The Push Towards a Cashless Controlled Society
Banks make billions each year in profits by being the centralized hub that money flows through. The banking services offered allow for money to move around. But some of these services cost more than others.
Having people work in a bank to process money and checks costs money. There are also ATM cash machines that cost money to power up and people to fill with cash. Having people use digital methods of payment like bank cards, credit cards or online bank payments costs less.
In an effort to reduce costs and make even more profits (as if they don't have enough already), banks in many Western countries have been shutting down branches and ATM machines.
Banks also want to have more control over the flow of money. Cash means the money goes out of the bank and into the various areas that people spend that money on. When everything is digital, the money never leaves the banking system, ever. A move to a cashless society is favored as that means all transactions will go through the banking system.
Gary Stevens/flickr, CC BY 2.0
yet, banks wont admit to this motive. According to them, they are doing this all for our own betterment and convenience, since they say customers are turning to digital services to make buying easier. After all, you don't need any bills or coins when you have a card that is reused over and over. It makes shopping life so much "easier". This is the attraction to go digital and leave cash behind.
When banks close down branches of cash machines, they are forcing customers to go digital even if they don't want to. Using cash becomes harder and harder to do, as people have to go out of their way to even get cash in the first place. Then a closed loop happens where only the digital users can manage to transact with ease through automated systems. The noose is tightened on the users of cash, forcing them to go cashless or bear with the pains to find a way to get cash from their banks.
Eventually as the process continues, people have to choose to use digital options as their banks restrict the availability of cash options. The powerful banks are nudging us to a digital cashless society, whether we want it or not. In order for one option to dominate, they make it harder to use another.
A feedback loop occurs between the introduction of a new method or technology. As they introduce the tech, and some people use it, they claim "more people are using it, therefore we don't need the old method (as much) anymore".
Self-checkouts at grocery stores is an example of promoting an alternative to cut costs of paying employees. When some people start using it, it justifies the claim that there is a "change in customer behavior" and the need for more of self-checkouts, and a reduction in checkout staff. This increases the amount of customers who use self-checkouts, and further perpetuates the feedback loop to go in the direction they want to go.
Banks and other financial institutions are doing the same thing with their cutbacks on cash-related services in order to foster the dominance of the cashless society and control grid through digital banking. The profit motive happily coincides with the agenda for surveillance and control over society's flow of money.
Credit card companies would love a cashless society as well. With no cash for payments, this means that more people will use their service which increases the volume of their services they charge for use. This is why cash needs to become an inconvenience for people to abandon it and seek refuge in the digital system. Shutting down branches and ATMs facilitates that goal.
No one "wanted" digital payments. There were not big public protests or speeches to make it happen. This push towards digital isn't coming from customers, but customers are accepting the influence and being pushed towards this new way of life. Cash was never a problem of inconvenience before, but that idea is being sold now.
The financial sector makes it seems like it's a natural change in a more digital world, but they are the ones making this change happen. They are engineering beliefs through ads and marketing to make us accept what they want. Now people think it's inconvenient, where cash should be replaced by digital, and it's all to help you. Financial institutions make people believe a cashless society is in their interest when it's mainly for the interest of the money changers.
Digital systems are convenient until they aren't. When there are credit card outages, people are stranded being unable to pay for gas, groceries or restaurant bills. Cash doesn't fail. It always works. Cash can't be surveiled and monitored remotely like a digital system of transactions can. Cash is unmonitored and off the grid.
This is why the digital system is preferred as it brings in the cashless control grid of their fees and surveillance. Governments want the cashless society too. Financial institutions team up with governments to try to "fight crime" and tax evasion. The authorities want to make sure all money is accounted for and everyone is paying their duties to the overlords.
Each step towards limiting the use or availability of cash is a step towards the cashless control grid. Then they can do like China, and limit your ability to use services in society or shut down your account if you are a dissident and step out of line.
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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Down here in Venezuela we have a forced cashless society at this point since the bills are worthless for day to day use except for public transport and cash only shops, for everything else you have to transfer money using the banks or pay using debit card and with the crappy internet connections and power outrages we have, its a mess and also the banks take a nice cut per transaction, some say its not that much but since most of the transactions in the country right now are made digitally, they are raking in mad money from fees.
Don't get me started on trying to get cash thought, if for some reason you have the bad luck of needing cash, the banks won't give it to you anymore because they sell it on the black market and the government does nothing about it, so if you want cash, you have to go to the black market and pay outrageous fees to get it, you end up paying anything from 150 to 300% fees, for example if you wanted 100$ you would need to transfer them 250$ just to get them, its insane...
Damn, that's bad. Banks are crooks, everywhere, but it seems their really bad in your country :/
Government owned banks! That's what happens when you allow the government to spread it's tentacles everywhere.
