Cashless society, forced banking, and the War on Cash

My data was breached from a company who I did not even know existed. When I asked them which of my financial institutions gave them my data, they ignored the request.

Attorney General: not our problem. Get a lawyer.
CFPB ← neutered by the GOP

There is zero consumer protection in the US for this scenario.

Indeed I cannot protect myself by pulling my money from the offending bank/CU because there is no law requiring the 3rd party to tell me where they got my data. And apparently no law requiring the company working for me to give me a breach notice if the breach notice came directly from the 3rd party who I have no contract with.

Interesting trivia along these lines: credit bureaus (and only credit bureaus) are required by law to tell consumers the source of their information. But they simply ignore this law because there is no statutory penalty for violating it. This is why your credit report lists your past addresses and other people tied to those addresses without stating the source of the info.

This is just to give an idea of the privacy shitshow with US banks. To have confidence in US banks is to be ignorant. It’s a good reason to shrink your banking footprint.

The CFPB has always been underpowered & under resourced. I reported malpractice by the finance industry many times and they could never fix a single problem while banks and CUs got away with murder in broad daylight. But it’s still good to have a watchdog around even if it’s toothless. If anything just to collect and publicize abuses, and advise consumers.

Now the Emperor of DOGE (Elon) is putting that toothless (yet mildly helpful) dog down.

The cherry on top: data brokers can keep selling your social security number, says new CFPB chief. This timing seems strategic. Recall that Trump overturned Obama’s policy that required ISPs to obtain consumer’s consent before selling their private data. I see a pattern.

Do you still want to participate in a banking system that exploits consumers? Consider these actions:

1. Draw down your bank balances by mostly cashing out. Keep the balance low.
2. Ask employers to pay you by cash or paper check.
3. Cash the payroll check at the issuing bank rather than deposit it. Bypass your bank. (Note that some Casinos give perks for cashing payroll checks in their establishment)
4. Stop using billpay, which enables an intermediary to collect more data on you (of course, because you have no protection from data abuses). Send paper checks in the mail with your own postage stamps. Unlike billpay intermediaries, USPS will not peek inside the envelope and pawn your data.
5. Switch to a bank or CU that is not a KYC overachiever (this may be impossible -- most banks demand more data on you than legally required)
6. Paycheck too big for this? You’re overemployed. Switch to part-time and quit buying silly tech garbage. Instead, pull your tech out of the dumpers, hack it and liberate it.

It used to be unlawful for anyone to turn right at a red traffic light. Cyclists broke that law so frequently that lawmakers decided to exempt cyclists from the restriction. And rightfully so.

Of course our adversaries (those who refuse cash) are leveraging the same effect. Merchants and organisations are refusing cash even in situations where they have a legal obligation to accept cash. They are getting away with it because pushover consumers simply pay electronically when given no other option. Because they just want to get on with their day. These pushover consumers are failing in their moral duty to hold oppressors to account. This tyranny of convenience is so widespread that everything is being setup for lawmakers to easily remove the cash acceptance obligation. They will justify it by pointing out lack of challenges or problems manifesting from unlawful anti-cash actions.

It’s because of defeatism. Most people I speak to believe cash will not prevail, so why fight it? That’s the widespread thought pattern.

How many debtors struggle to pay their bills when they can simply insist on cash payment? Most creditors are not calling the bluff because /they/ are too lazy to setup a cash register. People should be exploiting this. It’s a rare opportunity to put up a moral fight and also profit (in the form of an interest-free loan, effectively, because the money is still owed).

This is not just speculation. It’s working for me. But 1 person’s perpetual debt is not enough for a creditor to justify buying a cash register. There needs to be a critical mass of people doing this to reverse the forced-banking direction.

Warning about some regions, like Germany

An interesting case emerged in Germany whereby all residents in the country are required to pay radio fees (comparable to BBC fees in the UK). The radio authority refuses cash, which is obviously a reckless policy because in effect it imposes forced-banking on everyone. It was challenged by a couple Germans and they won.

