We are at a point where the removal of cash currency is becoming a genuine possibility.

By all means, electronic funds can provide some convenience at times, it would be dishonest to deny this. However, to remain honest, we (along with the media and other institutions) should not deny or overlook the consequences and drawbacks which are generated also.

There is a genuine strong push for a cashless society by the media, financial institutions, the government and big business. With such large entities behind the push, the opposing side does not have an opportunity to be fairly represented and the real concerns will not be voiced but rather the less important (if any) concerns will likely make it to our media publications to give the impression that no genuinely worrying concerns exist. Sadly, this is how many legal and political reforms seem to have been created in recent years since the control of information and ideas is in the hands of those who encourage and finance the policies.

We know the cashless push has been around for many years now and right now is the time we’re going to see it happen.

It mightn’t be so bad if the electronic funds system didn’t mean removing more control (and therefore power) from the hands of the money holding individual and shifting that almost total control into the financial institutions.

Once upon a time, giving large sums of money to banks resulted in ‘somewhat generous’ interest being rewarded to you. After all, (those of you old enough to know - funny how all these things take so long to implement) you were lending the bank your hard earned asset, with which they were using to create profits via interest from loans. Once there is no cash, what reward do you receive for having 100% of your hard earned asset lent to them permanently, without any option to withdraw it into something physical of the same ongoing value in your possession? There becomes very little incentive to reward you, since you no longer will have any true ownership of the currency.

So, banks these days (listen up kiddies, it didn’t used to be like this) charge us fees to safe hold your money. They also charge you transaction fees, late payment fees, interest fees and withdrawal fees. Fees, fees and more fees whilst they have our money and operate with it. The point is, shouldn’t it be the other way around and when did we get to this ridiculous point?

Contrary to popular belief, the electronic currency is not at all free, in fact it comes with a genuine cost. Even though the financial institutions make mass profits, financial costs to your local community are high.

For starters, every time a transaction is made using electronic funds at point of sale, a small fee is incurred on the business you are purchasing from. In some instances (for large corporations) this fee is waved but for small businesses they are forced to just deal with it. The fee is very minor for Savings/Cheque transactions but for credit/debit transactions the fee is percentage based, so the larger the purchase, the larger the fee. There is no better way to describe this than the reverse Robin Hood since what is happening is financial institutions are using the consumers to rob from the poor (small business) and give to the rich. This does not occur when cash is used and not to mention on top of the transaction fees, there is also the annual fee incurred on the business for renting an EFTPOS machine as well.

At this point in time businesses have the choice to not use EFTPOS terminals to avoid these fees, however most businesses feel pressured to have them since customers are rewarded by financial institutions for this rob from the poor to give to the rich system via “points” that allow the customer to go on holidays, etc for accumulating so many points. The actual reward they receive / the points they earn is a mere minuscule percentage of what they are helping steal from the businesses but it’s enough to make them ask for EFTPOS options, especially credit/debit options.

But what happens when cash no longer exists and the businesses have no choice but to trade with EFTPOS only? Those unavoidable fees are in reality nothing more than forced taxation being placed not in a government account for redistribution throughout the community but instead a tax that goes directly to financial institutions, as if they don’t make enough already.

Further to this, it’s often forgotten that those small business owners, when they make profits, they are able to keep the money recirculating within the community as well. I’m not saying they always do, but at least there is a chance that they will re-use their earnings in your community to pay for a local trade or again, spend at another small business. The alternative, where the ‘tax’ goes to the financial institutions, there is zero chance that money is staying in your community and probably more often that not, it will likely leave your country all together. It’s a viscous and very gradual cycle which takes years and years to do the true damage, hence why it goes unnoticed until it’s too late. By supporting this robbery we might get a “free” holiday once in a while but we are gradually making our communities and therefore ourselves and our children poorer and poorer as a result. If we weren’t getting poorer, we might not have to work so many hours and then those “free” holidays might not seem as essential...

But that’s just scratching the surface.

What about the implications of total monitoring of your transactions? I know, I know. “I’ve got nothing to hide”, right? So what about when you sell a second hand product which you no longer need? Let’s say that dining table and chairs that you don’t need because you’ve bought a bigger one. How do you feel about being taxed for the “profit” you’ve made on selling that second hand item? “Don’t be ridiculous”, is that right? Remember what I mentioned above about “those old enough to remember”; it doesn’t have to happen in your lifetime, it’s always incremental steps which are justifiable to the current generation. With each new generation, reality has changed. We don’t know any better because we’ve never lived the “old” way, so it is much easier to convince another incremental step, and then another, etc. That is, after all how we got to the point we are at right now. Sooner or later our purchases will be taxed like they currently are (GST) and then selling those old, no longer needed good will be taxed as well.

