> what are the main benefits of going fully cashless
One piece of advice I got a long time ago, from a family member in politics: Don't put your groceries on a credit card. Especially if you buy junk food or alcohol. Obviously the same goes for bars, tobacco, strip clubs, gun purchases[0], and lots of other perfectly legal things that you might not want being counted up if you ever run for office.
At the systemic level, the main benefits of going cashless are:
- Being able to track everyone's purchases (for taxation, law enforcement, and in some countries the blackmail of political opposition or assigning "social credit" ratings)
- Have realtime, near-total visibility into the movement of money, for economic management and personal profit
- Being able to cut off individuals or members of a political movement from the ability to purchase basic necessities, if they fall afoul of the party in power[1]
[edit]: I should have also mentioned freedom of movement and association. You cannot buy a plane ticket or a hotel room anymore for cash - even if your bank's ATM allowed you to access enough of your cash in a single day to do so. Cards enable the granular tracking of everyone's movement, whether or not that person chooses to carry a cellphone.
Personally I'd be far more interested to learn that someone running for office refuses to use a credit card to buy groceries because they fear having that information collected and used against them... than that they once spent $500 in a single month on Twinkies.
If someone wants to use your spending history against you they don't actually need your credit card bills these days, they can just make something up. Look at the insanity that people managed to create out of John Podesta's office pizza orders.
Listen, you got a cell phone, and chances are that's going to give away far, far more than data that your credit card company holds on to.
They're just going to have a line -- "Food Lion, [Date] $88.23" -- not detailed list of your purchases.
Meanwhile if you use a membership card at any sort of grocery store, they absolutely will associate it with you; in many cases you have to register that card with your name and phone in order to use the points. Cash or credit, that's tracking you.
Until modern social media that -- grocery store membership cards -- were one of the best predictors of age, income, gender, etc. available.
I once used that as my number at Garage Center, then didn’t shop there for ~10 years. When I went back, I’d forgotten. The kid at the register tried looking me up by email, my actual cell number, my previous one, and then finally resorted to *gasp* my actual name.
Then, having found me, I asked what number was in there, and he proceeded to read, with exactly zero recognition, <area code> 867-5309, and I just laughed on the outside, and cried a little on the inside.
It’s not the government that concerns me, it’s the corporations. And I don’t think it’s a contest or even matters if cell phones give more data. I’m worried about both.
This line of argument seems to be common to other responders telling me my concerns are "fringy" insofar as they invoke concerns about governments.
My concerns aren't exclusive to governments or corporations. The degree of co-mingingling of personnel and regulatory capture at this point makes the difference moot. Whoever has the data on every purchase you made since 2012 can silence you, threaten you, blackmail you, or force you out of a public or private position, if there's any difference between those things now. It doesn't matter if you're innocent or the law is on your side; all that matters is perception. Someone who wants you in can hide anything you did; someone who wants you out can find the smallest detail that you accidentally allowed to be recorded, and amplify it. It really makes no difference whether it's a government agency, or a corporation. Splitting hairs on that or saying I'm necessarily paranoid because my concern runs more toward government abuse is an argument about nothing more than the superficial, speculative scenario. The data is the data, and anyone who has it has power. Power is power, and it's only realized when you can wield it over people. Handing anyone your full purchasing history is giving them the power to subjugate you.
Not yet [1]. Total symbiosis of corporations and government—to the point of making Mussolini blush—is the ultimate goal. Sure, that sounds paranoid, but look at how far we've come on that spectrum in the last 30 years. Proliferation of technology (due to its enabling of surveillance and weakening of the state) all but guarantees that future.
When you make statements like ‘Total symbiosis of corporations and government … is the ultimate goal’ without attributing that goal to anyone, you come off as sounding a little bit tinfoil hat.
Boston Dynamics is no more (and honestly in many ways far less) enmeshed in the security state than any number of military suppliers. Seems like a poor argument that things are specifically bad now or getting worse on this front.
If you’d pointed at Palantir perhaps you’d have had a point.
Not that you'll view it as valid but I'm using abductive logic. I shared the Boston Dynamics thing in jest, but I'd love to hear valid reasons for the existence of a bipedal robot that can run and scale over objects. Are these things being used to down dissidents a reality today? No, but it's a perfectly logical conclusion for what's down the pike.