What’s noteworthy here in addition to the win is that they paid their radio fees as cash into an escrow account. It’s unclear how necessary it was, but it was a gesture to ensure that their opponent could not claim that they were just looking for an excuse to not pay. So the take-away is that in some countries (certainly not all) freedom fighters should consider whether the escrow account is needed.

Is it civil disobedience?

Normally civil disobedience is a form of protest that entails breaking a bad law. But this is a bizarre scenario where the establishment is actually breaking the law by refusing cash. Insisting on paying in cash is our right (of course, lawfullness depends on region and also circumstances). Feels like civil disobedience but in any case it’s safer than that because a court has an obligation to take your side.

The linked article covers Sweden and Norway’s rethink. The spolier below is the full article covering Dutch banks.

full article on the Dutch banks story

Banks advising people to keep cash at home as “geopolitical threats” worsen
WEDNESDAY, 11 DECEMBER 2024 - 13:40

Dutch banks are going to advise consumers to keep cash at home because of the increase in geopolitical tension in the world, said a spokesperson of the Netherlands Association of Banks (NVB). It will be the first time that the banks give this advice.

The bank association is going to discuss this after the Christmas break with the Maatschappelijk Overleg Betalingsverkeer (MOB). Social organizations, such as elderly organizations and the Consumers' Association, but also the Dutch Payments Association, and interest groups, such as Koninklijke Horeca Nederland and MKB-Nederland, work together in this.

“We are giving integral advice about how you can have your financial affairs in order if there are problems with payment structures. This can be about cash money, the denominations needed, and how much that should be. But also about keeping an extra bank account or credit card,” said the NVB spokesperson to ANP.

Minister of Defense Ruben Brekelmans said on WNL op Zondag that the Netherlands should prepare for all possible war scenarios due to the threat from Russia. He also advised people to have cash at home.

The NVB does know whether people have already withdrawn money from their savings. “We have no view of this. But if everyone withdraws some money from their savings account, you will not immediately see it come back in huge numbers," said the spokesperson.

He emphasized that banks are very well prepared for all kinds of threats like cyber attacks, which means that customers' savings are always safe. "Cyber ​​resilience has been a top priority for banks for years. Banks inform each other about incidents, analyze them jointly, and share effective countermeasures," the spokesperson underlines.

The advice of the Maatschappelijk Overleg Betalingsverkeer is expected to be published in the first quarter. A specific date has not been announced for this as of yet.

The Dutch Association of Insurers reacted skeptically to the advice to keep cash on hand. It can be difficult to prove the amount of cash that was actually in the home at the time of the burglary, which can make it more complicated to submit a damage claim, a spokesperson for the insurance association said.

Compensation for stolen cash usually varies between 250 and 500 euros, depending on the insurer, she said. “If you have large sums of money in your home, this can lead to distress in the event of a burglary.”

The association also warns that the risk of a break-in increases when burglars know that there is a significant amount of cash at the location.

“Cash in the house is covered by your home contents insurance in principle, but there are limitations,” said a spokesperson for the insurance association. She said people should review the terms of their insurance policy to familiarize themselves with coverage for stolen cash.

Reporting by ANP

Indeed it is absolutely foolish for people to make themselves 100% cashless, needlessly exposing themselves to the vulnerabilities of being helpless when electronic payments fail. The advice from Dutch banks is inspired by Putin’s war, but we should be smarter yet, and realise there are many other peacetime situations as well where you are fucked if the bank has nannying power to control your money (e.g. recall what happened to Wikileaks; and recall the last time your bank card just spontaneously quit working unexpectedly).

The advice of the article does not go far enough. Of course you should have a stash of banknotes. But that’s not enough because merely having the cash does nothing to fix the dismantling of our cash infrastructure. Suggestion: for 4+ months straight, pay for everything with cash, including utility bills, mortgage, etc. Suppliers who never receive cash payments are dropping cash acceptance. They need to be made aware that cash feeds them -- make the metrics proper. It’s also important for both payer and payee to become aware of payment incompatibilities and injustices. Payees need to know they have cash payers. And cash payers need to become informed of which suppliers are subjecting everyone to forced-banking.