Ha ha! My dear you expressed what was in my mind. I have written on the same subject on my facebook posts. Cash transaction is the safest form of transaction which protect your identity. It also make us safe from the authoritarian governments.
Money is the most important thing in human society. We do every business to earn money. It is the source of the power. When banks and the governments will be able to make everything digital, they would have full control over the wealth of everyone. That will lead us to a state of slavery. There will be a society where opposition would be destroyed by simply stopping them to use money.
I think people should not be lazy. They should prefer cash transaction. They should not let banks and the governments to screw themselves. But common man is not aware of these dangers. He/she is happy to get some cashback after using his/her debit/credit card.
Yes, but convenience and the easy path is a basic unconscious motivator in life. Effort is less desired. It's a done deal pretty much. No stopping it unless people learn why it's a great hindrance to value the effort more.
The government (the bankers enforcement branch) has went out of their way to dis-incentivize the use of cash, from confiscations over certain amounts, to the need to report over certain amounts. The I-10 corridor has many horror stories of cops confiscating cash from unsuspecting travelers and releasing them on their way, forcing them to come back and sue for their money back.
Then you look at the licenses they make the public get to transact in cash, some areas even requiring it for a yard sale or a kids lemonade stand. Not sure how even the most ignorant of citizens can still call this the land of the free.
In my opinion we are still free to a large and enviable extent, just much less free than - I think you'll agree - is rightly American.
The USA is not yet Switzerland, where physical notes are not legal tender and capital sitting in a bank account is taxed to incentivize spending. But the USA is also not the PRC, where banning cash is simply impossible b/c of the culture and the nature of the economy, even whilst there digital banking is almost indispensable in some commerce and all civic services. I would guess that the path the USA takes will be a little of these both. Without crypto, however, it would tend more towards the example of Switzerland, unless the American ethos of individual sovereignty and liberty over everything else drys up too.
Things can be worse for sure, and they can be better. More or less freedom isn't true freedom. We have work to do.
To be honest, I think the ideal of the absolute and total freedom of the individual is misguided and humanly and logically impossible. Each one of us would have to be God but only one could ever be omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient.
Was it Rousseau or Voltaire who remarked that liberty is the realization that you have responsibilities? I think popular understanding needs to work back to that conception of liberty-responsibility. There is a lot of work to do, for sure.
Yup, the "law" and total control, gotta get a permit to sell lemonade kids!
I could not have said it better. My research shows the same results on every point. I researched the cashless biometric ID system in India (AADHAAR) and made a warning video that fell on deaf ears. This type of enslavement system is our future.
Very well done article! The feedback loop you talked about is used in all sectors of our society as I am sure you know. Hopefully people will read your post and seriously think about it.
unfortunately, most people don't realize what is being done. They just go along with it :/ Thank you ;)
Where do cryptocurrencies figure in all this? It's not actual cash, yet it's not under the control of the banks. For the time being, we still need the banks to use cryptos, but if/when cryptos become mainstream we can bypass the banks. (Hopefully)
Yup, hopefully that happens. Probably in time, just gotta wait ;)
Hi @krnel, In Venezuela they are applying this for years, little by little, they have severed the ability of the individual to decide, not only with cash but also in all other basic services.
They apply it progressively and with manipulation, so that in the end "some" believe that they really need or deserve what is happening. It's like saying: "I break your legs, but then I offer you crutches".
The ambition to power is pure evil!
Thanks for the reflection. Blessings.
There is more to this, I think. Forcing people to pay with cards and what not allows the things that we buy to be kept track of and that worries me for a number of reasons. It turns users into a product that can be sold because marketers would pay dearly for that kind of data and so would authoritarian governments who could use that information to discredit anyone who stands against them.
Yes, know who like what, where, and you can target them more to buy the things you know they want to buy.
Add in the role of government in this move. Simple example: Here in Australia, Medicare used to pay refunds in cash. Now they only use bank transfer.
The government also are in the process of banning cash payments over $10,000. They will progressively increase that - see India remove large denomination bills. As soon as things are cashless they can tax more of what money moves.
Yeha, it's nuts how we are being channeled into more control over our lives, less freedom :/
Thanks for your deep insight @krnel.
I think getting a TenX card may be the wise choice here. Naturally speaking society will go digital and "into the cloud". A long term goal humans share is to work together as "one". Unfortunately our morals and values fall short of Gods plan.
Let's all just tacitly agree as usual... (face in palms).
Can crypto be hijacked and used for this purpose?
It can, without being hijacked. All the ledgers have the info public. The only thing needed is identity on the chain to tie to a real person to track them. Consensus would be needed to change the chain.