A Cashless Society Is Coming – Do You Welcome It Or Not? (+3K Views)

Many will cheer as the world makes a rapid transition to a cashless society, but I will not.  I believe that a truly cashless system would open the door for great evil, and I don’t want any part of it. What about you?

The comments above & below are edited ([ ]) and abridged (…) excerpts from an article written by Michael Snyder (economiccollapse.com)

The notion of a truly “cashless society” was once considered to be science fiction, but now we are being told that it is “inevitable”, and authorities insist that it will enable them to thwart criminals, terrorists, drug runners, money launderers and tax evaders but what will we give up in the process?

All over the world, we are seeing a relentless march toward a cashless society, and nowhere is this more true than in northern Europe.

• In Sweden, hundreds of bank branches no longer accept or dispense cash, and thousands of ATM machines have been permanently removed.  At this point, bills and coins account for just 2% of the Swedish economy, and many stores no longer take cash at all. In fact, 95% of all retail sales in Sweden are cashless?
• Two decades ago, roughly 80% of Danish citizens relied on hard cash while shopping. Fast forward to today, that figure has dropped dramatically to 25% – and the government of Denmark has a stated goal of “eradicating cash” by the year 2030.
• Cash transactions of more than 2,500 euros have already been banned in Spain.
• France and Italy have both banned all cash transactions of more than 1,000 euros.
• Research by Westpac Bank predicts Australia will be a fully cashless society by 2022 — just six years away. Already 50% of all commercial payments are now made electronically.
• Even in some of the poorest areas on the entire globe we are seeing a move toward a cashless society.  In 2015, banks in India made major progress on this front, and income tax rebates are being considered by the government as an incentive “to encourage people to move away from cash transactions“.

Banks like this change, because it enables them to make more money due to the fees that they collect from credit cards and debit cards – and governments like this change because electronic payments enable them to watch, track and monitor what we are all doing much more easily.

Most of us just seem to accept that this change is “inevitable”, and we are being assured that it will be for the better – that a cashless society reduces crime and makes all of our lives much more efficient. Maybe but what would we have to give up?

To me…if people choose to use cashless forms of payment that is one thing, but if we are all required to go to such a system I fear that it could result in the loss of tremendous amounts of freedom and liberty.

It is all too easy to imagine a world where a government-sponsored form of “identification” would be required to use any form of electronic payment.  This would give the government complete control over who could use “the system” and who could not.  The potential for various forms of coercion and tyranny in such a scenario is obvious.

What would you do if you could not buy, sell, get a job or open a bank account without proper “identification” someday?  [Would] you simply give in to whatever the government was demanding of you at the time even if it went against your fundamental beliefs? That is certainly something to think about.

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