FWIW, too, the "tinfoil hat" thing doesn't work on me. I will smugly tighten mine as I look down upon the naive proletariat being manhandled as "Do You Love Me" [1] is played over the crowd control loudspeakers.
I think "to the point of making Mussolini blush" gives enough background to take the comment seriously without demanding piles of documents.
Few Americans are aware even now of the role of IBM in mechanizing and tabulating the murder of Jews for the Nazis, and basically no Americans were aware of it then[0]. "They" who desire "symbiosis" between corporate power and government power - a better word would be fusion - are the same corporations who promoted fascism in the US and abroad throughout the 20th Century, whose continued efforts we can see daily through virtually all channels in our society.
Name one sphere of society in which corporate power has not merged with or overrun democratic governmental oversight. Name one environmental, social or economic battle that grassroots democratic movements or western governments have won against the corrosive force of corporate profiteering in the last 30 years.
A friend who worked in credit finance many years ago warned me they were “thinking” (wink wink) about doing things like selling your food purchase history to medical insurance companies for the purposes of declining claims on the basis of long-term bad eating habits. I believe it was and still is illegal, but if corporations are allowed to do this, then they will, and it’s worth it to them.
I wouldn’t conflate political shenanigans and things that make the news with systemic forces. Made up things don’t always, or even often, pass muster in court. But true information being lawfully used against you will result in no legal recourse.
...this is already legal for some decades. if you are in a rewards program you agreed to have you anonymized sales history (i mean, they will not list "ate burgers" but "ate at fiveguys" is pretty similar).
after that you need some magic to deanonymize the anonymized data, but in the 90s plenty of people claimed to do that already. the famous case was infact with health insurance and burgers... but i can't recall any names.
If you look at the recent history of scandals that have had zero to negative reputational impact on politicians and public figures in Western democracies - we’re talking Access Hollywood, tax fraud, undeclared gifts, gross nepotism, punching journalists, flouting public health laws, sexual impropriety, lying about your career and life story, mishandling of classified information, and just plain incompetence - what on earth do you think the harm could be of someone getting hold of someone’s old credit card bills?
And literally nobody would care. Regardless of whether the accusations are true or not, the other side is already convinced the politician's in question is a baby-blood-drinking child abuser, while their side will be convinced its just a baseless smear campaign by done by butt-hurt losers.
Life isn't a song, nobody in politics these days actually faces the consequences just because they were a rapist/adulterer/wearing blackface/drag/doing felony fraud/etc.
Given how relentlessly (just to pick a particular example) Epstein's crimes, accomplices, and associated have been publicized, and the negligible impact, why do you think that would be impactful?
Because three letter agencies have a huge incentive to trawl through politicians' private lives through credit card purchase data, and use that against them if they don't want to toe the line of these agencies, whose ex-employees are guests on the main stream media. Just leak enough to derail any politician.
The constraints and incentives for agencies like the FBI have changed a lot since Hoover (in no small part due to the abuses under Hoover.)
“Read about J. Edgar Hoover” is a handwave, rather than an argument, and its made worse when it supposed to support a position on the current state of affairs.
Pointing to a guy who’s been dead 50 years seems like weak evidence for the claim that government agencies are widely incentivized to undermine political candidates by… selectively leaking their grocery shopping habits?
They’ll look for anything they can find, when they need to. There are whole organizations devoted to digging up dirt, and others devoted to countering/deflecting it.
Risk minimization sounds prudent if you’re a target.
If the very first director of the FBI immediately abused his position to blackmail everyone around, what do you think has been going on in the intervening 75 years?
...huh? "Don't use store membership cards that track your specific purchases" is one thing, but in what world does your credit card processor get info about the individual goods on your receipt?
If you apply for a loan, especially a mortgage, the lender could ask to see your outgoing cash flow statements. Which wouldn’t get into receipt-level detail, but could still potentially allow the lender to discriminate against you.
A person with habitual transactions at a casino or liquor store could be perceived as high risk and the lender could jack up the interest rate for that person. I have no clue if lenders _actually_ do this, but they could since they do ask for your outgoing transactions.
They could, but for the vast majority of people they won't. Credit scores exist so that they don't have to.
