In the dystopia I'm desperately trying to keep ahead of, nobody has actual money. It's a socialist paradise. Everyone has an embedded chip which carries, along with personal data and lots of other stuff, their bank balance. Nobody appears to pay income tax - in fact, tax is deducted before you're paid but nobody knows at what rate because all they see is the final amount they get. Nobody knows their pre-tax salary.
So there is absolute control over every transaction and tax on every transaction. How much tax? Nobody knows. An amount is deducted from the buyer's balance and a smaller amount is added to the seller's balance but at no point is the tax amount declared. Neither party knows the actual price, you just buy things, and you are required to explain yourself if you are not buying things because you are hampering the economy. Even if you sell stuff via the fictional equivalent of eBay, the transaction must be electronic and the bid you see on your screen isn't quite what the buyer sees on his. Emails passed between seller and buyer are auto-edited on the way.
How to make this happen? First you ban cash. Then cheques (I know, they started with the wrong one here) so everything is done via a credit card. These already have chips, and already can be integrated into phones. It's only a tiny step to integrate them into your implanted ID chip and just look how convenient it is. You can't lose it, you can't go right round the supermarket and then find you've left your card at home, and it can't be stolen. Perfect. People will fight each other to be the first to get this.
That's the fiction. I wondered how to go about banning cash from this imaginary world. What pretext could I use?
Ah, here it is. Once again, life is ahead of me.
You know, I've been wondering about all those maniacs stealing live cables and why it's so difficult to find scrapyards dealing in large amounts of copper wire.
Louisiana has made excellent use of those metal thieves. How long before we do, I wonder?
Best get back to writing.
19 comments:
"Neither party knows the actual price..."
Sounds like paying for gas/electricity on direct debit. Or, for that matter comparing the actual price per kWh rather than some vague £x saving per year.
No cash means you cannot buy or sell anything to which you are not entitled. So anti-terrorism, anti drug dealing, theft control etc are all good excuses to ban it.
Margaret Thatcher repealed the Truck Acts, which allowed you do demand payment in cash, forcing people to have bank accounts.
The intoduction of Standing Orders, allowed people to get used to money being taken from their accounts at their direction.
The introduction of Direct Debits allowed people to adust to money being taken from their accounts at the request of the benificiary. (Notice how Local Goverment and the utilities push for direct debits)
Now to abolish cheques and we're almost there.
The BilderBankers play a long game.
I pay in cash for almost everything now, and pay less because of it. No direct debits but a couple of standing orders (my choice as it suits me). I don't use a credit card and only use the bank card to withdraw cash.
It makes life a lot simpler as you can only spend what you have and I am amazed at the deals I can get when waving a handful of notes at the seller.
Disengage from the electronic payment pantomime and take back control of your money and spending. If more people did this I'm sure it would hack off the gummint too.
Coins are physically quite dirty of course. Could be carrying some nasty germs. Also I recall reading somewhere that most US dollar bills are contaminated with cocaine. There's a wide range of contaminates that could be used as an excuse to ban notes. Teenagers or younger children might get their hands on notes contaminated with tobacco smoke. Heh.
Louisiana legislators try to ban cash transactions. Talk about Canute ordering back the tide. How will they even enforce that (stupid, begging to be circumvented) law? Surely the thing about cash transactions is that they're private, untraceable and require no banking infrastructure?
Ah, wait. Civil Asset Forfeiture (aka "Prove this money's yours") is legal over there, isn't it? Nice way for good ole boy sheriffs to plump up their petty cash fund in these cash-strapped times.
I did a post at Orpans a while back about banning cash under the smokescreen of drugs and money laundering.
It included the chips and the tax taken at sorce, plus the masses screaming for all this to be done in order to protect them
precisely, leg-iron, you seem to have such an uncanny appreciation of marxism that i seriously suspect that you are really one of us.
yes...we anti-capitalists who are currently using the st paul's demo as a diversion to tunnel into the bank of england and rob it...are in fact agent provocateurs setting-up a false-blag in aid of the cashless state - of course, we won't be able to sell the gold...so we'll have to use it to do some errr...business...
...maybe a spot of errr...banking, perhaps?
22:44
as a precaution against being left in the poo by the lord god almighty, i've barricaded myself into the vestry with all the cathedral valuables and i've been granted a miracle to electrify the lead roof - that'll teach 'em. most of these anti-cappers were born with a silver-spoon in their mouths...and if they try anything, some of 'em are going to leave this world complete with an irreversibly integrated silver candlestick (in accordance with ancient british custom).
22:44
and on the subject of diversionary tactics, why is everyone getting so damnably obsessed with the economic collapse of the european onion when there are important issues of national security to cover?
...such as liam foxhole's complete innocence of any innuendo of any kind...you know, i'm sure this continental bankruptcy scenario is actually just a deliberate communist conspiracy to deflect attention from our wonderful conservative government and its outstanding political and financial achievements...
to be fair, liam foxhole did a grand job (a bit more than a grand, if the truth be told) and deserves better than to be swept under the corrupted carpet of allied atlantic apathy...ok, so technically the minister responsible for defense of the realm was a cia-mossad 'asset'...but there's really a quite innocent explanation for all this, and the parties involved were absolutely blameless of all impropriety...you see, mr foxhole's 'handler', adam weerighty, was simply present at top-level meetings with foreign powers in order to accompany the minister to the gents and 'guide' his nob in a direction commensurate with pissing in the 'right' urinal. indeed, there was nothing unusual in such behaviour...mr weerighty was most charitable in offering mr foxhole this special service totally free-of-charge, at all times, and in all places, and, like any good friend, never left the minister's side, lest he should suddenly require extra-genital assistance at short-notice...
furthermore (and i communicate this by way of full-disclosure), the terms of the assignment entailed that, each day, mr weerighty worked a 24-hour shift, or so i understand.
00:57
'defense'? an american spelling in vauxhall? you're nicked. go back down your hole and return to washington.
00:57
in all honesty, i'm more concerned about the current whereabouts of 1500 sheep, sir.
01:49
not me
01:49
wey, ah needed them tuh feed me kebab habit, divvint ah man?
The comical thing about the whole idea is that only the law abiding will comply. The villains will not. But then, as you say LI, it is not the villains which this silliness is aimed at.....
Bucko - how far back was that? Sounds like good source material ;)
Sorry, turns out it wasn't on Orphans but on my own site.
It was at the time you came up with the 'Handled by Smokers' idea, and you read and responded to it.
There are two posts here and here if you still want a look
Bucko - I remember when I used to have a memory.
Oh wait. No, I don't.
Too many things in one brain, there's bound to be leakage.
I had one of those things too once. Now I can't even remember where I have written my own stuff.
What were we talking about?
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