Confuzzed yet?

Recently read an email from one of my subscriptions about recent attempts to make our world a cashless society.

I run into problems with that and not for clandestine reasons. Practical ones actually. First one is the big one: we dont live in a 24/7 electric utopia. Power outages happen, sometimes frequently. When they do, well electronic money does not work, at all. Duh, right? You’d think the idjits proposing this mess would “get it”, but, well, yeah; idjits.

The second one is security. This is why I am a proponent of block-chain. Not cryptocurrency outright◇, though the two go hand in hand and one birthed the other in a sense. Block-chain is bottom up security system, not top down as we currently have in our electronic world. Passwords galore with exceedingly painful rules of alphanumerics, caps or no caps, and only certain special characters gives an illusion of security, but the fact remains, if someone can get into the backdoor of a server, they have access to ALL of its information. Blockchain eliminates that by needing two keys, both created by the user, NOT some entity behind a firewall. One is the public key, the other is the one that does all the magic and is held by the user. Keep that safe and all that your blockchain holds is safe. Hacking attempts are traceable and time stamped, all transactions are encrypted and time stamped and the more its used, the stronger it gets.

Until we can use blockchain to control our electronic ‘cash’, I want to keep cash as King. And I still want to be able to use cash for the reason first listed: not so reliable electric infrastructure.

Second off, if all transactions are truly electronic, and security is ‘sanctioned’ top down type like is currently in place, there is nothing in the world to stop the money centers from utilizing Negative interests to cover costs. And costs would go up for the simple reason of needing an army of programmers to defend against cyber attacks.

As it stands, most of my transactions (roughly 85%) are of an electronic nature. My credit union is 200 miles away and I deposit checks via image transfer. I take payments from card holders using either paypal or Square, and those go to my CU as well. My income from book selling is electronic. My classes I attend are payed for over internet, and I attend them over the same. Going full cashless wouldn’t be a stretch, but I just can’t see it working with our current world and its occasional glitches. Such as when Cincinnati went 4 days without power in 2008. Local mom and pops may have been the saving grace for many, allowing a credit based buy for locals. Write the purchase down in a ledger and when the power comes back, go pay for them. But box stores,,, yeah right.

But cash can be taken even if you have to show the checkout person how to operate a calculator.

Now, some of the ass-hats that really want to push this, say it will ‘eliminate crime’. Keep toking dude, its obvious you have zero clue about the real world. Its like outlawing guns. You only get MORE outlaws, not less guns. If cash goes away, the dealers will still keep shipping, and users will still buy: the only change would be in how. What that would be I can only surmise, and don’t have a care to at this point. And it may mean even more violent crime against property owners as criminals will steal material goods more, and likely be more desperate.

Of all the things going on, and face the fact, all of this IS a power grab in action, the PTB NOT passing the cashless aspect of the CARES act surprises me; somehow, they saw it as not workable.

◇ cryptocurrency can be the next leap, but not under the Time-price paradigm. With ‘fixed’ reserves, bitcoin won’t suffice as a monetary anchor, and many of the others are bandaided compromises. Currency anchors need to be difficult to produce, storable, and portable. They also need to be tangible in some form IMO: people like being able to hold a gold coin or see a barrel of oil. A thousand bitcoins on a thumbdrive looks the same as as a thumbdrive with none. (And why we are seeing the mess our world is in financially is due to there aren’t any anchors in place.)