[isodev]

I think you are jumping the gun on freedom here.

There are very few remaining instances in the region where people still pay large sums in cash. Transaction costs are so low (and mostly nonexistent) that cash remains in use either in very specialised circumstances or as part of “grey economy” activities.

[SQueeeeeL]

WHO CARES if it "only has a few instances". I will never understand where people will say that having our right LITERALLY REMOVED somehow isn't eroding our freedom. It simply is, you are objectively less free now.

[isodev]

The uppercase tells me you have strong feelings about this and maybe I’m missing something obvious. Would you explain why my freedom will be diminished by this? I can still pay and buy whatever I want. It just happens faster and more secure.

[steelframe]

> maybe I’m missing something obvious

A common tactic of centralized control is to "boil the frog," so to speak. Start with a control that seems to most people to be lax enough to be "not that big a deal," and then later -- maybe years -- tighten the control once enough people are acclimated to the existence of the control in the first place.

If the government were to come along and say, "If you are female and are purchasing travel tickets between a state where abortion is illegal to a state where abortion is legal, we want to know about it, so we're requiring that you use a traceable method of payment," then the problem may become more obvious to you.

If instead the government says, "We're requiring that you use a traceable method of payment," but doesn't disclose a specific reason why, and later decides to use it to determine when females travel to states where abortion is legal, that's not as obvious a problem. At first.

In this case, it could be, "We're requiring that you use a form of payment that we can easily monitor when engaging in transactions over $X." After about 5 years or so of people getting used to that, they can move the threshold to something like $(X/2). Then after a few more years, make it mandatory for anything over $50 or $20.

So we may want to not tolerate the activity at all, on principle. RMS' The Right to Read* is in orbit around the general theme, I think. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

* hysterically, Bing prominently provides results about locking down documents when I search it for "rms right to read"

[Aerroon]

You don't even have to move the threshold. Inflation will eventually take care of it. At the current rate of inflation in some EU countries it would only take 5-6 years for the value of money to be $(X/2).

[rootusrootus]

> I can still pay and buy whatever I want.

That's a big claim. Can you put a guarantee on it? Seems like when your only option is to use a tightly regulated system that has opinions on how much you can spend, every time you do you are granted permission. Some day they may say no. What is your recourse when they do?

[stavros]

Maybe you do, but not all countries function as well as yours. I'm Greek, and I remember a few years ago when we could only withdraw 50 euros a day from ATMs.

You're on the happy path, and wondering why anyone would complain when the path is so happy. The problem is what happens when that breaks down, and when that happens you definitely want to be able to use cash.

[poszlem]

Thank you. "the happy path" is the best way to put it I have heard in a while. I genuinely feel that people having that level of naivete is the result of them living in a fairly stable country for far too long.

Dear people who come up every time with their own version of "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear", break your bubble sometimes, talk to your work colleague from outside of America (or "the west"), ask them what it's like to live in a country where you cannot trust your own government. What it's like to live in a post-communist country, what it's like to live in a country with central planning.

[stavros]

Exactly, it's the same as "if you have nothing to hide". No, sometimes I need to hide things for legitimate reasons, and sometimes I want to buy weed and I should be allowed to.

[CapricornNoble]

>>> I can still pay and buy whatever I want.

Are you sure about that?

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/gun-shops-and-customers-...

[heap_perms]

There may be not many instances, but this is simply not an argument. That is irrelevant. People should be have the freedom to use cash.

We had instances where a government blocked bank accounts of protesters, in democracies and autocracies alike. This is unacceptable. No government in the world should be able to restrict what people can do with their own money. And with this EU-wide limit, we are one step closer to nothing else orwellian authoritarianism.

It's not just "grey economy" how you call it. It's part of an essential freedom that has been taken away from the people.