How do you feel about Google advertising to you now? You know, like when you search for a product and then for the next week you’re suddenly having ads show up everywhere you go on social media and webpages to market that product to you. Or worse, you’ve spoken verbally to a friend about buying a vehicle and then you start seeing ads for that vehicle because Siri/Alexa heard you. Imagine once all transactions are digital and databased, Google will obtain your every transaction sooner or later whether you like it or not and this will just empower them more to advertise to you even more directly and through this power, allow them to charge even higher advertising fees to those who use it.

An individuals privacy, regardless of whether they need it or not, regardless of if they have something to hide or not is still a right to have and defend. How many of us are really willing to say “I do not need or want any privacy, ever! And my children and their children do not need or want any either” because to willingly and knowingly give up a little bit of your privacy is giving up your right to privacy since you can’t have a partial right. A partial right can be altered/manipulated to suit circumstance, which means the control is not your own.

What about the ease of reconciliation? Part of the reason I use cash is I don’t have to spend ages going through my transaction history to make sure no fraudulent transactions took place. Paying cash means I was personally involved in the transaction, it doesn’t even matter if I remember it and so my bank statements are mostly compromised of cash withdrawals. But once you use a card for everything, suddenly you’ve got hundreds of transactions to look through (like we’ve got time to do that) to make sure that each of those transactions really were done by you. Removing cash forces this unfair workload on those of us who don’t have the time to do it because for example we’d rather spend time with our family or our pets or in the garden, etc.

And this leads to another concern, not only is there the possibility of fraudulent transactions or sums of money mysteriously going missing with harder to trace fiat digital 0’s and 1’s representing money but there’s also the possibility of large sums mysteriously being created seemingly out of thin air and placed in “random” bank accounts. Doesn’t sound like a problem if it comes into your own bank account, though if it did, no doubt you’d be forced to pay it back or face criminal charges. But what if some of those “random” accounts aren’t so random. And what if those non random accounts get “lost” in the hysteria and are intentionally not pursued to return the funds? I’m not saying this is the goal of cashless society but we can’t deny that with something so fake, so non-physical, that such a situation could occur, especially considering the perceived value we place in money is so high and even more so considering we know at least a small portion of people are corrupt and will take advantage.

From a legal stance there are implications as well.

Recently in Western Australia, the Premier announced (in the name of Black Lives Matter of course) that people will no longer face jail time for not paying a fine, instead funds will just automatically be deducted. This would not be possible without the digital system, where the government has access to your funds at will, as if the funds are theirs to control. But the scary part is, who decides if the fine is justified? Recently (before the BLM protests) people were being fined for breaking social distancing “guidelines”. There was/is no constitutional law which forces people to “social distance”. Ie. no law exists, yet people were receiving fines anyway. If this were to happen now, the money will just be taken without their consent, even though they haven’t broken the law!?? The social distancing we’ve learned isn’t even based in science for goodness sake and in fact it’s proven to be worse for the majority of people and yet, these fascist fines occurred anyway.

What if you protest something the current government doesn’t like? Let’s say they “start” acting like communists and you call them out. Guess what, under certain circumstances, they will have the ability to suspend your account. The government and banks can reserve the right to hold on to, postpone or lock your available funds in case of pandemic, economic crash, civil war, protests, refusal to co-operate, tax, refusal to be vaccinated and who knows what else they will decide. Imagine that, the only resource you have to purchase food gets temporarily removed from your access because you don’t think the way they want you to think...

Digital currency is also very difficult and unfair on the elderly who struggle with technology and change. And I’m sorry but implanting them with Nanotechnology or RFID technology is not the answer.

It doesn’t even end here, we could go into discussions about negative interest and inflation, not to mention the sinister history of money being no longer backed by anything, effectively making it illusionary value, controlled by the Monopoly players who own all the best properties on the board.

I think though just based on what I’ve discussed alone, we can all clearly see the implications of throwing away our purchasing power and handing it over to corporations and governments (if they’re not one in the same).