(BTW, I discovered the Dutch bank article was in Cloudflare and has no free-world reports; so instead the full text was nested in the post and the link goes to the Scandinavia story)

All banks are shit but suppose you have a bank that is insideously over-achieving their KYC “compliance¹” and for whatever reason you cannot switch (likely because all the other options are too repugnant). One small thing you can do for every document they demand (id card, utility bill, bank statement, etc) is to fatten the storage footprint of that file as much as possible while simultaneously reducing the quality to barely legible.

I start with a cover letter (“Dear Bank X, a copy of my ID card is attached”). This is not necessary but adding a page really amplifies the filesize. Let’s assume you have a 2 page PDF to start (which is black and white in my case).

Tools needed:

• GhostScript
• tiff2pdf
• ImageMagick
• exiftool

¹ scare quotes used because they are far exceeding their KYC expectations well beyond compliance. They are “taking the piss” because there are no consequences for them when their overcollection hits you harder in data breeches.

convert PDF to fax TIFF

$ gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=tiffg3 -r204x196 -sPAPERSIZE="$paperform" -dFIXEDMEDIA -sOutputFile=fax_format.tiff "$src_pdf"

Replace $paperform with either “A4” or “letter”, depending on where you are. And replace $src_pdf with your input filename.

This command actually has a practical use if you ever send a fax because the fax_format.tiff file is in the group 3 fax format so you can see an accurate representation of what the doc will actually look like on the receiving end without having to just hope that it is not downgraded too much. The significant change is to get it down to ~200 dpi. It can be surprising how decent fax quality is if you start with a good scan and use a good dither algorithm.

convert the TIFF back to PDF

$ tiff2pdf fax_format.tiff im_input.pdf

The output actually shrinks in that step because the PDF contents get compressed. But we do this because when ImageMagick processes a PDF source and produces a PDF target, it’s naturally extremely bloated for some reason. ImageMagick is just terrible with PDFs but this is to our benefit in this case. Add a few key options to really bloat the shit out of it:

bloat it out

$ convert im_input.pdf -quality 100 -colorspace CMYK -resample 600x600 fuck_KYC_assholes.pdf

This triples the number of pixels but it’s still bounded by the A4 or US Letter geometry. It converts the bilevel doc to color. In my test a 38k file grew to 26mb!

im_input.pdf → 38kb
fuck_KYC_assholes.pdf → 26mb

The quality takes a huge hit in this step. I have no idea why. The doc is like 715 times bigger and much worse quality, but the quality is still just barely good enough to be accepted as long as it’s not judged by an asshole with a reject button.

Of course YMMV.. might need some tuning if your bank has a filesize limit you need to target. The beauty of this is that since banks are like cops now, they probably treat these KYC files with forensic care. I don’t imagine that if they had excessively bloated files that they would dare risk reducing the quality by further processing in an effort to reduce the size.

cover your tracks

$ exiftool -all= fuck_KYC_assholes.pdf

That final step sanitises some or all of the metadata (e.g. removes Producer: …imagemagick.…). Of course there is an opportunity to tell them what you think in the metadata as well.

(optional) express yourself in the metadata

$ exiftool -author='(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻' -creator='┌∩┐(◣_◢)┌∩┐' fuck_KYC_assholes.pdf

The author in this case is doing a table flip.

Or more constructive:

$ exiftool -Subject='Please stop financing fossil fuels and private prisons' fuck_KYC_assholes.pdf

(optional) embed a hidden file

Suppose you want to add files that are not rendered when the PDF is opened, either to express yourself further but in a less visible way or to bloat it out a little more in a way that’s easy to control. E.g. your file is 10mb under the size limit. Use dd to make a 10 meg file of random chars then add that to the PDF. Or add a manifesto to the PDF.

