It’s not that much of a leap to the government Controlling what you buy or sell, or even the amount of money you have in the bank.
Let’s see Mrs. Jones.. you want to buy more food than your allotment … or gee Mr. Smith the government has declined your transaction to buy that ammo.. to bad… sucks to be you..
Your money will simply be numbers on a ‘ledger’ that can manipulated at will by the powers that be to do whatever they want.
But hey, it’s not like people ever having to worry about the government doing that, right?
Cash is a positive representation of wealth. Mere possession of a currency unit warrants exchange of value.
Cashless is a negative representation of wealth - to wit: debt. Every “possession” of a currency unit MUST be tracked & documented as value owed to someone; exchanging value is changing who owes who what, a data chain accounting for all ownership of every bit of currency.
So is Greece, Haiti is already there. {snicker}
It won’t happen right away. Laws banning cash will be sold to the public as fighting terrorism and drug-smuggling. Banks will of course be on-board, as part of our crony-capitalist Federal Reserve system, they play along for their seat at the table. they will sell it as convenience and safety.
Then after that comes the IRS, EPA, FDA, etc... with rules indicating when, where and what individuals and businesses may make transactions.
The main reason is that banks want to be charge negative rates (charge you money for keeping it in the bank). The reason they are having trouble is that one can move the cash out. Thus restrictions in cash withdrawals.. etc.
So it is all a matter of greed.
Don’t fall for this BS.
I’ve been anticipating this for decades. Governments can barely wait, because it finally gives them total control at the finest possible level over everyone and everything. The advantages to the banks of course are equally obvious: they become indispensable crossroads for total economic control.
Oh,and remember, when cash is outlawed, only outlaws will have cash. Thus, in my fantasies, I’ve always pictured the new outlaw cash as being small-denomination gold coins minted in the Caribbean and that they would have the images of famous Mafia heads on their obverses: the higher the denomination, the more important and powerful the historical Mafia head. (I haven’t figured out whether Don Corleone or Tony Soprano would count since they’re fictional, and besides, Tony was head of the lowly New Jersey mob anyway, so he’d be lucky to make it on the dime.)
At any rate, I’ve wondered whether bartering would be outlawed too, you know, as part of the all-digital-money plutocracy. If so, then we digital peasants wouldn’t even be allowed to engage in practices such as chicken trading, practices utilized by our less-than-digital ancestor peasants from time immemorial.
Does that mean people will have to write more czechs?
Were going to have to have a cashless society as prices increase. How on Earth are you going to be able to grocery shop for a million dollars total price? It will be impossible as the numbers get to big and the money to thick to carry around. It will happen by necessity and not because we want or don’t want it to happen.