As
Greece moves closer to becoming a cashless society, it is clear that
the country’s attitude towards cash is reckless and dangerous. The
supposed convenience of switching to a cash-free system comes with a
great deal of risk, including needless overreach by the state.
by
Michael Nevradakis
Part
1
Day by day,
we’re moving towards a brave new world where every transaction is
tracked, every purchase is recorded, the habits and preferences of
everyone noted and analyzed. What I am describing is the “cashless
society,” where plastic and electronic money are king, while
banknotes and coins are abolished.
“Progress”
is, after all, deemed to be a great thing. In a recent discussion, I
observed on an online message board regarding gentrification in my
former neighborhood of residence in Queens, New York, the closure of
yet another longtime local business was met by one user with a
virtual shrug: “Who needs stores when you have Amazon?”
This last
quote is, of course, indicative of the brick-and-mortar store, at
least in its familiar form. In December 2016, Amazon launched a
checkout-free convenience store in Seattle—largely free of
employees, but also free of cash transactions, as purchases are
automatically charged to one’s Amazon account. “Progress” is
therefore cast as the abolition of currency, and the elimination of
even more jobs, all in the name of technological progress and the
“convenience” of saving a few minutes of waiting at the checkout
counter.
Still insist
on being old-fashioned and stuck behind the times, preferring to
visit brick-and-mortar stores and paying in cash? You may very well
be a terrorist! Pay for your coffee or your visit to an internet cafe
with cash? Potential terrorist, according to the FBI. Indeed,
insisting on paying with cash is, according to the United States
Department of Homeland Security, “suspicious and weird.”
The European
Union, ever a force for positive change and progress, also seems to
agree. The non-elected European Commission’s “Inception Impact
Assessment” warns that the anonymity of cash transactions
facilitates “money laundering” and “terrorist financing
activities.” This point of view is shared by such economists as the
thoroughly discredited proponent of austerity Kenneth Rogoff,
Lawrence Summer (a famed deregulator, as well as eulogizer of the
“godfather” of austerity Milton Friedman), and supposed
anti-austerity crusader Joseph Stiglitz, who told fawning
participants at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year
that the United States should do away with all currency.
Logically,
of course, the next step is to punish law-abiding citizens for the
actions of a very small criminal population and for the failures of
law enforcement to curb such activities. The EU plans to accomplish
this through the exploration of upper limits on cash payments, while
it has already taken the step of abolishing the 500-euro banknote.
The
International Monetary Fund (IMF), which day after day is busy
“saving” economically suffering countries such as Greece, also
happens to agree with this brave new worldview. In a working paper
titled “The Macroeconomics of De-Cashing,” which the IMF claims
does not necessarily represent its official views, the fund
nevertheless provides a blueprint with which governments around the
world could begin to phase out cash. This process would commence with
“initial and largely uncontested steps” (such as the phasing out
of large-denomination bills or the placement of upper limits on cash
transactions). This process would then be furthered largely by the
private sector, providing cashless payment options for people’s
“convenience,” rather than risk popular objections to policy-led
decashing. The IMF, which certainly has a sterling track record of
sticking up for the poor and vulnerable in society, comforts us by
saying that these policies should be implemented in ways that would
augment “economic and social benefits.”
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