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Comment by po8tin | Hacker News Reader

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Don't the poor rely on cash far more than the wealthy these days?

Absolutely, especially homeless people. It's hard (impossible?) to have a bank account if you don't have an address.

Yes because they don’t trust the wealthy’s institutions. For good reason; they’re irretrievably corrupt and self serving tribal bubbles.

In what why? undeclared work?

Yeah but capitalism isn't going away, it's just transitioning into full surveillance capitalism.

Oh please. This is entirely about making things fair by cutting down on people, cheating the tax code. As much as people hate taxes, they are essential for a society to function… it is essentially your way of buying into the privilege of living in a nice society.

I agree, though any unlawful business will become much harder with all transactions being visible to law enforcement.

Which is fine as long as desirable business remains lawful... Until the government decides they don't like something that we do actually want.

We haven't had capitalism for a long time, markets are much to controlled and regulated to fit any reasonable definition.

Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.

There is nothing capitalistic in surveillance, there is nothing capitalistic about our regulated market.

These are the hallmarks of a socialist regime - and, surprise!, you live in one.

It's funny, because cash transactions are definitely more common among poorer people. Also, using (even more) imaginary money benefits banks, ultra wealthy, and governments not regular people. Even among the criminals laundering money, the influential and wealthy ones (i.e, the ones these laws should stop) will have little problem adapting. The influence these types of laws stop is that of regular citizens.

Nonsense - it stops criminals and tax evaders from doing the things that they do to undermine society.

I am 100% certain that you can evade taxes, and do crime without cash. Even movies have criminals do wire transfers. It is hard to have, say, negative interest rates though.

>Even movies have criminals do wire transfers.

And movies are famously accurate portrayals of things right?

It's extremely difficult to do lot's of profitable crime without cash. When the IRS sees large transactions routinely coming in, they're going to ask WTF you do for a living, and eventually want some evidence of that. Forensic accounting is VERY powerful.

Also your bank. No one working in a bank wants to go to prison; this makes it very expensive to get bank workers to co-operate.

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