$ dd if=/dev/random of=/tmp/extra_bloat.raw count=1 bs=10000000
$ pdfattach fuck_KYC_assholes.pdf /tmp/extra_bloat.raw screw_them_harder.pdf

FYI, if they are clever and nibby they can use pdfdetach to see what you did. So choose the filename accordingly. The reason for /dev/random as opposed to /dev/zero is the random bits don’t compress. Perhaps a good file to attach is a Banking-on-Climate-Chaos-$year.pdf report.

2021: 12mb
2022: 8.2mb
2024: 21.8mb

The preview text is a mess -- I suggest visiting the link.

Great story!

The preview text is a mess -- I suggest visiting the link.

The elephant in the room is the injustice of banks mandating disclosure of phone numbers (thus excluding people without phones and people who have a healthy objection to sharing their phone number with businesses). Then the fact that phone numbers are used as human identifiers. That bank is likely vulnerable to theft with their reliance on phone numbers as a unique identifier.

I generally avoid credit cards but sometimes rare circumstances make checks or cash inconvenient. A contractor did some work for me. The contractor’s bill was essentially:

• $2500 if paying by credit card (actual result: I pay $2475, he receives <$2425)
• $2500 if paying by other means

It became stark how foolish that pricing is when I saw that I received $25 cash back. Most consumers are easily exploited as they foolishly think they are $25 richer -- without thinking about the big margin the MitM took. It means the contractor paid a fee of at least $25 but likely much more¹. Surely he would have profitted more if I paid by other means, like cash. Why didn’t the contractor offer a discount of ~$25—50 for paying cash? I know some do but it’s not as common as it should be.

The merchant agreement generally bans traders from surcharging credit cards (which govs tend to ignore when they accept credit card and add a surcharge). But there’s a loophole for everyone: the rules do not ban giving a discount for other forms of payment. It’s perfectly legit for a merchant to give a cash discount so long as up-front quoted prices match what is charged to cardholders. They should be doing this more.

When a consumer pays by credit card, it would be good for transparency & awareness to print on the receipt: “credit card fee of $75 paid by Bob’s Roofing”.

¹ ~1% is a fee cap in Europe but in the US there is no cap so fees are often in the 3—5% range. So the US contractor likely paid at least $75 in fees.

(edit) Would someone please ship some counterfeit money through there and get it confiscated, so the police can then be investigated for spending counterfeit money?

A Belgian woman told me she received a gift from a relative for €300 in cash. When she tried to deposit it into her bank account, the bank interrogated her over the source of the money, as if this one-time transaction is some kind of terror or money laundering.

In case no one is paying attention, it’s good to be aware of the extremes the #WarOnCash is evolving toward. Banks have become like police without training.. bullying people arbitrarily.

We are collectively like boiling frogs as cashless people are oblivious to what’s going on. Only cash users see the water boiling.

The article does not state how she paid and got caught, but this should serve as a situation that highlights the importance of cash preservation.

(update) prosecution seeks a 15 year sentence.

Invidious link

The EU guarantees most people a right to open a “basic”¹ bank account. Superficially that sounds good, but of course having a right to open a bank account implies that you can then be expected to have an account. It’s an enabler for the #warOnCash. The right to a bank account is a masquerade of freedom from which oppression manifests.

Anyway, you have to ask: do you really have a “right” to open a basic bank account if the procedure for opening the account is inherently exclusive? That is, if a bank only offers a basic account to people who are online, doesn’t a problem arise when this right to an account then leads to an assumption that everyone has an account?

Some banks take the requirement to offer basic accounts seriously by making the application a static PDF which can also be obtained on paper form. So the only thing you need is a pen (to open the account and presumably to use it). But it’s bizarre some banks put the application for their basic account exclusively in an interactive online format. Are offline people just getting “lucky” if a bank happens to offer a basic account application on paper?

¹ “basic” is not just common language here. It refers to a specific type of account that fulfills specific legal criteria.

The article is normally paywalled but I prefixed 12ft.io/ to it, which worked for me. Google supposedly quit caching websites but old caches are still reachable with 12ft.io.

