in one 2017 prediction, I wrote:And more financialisation: India is having a huge push to get people off cash and into using banks.
Visa now bribing* small food outlets to go cashless in the states:
(July 12, 2017) Visa will be awarding up to $500,000 to 50 eligible US-based small business food service owners who commit to joining the 100% cashless quest.
Last edited by emordnilap on 01 Aug 2017, 13:10, edited 1 time in total.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
Banks would love to go cashless in order to dump staff and get their hands on 100% of peoples' money all of the time.
They should be careful what they wish for, for a couple of obvious reasons.
In the case of power disruptions, people will go back to cash.
They'll lose out big time on the drugs trade.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
It's the government who would love everyone to go cashless as they would have complete control over us and could tax us all automatically to what ever extent they wanted. Moneyweek and Capital and Conflict have been warning against this for a couple of years and advocating that we all buy Bitcoin to hedge against the upcoming crash.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but surely if there was a massive crash Bitcoin would be worthless as it would be very difficult to go out and buy the essentials like food with it. I see Bitcoin as part of the financial bubble; something which will evaporate in the catastrophic times ahead.
The main merit of bitcoin is that the government cant print more of it. Possibly useful if sterling devalued or inflated away.
But as you point out no good for a hard crash as it is reliant on the continuing availability of electricity and internet service.
Just a thought on importing images. Can you import them through a site like Tinypic.com where you can set the size at Bulletin Board sizing so that the page width doesn't increase. It's a bit annoying to have to scroll across the rest of the posts to read them when it's so easy to set the image to the correct size.
kenneal - lagger wrote:Just a thought on importing images. Can you import them through a site like Tinypic.com where you can set the size at Bulletin Board sizing so that the page width doesn't increase. It's a bit annoying to have to scroll across the rest of the posts to read them when it's so easy to set the image to the correct size.
Sorry. I'd forgotten about the tinypic option.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
The figures illustrate a growing trend for card payments instead of cash and cheques, buoyed by contactless technology. They also underscore an alarming rate of growth for borrowing at a time when consumers are squeezed by rising inflation and a slower pace of wage growth.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
If everyone goes plastic and nothing goes wrong, people will accept it because they have enough shit going on their lives to worry about it. But, if things go wrong and the banking system breaks down, along with plastic money, then all hell will break loose and ad-hoc alternative physical units of exchange will pop up all over the place.
Indeed, in some parts of the country, where ducking and diving is the inescapable norm if one wants to get by, a lot of places only accept cash. If everything goes plastic, even if nothing goes wrong, these places will be at the vanguard of those alternatives.
It'll be very interesting to watch the places that only accept cash, once cash is completely removed.
Getting rid of cash is the ultimate in milking every last asset from Josephine Soap; she will effectively have no money, only credit. It's a war that's been waged for a long time; the 1% have almost won.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
An obvious one would be a local currency backed by physical gold. Ironically, payments could even be cashless in the sense of a mobile app where people make a payment to someone on a database that is shared by all of the participants in the local currency. Thus, everyone's accounts are updated in real time on that database.
Once again, socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor.
The shift from cash towards digital transactions is being spearheaded by Bill Gates and US financial corporations who will profit from the mark up on digital payments.
Bill Gates has the backing of some heavy hitters: the big banks and likes of PayPal, Citi, Visa and Mastercard all smell huge profits in this.
Washington and its unelected oligarchs like Bill Gates regard ‘development’ as a way to further US interests globally
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
