On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 12:15 PM, Daniel Davies <daniel.davies at gmail.com> wrote:
> the cashless society has already been implemented in some large-scale
> social experiments - basically the prison system, where lots of prisons use
> commissary cards and phone cards, to control what the prisoners are able to
> spend money on. What seems to happen is that people quickly create a
> numeraire consumption good (tinned mackerel, apparently) and/or start
> dealing in IOUs for settlement elsewhere.
>
> On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 4:12 AM, Marv Gandall <marvgand2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> There is much talk lately by bankers and mainstream economists about
>> implementing negative interest rates, where depositors pay rather than
>> receive interest in their accounts. The ostensible purpose is to discourage
>> saving and encourage consumer spending to revive the stagnant global
>> economy.
>>
>> The conundrum facing policymakers, however, is that any such move below
>> the “zero bound” would provoke mass withdrawals and the hoarding of cash
>> under mattresses.
>>
>> So the chief economist of the Bank of England and other advocates of
>> negative interest rates are proposing that coins and bills and be
>> eliminated and universally replaced by digital transactions over
>> smartphones and other electronic devices. Digital transactions are already
>> commonplace in Scandinavia and Africa.
>>
>> Critics like the pseudonymous blogger Don Quijones linked to below charge
>> that the unintended consequences of the accelerating move to a cashless
>> society make it possible for every transaction to be recorded, scrutinized,
>> and profitably exploited by banks, and for negative interest rates to be
>> imposed on depositors deprived of recourse to withdrawing cash.
>>
>> Quijones calls this potential misuse of the new technology a “tragedy”
>> and blames the “general public” for inadvertently becoming the “the
>> governments' and banks’ strongest ally in their War on Cash…As long as
>> people continue to abandon the use of cash, for the sake of a few minor
>> gains in convenience, the war on cash is already won.”
>>
>> However, the problem, as always, is not the development of the new
>> technology which arguably offers more than a few minor gains but whether it
>> is democratically controlled and regulated in the public interest. The
>> imposition of negative interest rates and the surveillance state are not
>> foregone conclusions.
>>
>>
>> http://wolfstreet.com/2015/11/07/first-they-came-for-the-pennies-in-the-war-on-cash/
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>>
>
>