Credit card company rolls up your behavior into a number, and passes that to a credit agency like Experian, and they pop a number out to anyone who asks.
No one is asking for outgoing transactions unless you're trying to buy a business or are getting a non-standard loan for something
The vast majority of people don't have to pass intensive government background checks or face potential rejection during a political vetting process. (And I'm talking about in the United States, where questions raised about personal peccadillos during this process wouldn't necessarily result in the sort of watchlisting they would in most nonwestern countries).
The fear of having oneself audited is the main reason more people don't run for office.
Yes, some narcissistic maniacs have managed to slip through by portraying themselves as victims of witch hunts, but the average married person will not run for office if it means their spouse will find out they went to a strip club.
Everyone is susceptible to blackmail. The digital trail of expenditures is the key to letting the people with access to that data remain in power.
Even with cash, you can't buy a plane ticket without handing over all your info. Which is a good thing!
And, if I had to guess, the booking of hotel rooms probably has more to do with liability rather than tracking. There are plenty of ways of getting a roof over your head without using a credit card; though IMO they are likely a downgrade.
While your statements resonate with me, it's a bit hyperbolic to say that electronic payments/banking are the only way of exerting the control you're worried about. I think there are a lot of good points in this line of complaint about centralized private financial systems, but the ones you're raising are a bit fringe.
> Even with cash, you can't buy a plane ticket without handing over all your info. Which is a good thing!
Why is that a good thing? You used to be able to walk into the airport, pay cash at the ticket counter for a ticket, and get on the plane. Compared to the fantastic level of nonsense we put up with today?
In the 1974 political thriller The Parallax View, one of the characters boards a plane at LAX, and then purchases a ticket from the stewardess. It is the most jarring scene in the entire film.
> things that you might not want being counted up if you ever run for office.
Granted, I don't see a lot of campaign ads, but has this ever happened? Has anyone ever run an ad like "My opponent's credit card bill shows they bought nothing but Funyuns and Jack Daniels for the entire month of August. How can you vote for this person?"
Well many (not sure if all) strip clubs are basically legal brothels that run on cash specifically because a) they are (usually) in with local organized crime and b) so when the girls get their "tips" they can't be scrutinized about what service they provided to acquire it.
I know a lot of women who work at or have worked at strip clubs (including my partner of many years). While there's sometimes an organized crime element, those are often the safer ones for girls to work at. The blanket statement that they're "legal brothels" is far from the truth. In fact, most will fire girls for any sort of illegal contact, onsite or offsite, with customers. I've heard myriad stories of girls being fired for selling services.
That said, your comment doesn't deserve downvotes, because this very much depends on where you live. It's true that some of them are as crooked as you say. I can usually tell within a minute of walking into one. And if that's been your experience then I can't blame you for holding that perception. But I don't think it's true over all in America.
Its the same case with massage parlors: they either have very well-trained masseuses and take cards, or they are just brothels that may or may not actually give you a massage. I don't think its a bad thing at all...but I can't imagine the working conditions are always great. The thing that makes people uncomfortable about prostitution is the idea that some of the girls might actually be doing it completely willingly (they might even be enjoying it): I don't think the problem, then, is with the existence of these types of establishments, but the complete lack of regulation.
One piece of advice I got a long time ago, from a family member in politics: Don't put your groceries on a credit card. Especially if you buy junk food or alcohol. Obviously the same goes for bars, tobacco, strip clubs, gun purchases[0], and lots of other perfectly legal things that you might not want being counted up if you ever run for office.
At the systemic level, the main benefits of going cashless are:
- Being able to track everyone's purchases (for taxation, law enforcement, and in some countries the blackmail of political opposition or assigning "social credit" ratings)
- Have realtime, near-total visibility into the movement of money, for economic management and personal profit
- Being able to cut off individuals or members of a political movement from the ability to purchase basic necessities, if they fall afoul of the party in power[1]
[0] https://www.wlox.com/2022/09/20/gop-ags-call-credit-card-com...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/trudeau-canada-freeze-bank-a...
[edit]: I should have also mentioned freedom of movement and association. You cannot buy a plane ticket or a hotel room anymore for cash - even if your bank's ATM allowed you to access enough of your cash in a single day to do so. Cards enable the granular tracking of everyone's movement, whether or not that person chooses to carry a cellphone.