The UK’s GDPR might make it hard for banks to use people’s purchase data to derive their alcohol & tobacco habits, so apparently banks have to rely on interviews. Still, it would be foolish to rely on the GDPR. There are also stories of banks looking at spending data to deny mortgages, which I would guess is happening in a place without privacy safeguards like the US.

I’ll quote the article here as well:

Homebuyers could be forced to provide detailed information about the amount of money they spend on alcohol each month to qualify for a new mortgage under a new clampdown on reckless lending.

In a sweeping review of the mortgage market published today, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) said lenders needed to be far more rigorous about their financial checks of potential borrowers.

It said lenders should delve deeper into homebuyers’ personal spending including the amount they spend on alcohol and tobacco.

Spending on shoes, clothes and childcare could also be assessed under a new, industry-wide “affordability test”.

At present, the FSA does not prescribe rules about assessing a consumers’ ability to repay a mortgage and practices vary from one lender to the next.

In its document, the City regulator said: “There is clearly a responsibility on all lenders to extend credit only where a consumer can afford it and, in our view, a robust assessment of both income and expenditure is key to ensuring affordable mortgages.

“We propose to require all lenders to assess the level of a consumer’s expenditure in determining the affordability of a mortgage product, to ensure that lending decisions are based on a consumer’s free disposable income.”

It conceded though that there were some flaws with its plan with consumers potentially underestimating their spend or “failing to incorporate past experiences into their budgeting”.

The new measures, which aim to stamp out risky lending that has been criticised for compounding the financial crisis and tipping hundreds of thousands of homebuyers into negative equity, also include a plan to ban self-certified mortgages, dubbed “liar’s loans”, and to stop lenders from exploiting consumers who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments.

It also proposed that the FSA should regulate mortgages for landlords for the first time.

Self-certification mortgages were aimed at self-employed people with irregular incomes. The mortgages, which did not require proof of income, accounted for one third of new loans in 2007.

Their proposed banning was first revealed in The Times last week.

But the FSA stopped short of ruling out “supersized mortgages” by introducing caps on loan-to-value, loan-to-income or debt-to-income multiples.

Such mortgages were typified by Northern Rock which, at the height of the housing boom, offered 125 per cent home loan deals.

Gordon Brown wrote in a newspaper article at the weekend that it was “critical we end reckless banking practices that have left so many people worried about their finances”.

Jon Pain, managing director of supervision at the FSA, said: “The mortgage market has seen extraordinary upheaval over the past 18 months and while it has worked well for the vast majority of borrowers, some have suffered great financial distress. We recognise that we need to bring about a step change in regulation.”

He said there had been a “mutual assumption by too many borrowers and lenders that the good times could not end.”

The new reforms, he said, would ensure firms “only lend to people who can afford to pay back the money”.

But mortgage experts questioned the ease of imposing some of the new measures and expressed concern about the possible impact on homebuyers.

Ray Boulger, mortgage expert at John Charcol, said the new affordability test could prove difficult to implement. “I think it will be very difficult in practice to go into too much detail,” he said.

Homebuyers, he said, often forget the detail of their spending. “They will remember the weekly shop but not the £3 they spend on a sandwich each day.”

Paul Broadhead, head of mortgage policy at the Building Societies Association, said he had “significant reservations about the possible unintended consequences of some of the ideas.”

He said: “We believe that home ownership is something that should be encouraged, and it is vital that lenders retain the flexibility to respond to the very individual financial circumstances of individual borrowers.”

He added that self-certification mortgages were suitable for a minority of people and that an outright ban was “not appropriate.”

The Council of Mortgage Lenders said it was “important that the principle of consumer responsibility is not lost in such a regulatory environment, as it is a basic tenet upon which transactions of all kinds between firms and consumers rely”.

The report said there was a “clear and non-controversial case” for banning self-certification mortgages, instead compelling lenders to insist that customers provide evidence of their income.

“Our analysis shows that self-cert borrowers take out larger loan amounts than borrowers with standard products and fall into arrears much more frequently. To address these issues we propose to require verification of income for all mortgage applications,” it said.

