The BS File is an open source intelligence file where forum users can contribute related content to a specific topic. The goal is to build over time, an archive of knowledge on the subject, and to draw connections between people, places, and events that would otherwise may have been unnoticed. Information in the file all links to original, open sources, and readers will have to decide for themselves whether the source or the information is reliable, to come to their own conclusions.
Towards the Cashless Society
Do you remember the old saying, "cash is king?" Well, not anymore my friends. Yes my fellow chumps, we have been duped our entire lives by this old adage, because with the new advances in technology, cash is a thing of the past. With each and every passing day, whether you noticed or not, we are being bombarded by movements towards a cashless society. Some have been quite overt such as direct deposits from employers, digital currencies, and mobile banking. Others have been more subtle movements from government entities (http://web.archive.org/web/20100721092035/http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/05/04/cash-revenue.html). While some, such as cashless (http://www.hasbro.com/monopoly/en_US/shop/details.cfm?R=9367A23C-6D40-1014-8BF0-9EFBF894F9D4:en_US) versions (http://consumerist.com/2007/05/08/hasbro-and-visa-pervert-life-board-game-to-train-children-in-racking-up-credit-card-debt/) of childrens board games, are so innocuous, that you may not even have thought twice about it if you saw it.
(http://s22.postimg.org/dnqfpcrch/gates_old_banking_vs_cashless.png)
But why not rid ourselves of burdensome cash? I mean, everybody already knows that cash is disgusting and carries deadly microbes like MRSA and Anthrax (http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/04/23/305890574/dirty-money-a-microbial-jungle-thrives-in-your-wallet). It is also tainted with super-dangerous illicit narcotics like cocaine (http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/14/cocaine.traces.money/). Plus, cash is the reason that the economy keeps crashing (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/comment/11602399/Ban-cash-end-boom-and-bust.html), didn't you know? Besides, According to Bill & Melinda Gates (http://www.gatesnotes.com/2015-annual-letter?page=3&lang=en), cash is pass?, while mobile banking is "safe and efficient". And they should know a thing or two about money because they are billionaires, so who are we to question them?
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOg4s5UccZE[/youtube]
Of course some of us know that despite all the glowing praise our cashless future recieves from the media, bankers, and philanthropic billionaires, there is a darker side to the equation. For one thing, there is something to be said about having a tangible asset, like cash, instead of a bunch of 1's and 0's floating around on a computer somewhere out in the "cloud." It makes it a bit more difficult for things like this (http://www.ushistory.org/us/49a.asp), and this (http://greece.greekreporter.com/2013/03/27/cyprus-finance-minister-uninsured-laiki-depositors-could-face-80-haircut/) to happen, because with something tangible, you can always "stuff it under the matress," whereas a digital currency belongs exclusively in the cloud, or to a bank or government, and there could be little opportunity to remove your currency from the system. Just take a look at who is funding (http://suchbs.com/forum/index.php?topic=10.msg16#msg16) the move away from cash and you might start to get a clearer picture.
More importantly though, are the privacy concerns. Cash is much harder to track and control, and in a world where governments already spy on their citizens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29), and create dossiers and social networks (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/28/1242075/-NYT-N-S-A-Examines-Social-Networks-of-U-S-Citizens-The-NSA-Story-We-ve-Been-Waiting-For) on individual citizens, creating a complete record of your purchases to track you with doesn't sound very appealing (just for kicks, call your credit card company some time, and see how far back their transaction list for you goes). Don't think that the government would keep track of all your purchases through a digital currency? Well, they already do, whenever you move enough cash (http://www.fincen.gov/financial_institutions/msb/materials/en/report_reference.html) into or out of a bank. Which is exactly what the arcana of the cashless society is all about, power and control. It's really quite an old story (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+13%3A16-18&version=KJV), and perhaps one day, in the not so distant future you may wake up to find that you can't even purchase a used toaster oven from a garage sale with cash (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111019/17424316421/louisiana-makes-it-illegal-to-use-cash-secondhand-sales.shtml).
Whether you see the move to a cashless society as poitive or not, if you don't think it is happening right now, then consider the following:
- Billionaires Bill & Melinda Gates are developing a huge project to create a new "national digital financial services system" to capture an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide, not currently using banks. The plan calls for a payment clearing system that would keep a directory of users telephone numbers and National ID numbers. Also the system will have a "Fraud and Risk Management Service (FRMS)" which will keep track of suspicious accounts and transactions, and "possibly about non-fraudulent accounts and transactions as well," which means pretty much everybody could be tracked. Source. (http://suchbs.com/forum/index.php?topic=10.msg17#msg17)
- Coffee growers in Colombia have been issued "Coffee Smart ID Cards" since 2007, in order to be paid for their crops in digital currency. Even though the card was intended to be used for making payments to these rural farmers easier, a report noted that the card was instead mostly used for "the disbursement of various government subsidy schemes, rather than Federaci?n coffee purchases." Source. (http://suchbs.com/forum/index.php?topic=10.msg18#msg18)
- The Government of Bangladesh has signed on to the cashless society paradigm, with plans by 2021 to digitize all forms of subsidy payments to it's citizens, all fees that citizens must pay to the government, and all domestic and international remittances and financial transactions for e-commerce. Source. (http://suchbs.com/forum/index.php?topic=10.msg20#msg20)
- Banks in the UK are closed their branches for a day, but allowed people to still use mobile banking. Many smaller banks in the UK are considering closing their brick and mortar shops in favor of online banking. In some rural areas, a bank on wheels visits communities only once a week, limiting their access to cash. Source (http://suchbs.com/forum/index.php?topic=10.msg23#msg23).
-Ex-JPMorgan credit default swap legend Blythe Masters, says that the cashless paradigm will "change the way our financial world operates." She specifically is talking about Digital Distributed Ledgers, which are essentially the records of every individual transaction in the system. Source. (http://suchbs.com/forum/index.php?topic=10.msg35#msg35)
- The Bank of England has taken a keen interest in digital currencies, specifically one of their features which would allow for digital identity management. Source. (http://suchbs.com/forum/index.php?topic=10.msg36#msg36)
- The Government of Ecuador has its own e-Money system which was established at the end of 2014. Source. (http://suchbs.com/forum/index.php?topic=10.msg37#msg37)
- Economist Martin Armstrong says eliminating cash will have the dire effect of the "elimination of the ability to demand to withdraw funds from a bank." Why is that important? Because right now the Swiss National Bank's negative interest rate policy?where depositors are charged for holding their money in a bank?is forcing Swiss pension funds to take their money out of banks and store it in expensive private vaults to avoid losses. Source. (http://suchbs.com/forum/index.php?topic=10.msg38#msg38)
Please feel free to contribute to this open source intelligence file to further the development and understanding of this vital topic.