Your Money No Good Here

I have long viewed the efforts of banks, retailers and government to make us a cashless society. I’ve heard all their reasons: money-laundering, efficiency and so on, and I remain unconvinced.

It’s even worse over here, and Ross Clark of the Daily Mail takes aim at the process:

The argument in its favour is convenience, but the truth is that it’s all about greed.
Firstly, there is the opportunity to collect fees. The Boston Consulting Group estimates that banks and payment companies such as Visa and Mastercard currently make $1 trillion annually worldwide in fees — typically paid by the retailer — for processing electronic payments.

And it won’t be just the retailers who are being fleeced. Currently, consumers are rarely charged fees to use credit cards and debit cards, but you can bet that would change if there was no option to pay in cash.
An even bigger prize is the opportunity that cashless payments offer to large corporations to collect vast amounts of personal information about individuals.
We are familiar with how tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter harvest information about us via our internet searches and so on.
But few of us are aware that we are also feeding a vast data machine whenever we use our credit and debit cards.

It’s worth reading the whole thing, because Clark’s analysis is very good, especially hw going cashless makes us completely vulnerable to the vagaries of computer systems, their inefficiencies and the hacking thereof.

And while I share his cynicism about Big Business and its Marketing Department, I am even more cynical about Government and its attempt to make all transactions cashless — because as a former marketer myself I can at least understand the desire for more information about consumers (even if I don’t agree with the ruthless harvesting thereof) — but when it comes to government knowing every little detail about how I spend my money, certain part of my anatomy start to twitch uncontrollably.

And yes, we’re mostly talking about my various fingers.

Whenever I’m faced with any attempt to make a massive, wholesale change in society’s behavior, I get that same twitch — and this one strikes me as especially worthy of some digitized action. So I’ll start with the most innocuous one first.

Note to government and business: want me to stop using cash?

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range, to rid myself of another twitch.

7 comments

  1. Look on the bright side: an entirely new range of employment opportunities. As an economic beard, I will purchase anything for anyone, provided they pay me my asking price in gold or silver.

  2. I’m sure the prospect of using a cashless society for controlling everyone’s everyday activities has no attraction for the ruling class.

  3. Faceless Computers, and the people sitting at them…….
    Twitter takes down account of DJT!
    It was the last act of a disgruntled employee on his way out the door.
    How does that even happen, and does DJT have a tort against Twitter and their ex-employee?
    BigTech needs to be regulated under the provisions of a Public Utility.

  4. I actually look forward to the government screwing up money so badly that it once again falls into private hands.

    After all, whose signature would you prefer on a monetary instrument? Some arsehole of a politico who got himself appointed Secretary of the Treasury, or the CEO of MasterCard or Visa?

    Me, I’m a racist too. My preferred banker is a Scot, a Jew, an Indian, an Armenian, a new England Brahmin, a Swiss, a Dutchman, a Brit, possibly an Arab or Persian or maybe a German. All of them are quite likely to steal, less likely than any government, but the thought of an African, Latino or American central banker frightens me half to death.

    1. > or the CEO of MasterCard or Visa?

      Why do you think that the CEOs of Visa/Mastercard are any better than the CEO of Experian?

  5. One other factor that leads to a push to cashless transactions in many instances is that you are far less likely to be robbed if you have no cash. Pizza places in some parts of some cities won’t touch cash for delivery. Some convenience stores won’t have anything to do with cash after dark. If you don’t have it, and it is well known that you don’t have it, people are much less likely to try to kill you for it. And yes, you should be able to defend yourself, but even if your rights aren’t being trampled on in your area, you still might lose.

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