I would say a lot of people (by my observation) have begun to fall back into having cash in their pockets to control their spending habits. So I guess this is the start of the Finance Sectors media machine cranking up to push everyone away from cash and back into using cards..

More debt servitude anyone!

Mythtified,

Conformity is the word. Apparently people want to experience the illusion of security.....

.....until government freezes your account because you are regarded a threat to national security for visiting ATS.

The Netherlands are not the only country transferring to this system but it's not to hard to imagine why we are so eager to abolish hard cash. Do you have any idea how much money is being made by electronically transferring cash between one bank and the other?

And how will uncle Joe pay you for washing his car on Saturday without the IRS taking their little slice of your labor?

Etc etc etc....

Coming straight out with the question if people would want to trade their freedom for security would be to suspicious so they are taking the long way round.........but eventually they will come round.

Peace

(En dan hebben we het nog niet eens over de chipknip gehad..... )

Yes, this is a very tragic development indeed. I have warned the people around me for many years that this was coming. Soon there will be a system in place where you can go from "normal person" to homeless bum with the push of a button by a private corporation. Nothing you can ever do about it. No way to prove how much "money" you owned before it "disappeared." If they want you out of the way you will be "blocked" or even "denied existence" electronically on all systems -- unable to live or simply not existing in the society any longer.

There used to be a time where money had value, because it was made of valuable materials. After that paper money was introduced with it's value backed up by gold to provide a secure system. Now, ever since the Federal Reserve System in the USA and many similar (privately owned!!!) systems worldwide are installed, the gold doesn't have to exist any longer to back up the value of money.

With electronic payment they are taking it one step further to the point where money doesn't even exist any more. Just the memory of it and some digitized data stored on systems you don't control. Mission accomplished.

And still I wonder why we let this happen to us...

Originally posted by RationalDespair
If they want you out of the way you will be "blocked" or even "denied existence" electronically on all systems -- unable to live or simply not existing in the society any longer.

Actually... that doesn't even sound that bad at all!
I wouldn't mind becoming part of a subculture with its own kind of money and its own kind of retail system; but instead of it being a criminal-sub-society sort of environment (that is also based on fear and control), I envision it to be a populated with people that base their interactions on mutual respect and principles of freedom...
Ah well... I must be dreaming...

Actually... that doesn't even sound that bad at all!
I wouldn't mind becoming part of a subculture with its own kind of money and its own kind of retail system; but instead of it being a criminal-sub-society sort of environment (that is also based on fear and control), I envision it to be a populated with people that base their interactions on mutual respect and principles of freedom...
Ah well... I must be dreaming...

Hmmm... never looked at it that way I guess that would be an ideal situation, but unfortunately crime will most likely rule in such a world...

I'm living in Denmark, and as far as I know, one of the only places not accepting anything but cards, is the "Citizen Service" (Borgerservice) where you go to renew your passport for example.

Which I personally believe is far more scary than a company doing it, anyway...

Also, to make it more secure, they'll require our fingerprints as well, to merge PIN and biometric security for purchases. That gets round the problem of the pesky peasants refusing to give their fingerprints to the authorities. Just design a system under which they cannot survive unless they do so.

I remember when Gordon Brown took the reins as PM, he made a long-winded speech, part of which was on technology and the cashless society. This has been planned for a long time and they are just introducing it all piece by piece, as to do so all at once would likely get their arses kicked out of office and have them hanging from the rafters.

Originally posted by operation mindcrime
Mythtified,

Conformity is the word. Apparently people want to experience the illusion of security.....

.....until government freezes your account because you are regarded a threat to national security for visiting ATS.

As long as banks and local goverments can seize funds, there will never be an end to cash money. Even now, there are people that have preferred local barters and local currencies over the use of bank cards.

Maybe when a true credit card, one that actually stores monetary credit directly on the card itself, such as this exists, then we'll see the end of paper cash. Until then, they'll have to make those plastic cards work as good as cash.

A cashless society will only drive the black markets into greater success, creating a great dichotomy between those who acquiesce to the banksters and their tyranny, and those who refuse to acquiesce, and will only embrace the black markets where other forms of currency will be used in order to purchase what is necessary. People today often view the black markets as being those markets that sell illegal products, such as illicit drugs, but I live in an area in a large metropolis in The United States where all sorts of products are sold on the black market, including fresh fruits and vegetables, clothing, wallets and jewelery, and many other items that are not illegal to sell.

Many of these black marketeers are operating in the black market because they either can not afford the licensing schemes that come with "legal markets", or they are illegal immigrants who do not qualify for the licensing schemes, or they are "tax evaders". Governments will only create more "tax evaders" by forcing a cashless society, and the battle lines will be clearly drawn. Who will win? Tyranny always stumbles. Complexity always creates unintended consequences or emergent behavior that nobody could reasonable predict. It is folly to complicate simple market paradigms. In the end, freedom will prevail, as governments keep insisting in perverting law, and turning law abiding citizens into "criminals". The dystopian futures often told in science fiction are unsustainable, and are this is why they are more prevalent in fiction than they are in reality.

While there will be many who will acquiesce, there always are, because complexity is unsustainable, there will be many who acquiesced who will feel the sting of unsustainable complexity, and where they first acquiesced, they will eventually rebel and join those who have all ready rebelled, and the fools who thought they could control the masses, will at some point discover that fools can not outwit a majority of angry people fed up with tyranny.