I have never once heard of an innocent person’s assets being frozen. That’s a nuclear option that’s not often used. I’m certainly never keeping my assets in cash anyhow, as that’s fucking bonkers.
Just because you haven’t heard of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. It is a big world and everyone only sees their small piece of it.
The Canadian government did recently it with the trucker protests. The US did it with operation Choke Point starting in 2013. It targeted 20+ categories of merchants including porn stars, cable box descramblers, and money transfer networks.
The government routinely misuses the ‘justice’ system to wrongfully imprison people. Is it so hard to believe they will do the same thing with money? The government is not a neutral arbitrator of who is innocent. No one is innocent. But the government allows some people to be treated as more innocent than others.
Cashless forces everyone to cede control of their money to the government through the banks. Do you want the government to be able to get a list of everyone who purchases abortion pills? Can you see how such an ability can be easily abused by government? Assuming the government will always be friendly to you is a false assumption.
IIRC the protests in Canada were also super controversial, especially for the people who lived there at the time.
I will not get into that here, though.
If you aren’t keeping your life savings in cash and you wouldn’t trust digital currency, how would you propose your idea?
Even stuff like bitcoin would be susceptible to your concerns about government overeach. Investing could also easily be a crapshoot, because your entire life saving would still be reliant on someone who doesn’t know or care you.
I would say you ideally have enough for about a month expenses in cash. Then maybe have 2 more months expense in two different bank accounts(1 in each account). That way any one bank blocking an account for a flagged transaction is just a minor inconvenience. Same thing with credit cards, have 2 different ones so 1 getting blocked is just a minor inconvenience. Anything beyond that I would probably put in a tax advantaged investing account like a roth ira invested in mutual funds.
I wouldn’t be opposed to holding some portion of long term investments in a well established blockchain like bitcoin or monero but I would hardly call it a necessity for most people. They are effectively out of the reach of governments if they are setup and used correctly. But I wouldn’t expect most people to have the know how and motivation to set them up and use them that way. Government can’t tell bitcoin to freeze your account. They can tell that to your bank.
You did not demonstrate any of those examples were unjustified. they probably were
I do not expect the government to always behave, obviously because I am alive I have seen plenty of counterexamples.
However it’s beyond insane to suggest keeping my life savings in cash is even close to being less risky than using a bank. It’s ludicrous to suggest that. Do you understand that? It’s not subjective.
I never suggested keeping your life savings in cash. You brought that up. I ignored that bit as your financial decisions are your own. And they are just not relevant to the original point of a cashless society being bad.
The examples were never proven to be justified by the government or anyone else. In both cases the government essentially said freeze these people’s money and the banks did. No due process. No presumption of innocence.
Not allowing the government/banks the ability to freeze or seize your money because you did something they don’t approve of.
Not giving the government/big companies a log of how you spend your money.
I have never once heard of an innocent person’s assets being frozen. That’s a nuclear option that’s not often used. I’m certainly never keeping my assets in cash anyhow, as that’s fucking bonkers.
Just because you haven’t heard of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. It is a big world and everyone only sees their small piece of it.
The Canadian government did recently it with the trucker protests. The US did it with operation Choke Point starting in 2013. It targeted 20+ categories of merchants including porn stars, cable box descramblers, and money transfer networks.
The government routinely misuses the ‘justice’ system to wrongfully imprison people. Is it so hard to believe they will do the same thing with money? The government is not a neutral arbitrator of who is innocent. No one is innocent. But the government allows some people to be treated as more innocent than others.
Cashless forces everyone to cede control of their money to the government through the banks. Do you want the government to be able to get a list of everyone who purchases abortion pills? Can you see how such an ability can be easily abused by government? Assuming the government will always be friendly to you is a false assumption.
IIRC the protests in Canada were also super controversial, especially for the people who lived there at the time.
I will not get into that here, though.
If you aren’t keeping your life savings in cash and you wouldn’t trust digital currency, how would you propose your idea?
Even stuff like bitcoin would be susceptible to your concerns about government overeach. Investing could also easily be a crapshoot, because your entire life saving would still be reliant on someone who doesn’t know or care you.
What do you suggest?
I would say you ideally have enough for about a month expenses in cash. Then maybe have 2 more months expense in two different bank accounts(1 in each account). That way any one bank blocking an account for a flagged transaction is just a minor inconvenience. Same thing with credit cards, have 2 different ones so 1 getting blocked is just a minor inconvenience. Anything beyond that I would probably put in a tax advantaged investing account like a roth ira invested in mutual funds.
I wouldn’t be opposed to holding some portion of long term investments in a well established blockchain like bitcoin or monero but I would hardly call it a necessity for most people. They are effectively out of the reach of governments if they are setup and used correctly. But I wouldn’t expect most people to have the know how and motivation to set them up and use them that way. Government can’t tell bitcoin to freeze your account. They can tell that to your bank.
You did not demonstrate any of those examples were unjustified. they probably were
I do not expect the government to always behave, obviously because I am alive I have seen plenty of counterexamples.
However it’s beyond insane to suggest keeping my life savings in cash is even close to being less risky than using a bank. It’s ludicrous to suggest that. Do you understand that? It’s not subjective.
I never suggested keeping your life savings in cash. You brought that up. I ignored that bit as your financial decisions are your own. And they are just not relevant to the original point of a cashless society being bad.
If you aren’t suggesting keeping money out of banks then what are you suggesting?
The examples were never proven to be justified by the government or anyone else. In both cases the government essentially said freeze these people’s money and the banks did. No due process. No presumption of innocence.
That is the danger of a cashless society.
This almost never happens though. People have been robbed of their cash every single day for thousands of years.