SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
All over the western world banks are shutting down cash machines and branches. They are trying to push you into using their digital payments and digital banking infrastructure. Just like Google wants everyone to access and navigate the broader internet via its privately controlled search portal, so financial institutions want everyone to access and navigate the broader economy through their systems.
Another aim is to cut costs in order to boost profits. Branches require staff. Replacing them with standardised self-service apps allows the senior managers of financial institutions to directly control and monitor interactions with customers.
Banks, of course, tell us a different story about why they do this. I recently got a letter from my bank telling me that they are shutting down local branches because "customers are turning to digital", and they are thus "responding to changing customer preferences". I am one of the customers they are referring to, but I never asked them to shut down the branches.
Source: The cashless society is a con – and big finance is behind it
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 21 2018, @02:42PM (3 children)
The legal cannabis purveyors here in Oregon can't use banking so they handle lots of cash. That will continue until the pinheads in Congress change the banking laws, and I will continue to pull several hundred $$ frequently from ATMs for my purchases. But: My local purveyor just opened a new sporting goods store next door, and they are connected. So now I can buy cannabis from a sporting goods store and use plastic. Just got a new MasterCard, first instruction says "don't use for anything illegal". Haven't tried it yet, but it worked with my old Visa debit card. NoCash is going NoWhere until these banking laws are changed.
Anonymous for obvious reasons.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday July 21 2018, @03:36PM
I think that if this is the path that banks and the government, which works for the banks, wants to pursue then they might find everyone opts out. Maybe they'll use virtual currencies like BitCoin instead, or perhaps they'll fall back on barter.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Whoever on Saturday July 21 2018, @05:46PM
It's not the banking laws that need to change. It's the ridiculous treatment of cannabis by the Federal government. Really, if there is one thing Obama could have done that would have been relatively easy to do, popular, and not require the approval of Congress, it was to change the classification of cannabis.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Saturday July 21 2018, @06:36PM
Same here in California. I've been a member of a coop since it became legal to grow for medicinal purposes, and we've had cash accumulation problems since the beginning. Can't deal with a FDIC insured institution unless you do it under the cover of a front. We've had safes at several locations and created a network of family and friends to launder funds. Some day the Feds will see the light and we can move into the modern world and bank with the big boys but in the meantime we store too much cash, buy precious metals and support retired family members with our cash, and in turn receive recompense from their laundered social security and retirement checks.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge