It would be far better, from my perspective, to get rid of a money economy altogether, of course, but short of that just be warned. If you allow the masters of money to get rid of cash you are setting up a seamless means for those in power to not only monitor ever more closely what you do, but to also intimidate you should you happen to piss them off. Not to mention the fact that it also closes the circle on increasing the probability of their ability to charge you for every transaction you make. After all, once you have no other option other than some card, or app, or other abstract mechanism, what could you do about increased fee charges, or whatever other sort of abuse they might decide to place upon you?
In fact, how long might it take for them to decide that having an authorization chip, somewhere on or in, your person, might be predicated on more than what they might call "good credit?" What euphemism might they come up for other undesirable traits (in their view of course)? "Disruptive?" "Subversive?" ...I think you get the idea. And though you might think it a bit excessive, or conspiratorial, now, consider how possible you would have thought recent drug price increases (a vastly more singularly controlled market now) would have been a decade or two ago (three or four hundred percent? Seriously?)
Banks, governments, credit card companies and fintech evangelists all want us to believe a cashless future is inevitable and good. But this isn't a frictionless utopia says Brett Scott, and it's time to fight back
19th August 2016
Illustrations by Scott Garrett
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