profile. Other people place it on totally radical grounds.

[thisgoesnowhere]

This comment is identical to the one you responded to.

[tboyd47]

10/10 != 9/10

[happyopossum]

When giving up privacy, once is roughly equivalent to ‘every time’.

[tboyd47]

If what you said was true, then no one would have any privacy at all.

But yet certain people have seemingly perfect privacy, like Satoshi Nakamoto and Jeffrey Epstein's employers. How?

I now realize a lot of people on HN are hard liners when it comes to privacy and think there's only absolute privacy and no privacy.

I think you all forget that not all information is the same. You can keep private channels open "just in case" while using public ones.

You can also enhance your privacy to a degree better than most people with simple, easy-to-do steps.

Anyway, the "all or nothing" mindset is detrimental to your cause and makes the average person feel like it's not worth it.

[bryanrasmussen]

given the technical capabilities to make it so, which we have.

[john_the_writer]

What if you get arrested because you buy a pride flag? Or if you get killed because you use a service?

What if you get arrested because you sold a train ticket to someone who doesn't have enough "social credit" to buy said train ticket?

[desas]

Then your society has bigger problems than how purchases are carried out.

[rapnie]

And a cashless society helps aggravate these problems.

[mdp2021]

> your society has bigger problems

It does not. A psychically deficient society expresses its "illness"¹ in many different ways, all with the same root.

(¹Both "evil", original sense, and "malfunction", translated sense. 'Illness' is a good term for this context.)

[happyopossum]

It’s insane to make it a choice though. Allow/require cash as an option, and all of these problems go away.

[StanislavPetrov]

If you give me the choice between a government that tries to force me to cede my autonomy and my privacy in order to buy a loaf of bread or go hungry, I'm sharpening my pitchfork and lighting my torch ten times out of ten.

[JetAlone]

Governments don't even have to get involved, we are heading in the direction fo functional cashlessness by the influence of corporations and the market alone. Hope you like incinerating fat cats to doom music, my friend.

[bobthepanda]

There are several local governments in the US requiring cash payments specifically because there are still major unbanked segments of the population.

[mistrial9]

but you missed a crucial part -- the post says "pitchforks" but is made by a ninety-nine percent civilized person with manners and education, who is unlikely to actually do the physical act mentioned -- but in the modern day, will Very Likely remember this topic at voting time. Take-no-prisoners politics means that the losing candidate, really actually loses and is therefore out of a job right now. So these are high stakes for political types and they do know it.

Sadly most American politicians on both sides of the aisle would probably vote for cashless right now, but, not all of them... and things do change.

[JetAlone]

Out of autonomy, out of food. Out of a job, out of blood.

Rising flood raises all ships. The stakes will get higher for all of us.

Edit: Besides, the GP's got a slav sounding username. One would be wise not to assume civilization rates in excess of 75%.

Strong slavs make bad times. Bad times make strong slavs.

[time0ut]

Maybe more Russian sounding https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

[JetAlone]

Russians are a slavic people. There are ethnic subgroups of other backgrounds that live largely within the borders of Russian and have Russian nationality like the Tatars, the Chechens, the Kalmyks etc.

[Asooka]

> incinerating fat cats to doom music

Don't threaten me with a good time.

Though I don't think that would help. Let's say we go cashless some day, then people get oppressed and manage to put together an uprising. Will the result be the return of cash, or just putting another despot in charge? So many times it's the latter. Perhaps the only real answer is smashing the datacentres, like modern-day luddites..

[phist_mcgee]

You cede your autonomy every time you transact in US dollars.

[AinderS]

That is precisely my point. The ability to prevent you from buying a loaf of bread will be used for control.

[imtringued]

You must be really naive if you think that isn't the case already.

Imagine a bitcoin standard where the rich own all the Bitcoin and governments force you to use Bitcoin. The rich have no reason to lend you Bitcoin for free, you don't need the Bitcoin, you need the loaf of bread and you are willing to trade your time for that loaf of bread but since the middleman Bitcoin was inserted, you are forced to borrow in the hope that you can pay the money back. Nobody lends out money for free, you are going to have to pay interest. The best part is that you are going to default as the interest payments end up in the wallet of the rich guy you just borrowed money from, due to the magic of compound interest he is going to lend his money out again. This means your debt is unpayable because interest payments must recirculate in the economy and somehow end up with you again but in this case they are just being lent out again. The only thing you can do is outcompete some other guy and take the money he borrowed into the economy to pay your own debt. Since someone is going to lose this competition there are going to be destitute and poor people in your society. The only known way out of this mess that is commonly practiced is to force the economy to grow faster which degrades the environment and results in ever inequality. The obvious solution and actually working solution is to make liquidity have a cost so that withholding money from the economy is impossible over the long term.

Money is power and control for those who have it and their power extends beyond what they can buy with it, it also extends to those who don't have it.

[notpushkin]

This is exactly why we shouldn't let governments force us to use any currency. We don't have a currency problem, we have a government problem.