The loans have been vilified as a significant contributor to the banks’ toxic loans problem because some customers have lied about their income. Defaults on self-cert repayments have been at much higher rates than the industry average.

HBOS and Bradford & Bingley were among the biggest self-cert lenders. HBOS was sold to Lloyds TSB in a rescue deal in September last year and B&B collapsed and had to be partially nationalised.

The plan to bring mortgages for landlords into the FSA’s scope for the first time was necessary the regulator said because of the big part the industry had played in “fuelling property price appreciation”

The FSA said: “As well as being a general contributor, buy-to-let funding funding has particularly helped to inflate prices of certain property types and locations such as city centre apartments.

“The overall impact on house prices inevitably has implications for our interest in the sustainability of the mortgage market.”

The market for buy-to-let mortgages has grown rapidly. Gross advances grew from £3.1 billion in 1999 to £44.6 billion in 2007.

The paper has been put out for consultation until early next year with a “feedback statement” to be published in March.

A central bank digital currency (CBDC) is a form of digital currency issued by a country's central bank. It is similar to cryptocurrencies, except that its value is fixed by the central bank and is equivalent to the country's fiat* currency.

Many countries are developing CBDCs, and some have even implemented them. Because so many countries are researching ways to transition to digital currencies, it's important to understand what CBDCs are and what they mean for society.

*Most modern paper currencies are fiat currencies [for details here]

Note: I do not agree with how CBDCs are portrayed here, because it is actually the institutional point of view. Still, I think this article makes it easy to get a first glance on this topic.

from the article:

They are not allowed to avoid this amount by making several smaller payments in banknotes.

What does that mean for salaries? Every salary payment can be seen as a part of an annual income. I would demand more frequent pay days just to get some freedom back -- to be free from forced banking. Of course I would say the paychecks are not part of a whole payment but each are a whole payment for a specific amount of labor rendered.

#warOnCash

The EU has quietly imposed cash limits EU-wide:

• €3k limit on anonymous payments
• €10k limit regardless (link which also lists state-by-state limits).

From the jailed¹ article:

An EU-wide maximum limit of €10 000 is set for cash payments, which will make it harder for criminals to launder dirty money.

It will also strip dignity and autonomy from non-criminal adults, you nannying assholes!

In addition, according to the provisional agreement, obliged entities will need to identify and verify the identity of a person who carries out an occasional transaction in cash between €3 000 and €10 000.

The hunt for “money launderers” and “terrorists” is not likely meaningfully facilitated by depriving the privacy of people involved in small €3k transactions. It’s a bogus excuse for empowering a police surveillance state. It’s a shame how quietly this apparently happened. No news or chatter about it.

¹ the EU’s own website is an exclusive privacy-abusing Cloudflare site inaccessible several demographics of people. Sad that we need to rely on the website of a US library to get equitable access to official EU communication.

update

---

The Pirate party’s reaction is spot on. They also point out that cryptocurrency is affected. Which in the end amounts to forced banking.

#warOnCash

In a Dutch bar I ordered a few samples (which have no cost and were somewhat generous in size) and drank part way through them all. Then I ordered a full sized beer. I continued working on the samples.

Bartender asked if I wanted to pay now or start a tab. I asked if they accept cash. It feels silly to ask and I almost didn’t ask because the answer is always “yes”, of course. So I was shocked when the bartender said no.

WTF? Surely there would be enough customers who are wise enough to foresee possible consequences of having electronic records of alcohol consumption. It can only work against you, e.g. when the bank, data brokers, and insurance companies see an opportunity to collude and optimise your your insurance premiums using that info.

The GDPR would theoretically protect Europeans from that but bars are open to tourists -- non-Europeans with non-European bank accounts. I mentioned that to the bartender, who said “what’s the GDPR?” Wow. I was shocked again.

