Is aTurn Your Back philosophy workable?

[Vortex2]

I now despise our central and local government.

Is it conceivable that businesses and individuals could avoid the grasp of the inept politicians and their acolytes, to some degree?

Maybe via unconventional - but legal - import/export routes?

Or cash only business, who little/no digital footprint .. or encrypted/masked footprint?

I can imagine a secure web system supporting such a way of life.

[eatyourveg]

You wouldn't find enough interest.
Personally I find the move away from cash the most disturbing thing about modern life. Once all your money moves to total control by financial institutions, it's only a matter of time before it becomes useful as a 'punishment' tool. There will be no option but to do what you are told. Guess who will be doing the telling. It won't be you or me.

[adam2]

Sounds a bit like the dodgy tax avoiding outfit, the one with a major river named after them.
AFAIK they operate more or less legally but have successfully evaded most taxes and government controls.

[woodburner]

I think a secure web system is a pipe dream. Everything that exists is hackable by someone clever enough.

Cash is a way for funding crime. I doubt many drug dealers will accept cheques or have a card app on their phone used for white powder transactions.

[vtsnowedin]

There is an old joke that the street girls will not accept cheques because they keep coming back refused for insufficient fun.

[Little John]

If they completely eradicate of cash, as I think they may try to, people will just find other means to store their exchange value "off-grid" and we will end up with third-world-esque shadow economies

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

I now despise our central and local government.

What took you so long to come to that conclusion?

[emordnilap]

Personally I find the move away from cash the most disturbing thing about modern life. Once all your money moves to total control by financial institutions, it's only a matter of time before it becomes useful as a 'punishment' tool. There will be no option but to do what you are told. Guess who will be doing the telling. It won't be you or me.

This. Essentially, without hard cash people have no money. I know cash is only a token but digits on a screen is far far less. Power outages anyone?

Banks have been working towards this ever since ordinary people could get bank accounts. It was posh in the '80s for an ordinary Jane to have a bank account. Now there is no obligation to pay wages in cash. Financial institutions have your money 24/7 to do with exactly what they want.

If they completely eradicate of cash, as I think they may try to, people will just find other means to store their exchange value "off-grid" and we will end up with third-world-esque shadow economies

Yes.

[eatyourveg]

Cashless society, some pro's and con's.

https://www.thebalance.com/pros-and-con ... ty-4160702

I find this sort of thing naive. No real mention of the inevitable consequence of going cashless - a means of control over the citizenry. Religion and other means of mass population control will no longer be required.

[Paul Downey]

"I now despise our central and local government"

Back in 1971, in my first job, I was hauled before the Assistant County Surveyor (Traffic) for refusing to alter some projected traffic flows on a section of the proposed M54 in Staffordshire. In the office the talk was that the County Surveyor's father-in-law owned a farm on that stretch and if projected flows were high enough he could sell a few hundred acres for a sevice station. I told him it wasn't going to happen and so ended a possible glittering career in L.G.! Brian Cox his name was, I can still see the look on his face, in all his years in L.G. I don't think he had ever met any-one with any back-bone, but I had a first-class degree under my belt, very rare in provincial L.G.in the early '70s, could get a job anywhere, and didn't need to take it up the arse to work on his plantation. And everyone else on the staff? Well they were more than happy to work for a corrupt organisation 'cos it paid the mortgage and kept the"little woman" happy. They had all been bending over for so long that it had become second nature.The Puritan in me knew they were all born free men but in order to make a living they all felt they had to " go alone to get alone".

50 years ago I knew nothing of cognitive dissonance or the man who runs all our lives, Edward Bernays and back then I was sure I possessed free will but once you leave the plantation as all you runaway slaves know there are all sorts of amazing things to discover as a free man.

But then you all know it takes courage to think, right?

You will never find any-one to attest to the level of corruption in UK local government but then have you travelled much in Afica or S. America?

[kenneal - lagger]

Having worked in the Planning system as a freelance for over forty years I can attest to some corruption in the planning system and some resignation. For the individual applicant there can be some corruption; I have had clients in one local authority who were told by a planner that they wouldn't get their plans through unless they changed their advisor to the person who was giving them this advise! Eventually that planner was sacked.

But with the big applications there were all sorts of allegations of bungs and sprees being dished out. None were ever proven though. The biggest bugbear though was the ability of large organisations to get things through planning because of the threat that they could afford to splash out millions on consultants and drag appeals out for years, even going to the high court if necessary. Local authorities usually resigned in the face of that.

Nowadays though I have to sign a declaration that I am not employed by the local authority nor related to any one in the LA. If I am, which I am, I have to declare who I am related to and which department they work in. so there seems to have been a change to more openness and transparency.