Cashless is a bad idea but coming soon

[Jocose]

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[Sir Moose]

I see bartering making a comeback.

[Del]

We're already there. They can already track us and back-track us by numerous means. We failed to stop it. Now we have to figure out how to live with it.

Micromanaging our behavior by "carbon consumption" -- not much different that restricting our access to life according to vaccination status.

And they demonstrated that they shut down our jobs and whole industries with an order. Tens of thousands of Keystone Pipeline jobs were killed without even a mention of covid. They banned church gatherings, closed schools, and made us wear masks. Easy for the powers to create some other excuse and impose some other badge of compliance.
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As for "global currency" -- People already wanting that, as with Bitcoin. Even before the fabrication of fiat currency, people have always used commodities (like gold, spices, tobacco, wheat) as international trading currency. US Dollars have been an essential global currency for a long time.

I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it's not a new thing. People want a form of currency that they can trust, is all.

[Del]

I see bartering making a comeback.

I see a culture much like the former Soviet Union. Constant shortages, bartering of whatever is currently in short supply, lots of bribery and corruption, and a whole economy held together by widespread black market activity.

[coco]

Cashlessness is, in my mind, a separate but related issue from spying. A cashless society makes it easier to spy on people, but we have already become a society in which spying by big tech and the government is nearly ubiquitous. The government, for example, closely watches bank deposits and such to counter terrorism, which I think that we could all consider a good thing, if 1) that is all they did with the data they gain and 2) if all government agents were immaculately sinless like an RC Mary. Big tech also watches purchases, which they claim to be a boon for us, since we only get the advertisements we want. Really this seems to only be a boon for the advertisers, and if they gave me what I wanted, I would have no ads at all. At any rate, the prior two problems are still relevant. Big tech does not merely use their data for targeted advertising, and they are not as sinless as Mary. If we somehow eliminated all forms of electronic payment today, much of our problem would still remain, and spy agencies would continue to grow in their monitoring capabilities.

[coco]

Bartering is a horrible way to build a civilization. It only works for primitive and post-apocalyptic societies. In other words, it might become popular in Russia and Ukraine if the war keeps up.

[tuttle]

There aren't many steps left. They basically have the system in place. Just start removing the cash from circulation. Typically when I travel I bring cash if ever my card goes bonkers. I flew to Florida twice last year and on the first go round I had a long layover in Atlanta and when I arrived every restaurant in the airport had signs saying, "Coin Shortage. Exact Cash Only." So I was forced to use my card.

The next time I flew I didn't bring cash, and wouldn't you know it, when I needed gas, my card wasn't working when I put my zip code in, even though I notified my bank, etc. I called my bank and they said it was an error in the system. But that really drove home to me that a cashless society was bad news. At one point I couldn't buy lunch with a $100 bill and at another I was at the whim of electronic gremlins. Aside from evil corporate/government bad guys doing nefarious things with our money and info, just forcing us into a position with a single point of failure is a bad idea.

[coco]

...just forcing us into a position with a single point of failure is a bad idea.

Yer so negative. The new definition of "justice" is that everyone has equal access to goods and opportunities. One solar flare could make this happen.

[FredS]

Credit card companies already restrict you to certain purchases. You can't use a cc to buy legal weed in CO. You pay cash or use your ATM card. That's what I've heard anyway. I've also heard that at certain times, in certain places, you can't use a cc to buy firearms or ammo. This will, of course, create even more of a demand for black market currencies and purchases. It will then be a global whack-a-mole game as governmental and non-governmental agencies try to squash these markets whenever they pop up. It'll take a while before all of us with our own discrete computers die off and everyone has only leased computers that run on centralized clouds controlled by big tech and thefed.net.

I've seen those creepers in raincoats (or maybe they're just schoolteachers) handing out 'free' chromebooks at the playground. It's a trap kids.