I made it clear that electronic payment doesn’t work for me (most especially when alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana are involved). I said: can someone pay with their own account and take my cash? Bartender asked if I have exact change. No, I didn’t but I got close enough that the bartender was able to use the tip jar to give me change.

I later noticed that the menu book (1st page after the cover) says “cash not accepted”. But I initially missed that because I ordered off the posted board. And there’s no guarantee anyway that a customer would see the first page. I often flip straight to the last page to look for drinks. When I left the bar I had a look at the entrance and door. There was no cash-hostile signage like some other shops have.

Questions for Dutch folks:

If the bar had been less reasonable, less flexible, how else might this have played out? I did not sip from the full beer before the conversation, so I suppose the bar could have just treated it like an erroneous beer pour and pour it down the drain.

Suppose I had not thought to ask if cash was accepted. What if I drank the beer and then my cash were refused with both sides standing their ground? There is a practical problem here not just a legal one. The hundreds worth of banknotes in my pocket would be worthless. So would it be no different than the situation of a deadbeat debtor who simply does not pay? Would I be cited and fined? Would I have the option to leave the bar with an invoice to pay by bank transfer, perhaps using the post office? Would I have to leave collateral such as an ID card while running the errand? And what if it’s Sunday or after hours of the post office?

What about the case where someone enters with bank card(s) that are in a broken state, unknown to the card holder? I’ve been in grocery store lines where a customer tries all their cards. Often the last card they try works but I’ve seen a case where someone had to leave all their groceries. I’ve been in situations where a card in good standing is refused for being foreign (despite the rules of the card network). Are these situations legally any different than someone who simply has no cards to pay with?

There is a very wise “EU Recommendation” that cash be accepted on payments towards debts specifically (not necessarily points of sale). I believe if you have a bar/restaurant tab that would be a /debt/, not a /point of sale/. But what are EU recommendations good for? Is it just to guide lawmakers, or is there some courtroom value when national policy deviates from the recommendation?

FWIW, this thread is where I learned that cash acceptance is optional in Netherlands. The original post was censored but that cross-post mirrors it.

In my cash-only experiment, it has been interesting to experience the pathetic responses where the merchant/creditor/gov is unlawfully cashless. They always say things like “don’t you have a friend who can pay for you?” Funnily enough, this is what you’ll hear from utility companies and gov offices. I’m like: seriously? Is that your official policy -- to ask debtors to ask their friends to proxy payments? Last time I checked the law did not require me to have a friend.

I generally respond to that with: “will you be my friend?” Utility companies and gov offices always refuse, but staff at cashless restaurants will often pay your tab from their personal card. It’s important to carry exact change in this case.

This could serve as a practical hack if you cannot pay a bill for any reason, like being poor. Instead of disclosing financial problems, offer cash as a bluff. If they do not accept cash, well that’s their fault and their problem. It can be a great delay tactic. But of course you should be able to pony up the cash if they call your bluff, so it’s a good idea to scope it out a bit first.

It seems almost no one is noticing how cash is being quietly killed off. Once it’s gone, your banks will have absurd amounts of power over you.

Stop being a contributor to the tyranny of convenience as described by Tim Wu, and (as a test) try paying everything in cash. Simulate for as long as you can the life of an unbanked person. And if you’re an activist, of course fight back in situations where cash is denied.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/13133455

It used to be that you could insert a coin into a washing machine and it would simply work. Now some Danish and German apartment owners have decided it’s a good idea to remove the cash payment option. So you have to visit a website and top-up your laundry account before using the laundry room.

Is this wise?

Points of failure with traditional coin-fed systems:

1. your coin gets stuck
2. you don’t have the right denomination of coins

Points of failure with this KYC cashless gung-ho digital transformation system:

1. your internet service goes down
2. the internet service of the laundry room goes down
3. the website is incompatible with your browser
4. the website forces 3rd party JavaScript that’s either broken or you don’t trust it
5. you cannot (or will not) solve CAPTCHA
6. the website rejects your IP address because it is a shared IP
7. the payment processor rejects your IP address because it is a shared IP
8. the bank rejects your IP address because it is a shared IP
9. the payment processor is Paypal and you do not want to share sensitive financial data with 600 corporations
10. the accepted payment forms do not match your payment cards
11. the accepted payment form matches, but your card is still rejected anyway for one of many undisclosed reasons:
    • your card is on the same network but foreign cards are refused
    • the payment processor does not like your IP address
    • the copy of your ID doc on file with the bank expired, and the bank’s way of telling you is to freeze your card
    • it’s one of these new online-only bank cards with no CVV code printed on the card so to get your CVV code you must install their app from Google’s Playstore (this expands into 20+ more points of failure)
12. your bank account is literally below the top-up minimum because you only have cash and your cashless bank does not accept cash deposits; so you cannot do laundry until you get a paycheck or arrange for an electronic transfer from a foreign bank at the cost of an extortionate exchange rate
13. you cannot open a bank account because Danish banks refuse to serve people who do not yet have their CPR number (a process that takes at least 1 month).
14. you are unbanked because of one of 24 reasons that Bruce Schneier does not know about
15. the internet works when you start the wash load, but fails sometime during the program so you cannot use the dryers; in which case you suddenly have to run out and buy hanging mechanisms as your wet clothes sit.

In my case, I was hit with point of failure number 11. Payment processors never tell you why your payment is refused. They either give a uselessly vague error, or the web UI just refuses to move forward with no error, or the error is an intentional lie. Because e.g. if your payment is refused you are presumed to be a criminal unworthy of being informed.

Danish apartment management’s response to complaints: We are not obligated to serve you. Read the terms of your lease. There is a coin-operated laundromat 1km away.

Question: are we all being forced into this shitty cashless situation in order to ease the hunt for criminals?

Keeping $1k in a bank for 1 year is equal to the CO₂ emissions of flying New York to Seattle. Because banks invest in fossil fuels.

The source of this article is in a walled garden that disrespects our privacy so I will not cite it. But here’s the text, posted here in the free world for all people to access:

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The menace of “the War on Cash” is making steady headway across the board.

And that’s whether it concerns big-time international policy-makers pushing for total digitization of financial assets – or individual examples that showcase just how serious this threat is.

Here’s one such case: Elizabeth Dasburg and two others were denied the right to use cash to pay entry fee to the Fort Pulaski National Monument in Georgia, managed by the National Park Service.

It’s turned into, “parks, but no recreation” – because the victims of this violation of US law regulating the use of domestic currency have now opted for litigation.

Plain and simple, Dasburg and the two others believe it is still illegal in the US to refuse to accept the country’s legal tender. Or is it? That’s the question the US District Court for the District of Columbia will have to spell out.

Judging by the filing, the Fort Pulaski employees were equally indoctrinated against accepting cash, as they were trying to be helpful. The visitors were first told in no uncertain terms that only cards are accepted.

We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.

And then, if – say they had no cards (that they might not want to use them doesn’t seem to have been a consideration) – they were instructed to go to a grocery chain like Walmart and buy a gift card.

However bizarrely and unnecessarily complicated this might sound – all the more ironic, because it appears the “explanation” for this policy is that cards are more “convenient” – that’s what Fort Pulaski wanted.

Cards. Of any sort. Things that can be tracked and tied to a person, in other words.

“By forcing people to use credit cards or digital wallets, under the guise of convenience, the National Park Service becomes a player in the surveillance state, undermining park visitors’ privacy right,” Children’s Health Defense (CHD) General Counsel Mack Rosenberg commented on the case – and the state of affairs.

CDH has decided to put its money where its mouth is and support the defendants’ case financially.

The National Park Service is said to have been working on cashless-only payment options for some years, the scheme now in effect in to close to 30 national parks, historic sites and monuments.

While those behind such things are always happy to present themselves as champions of “equality and diversity,” the reality looks quite different.

“Only half of low-income households have access to a credit card, according to a March 2022 Federal Reserve Bank of New York report,” CHD President Laura Bono said in a letter to the Park and Service CEO.