Debate in Austria over enshrining use of cash in the constitution (opens in new tab)

I'm no Luddite by any means, but on this topic I side with those who consider physical cash transaction a civil rights issue.

I suppose people in some EU countries, for example, which have mostly (?) transitioned to a cashless society don't mind what a massive invasion of privacy it is.

On the other hand, I do understand the advantages, the convenience, and perhaps the inevitability of going cashless. Already most of our financial transactions are being tracked and circulated ("peddled") in countless ways, as are our online activity, phone conversations, real-time location.. At this rate, future humans will look back at our concept of "privacy" and not comprehend what it means.

The question is whether someone has a legal right to conduct a monetary transaction anonymously. I think if you get to the root of the issue, most governments would prefer to track every transaction to ensure compliance with tax, money laundering, [insert whatever regulation].

However I think the state already has an absurd amount of power and the citizens need every tool possible to prevent governments from hurting them. Anonymous transactions, such as those using cash but also using new technologies like privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, are essential to keeping the state from becoming a panopticon. You can already see the inevitable outcome of all-powerful government with the ridiculous situation in Hong Kong and the social credit system in China.

The real benefit to get rid of cash would be to allow properly negative interest rates.[1] At the same time I fully agree with the privacy worries on going cashless.

So, what we really need are anonymous physical tokens whose value can change over time. Easy solution is to just tale the current bills and say that after one year, unless deposited to bank before that, are worth only 90% of the face value. But with current technological capabilities, and if someone would actually be interested, we should be able to come up with way better solutions. Solutions that actually make it easier to pay with these anonymous tokens than current cash.

[1] I know. This is far from intuitive to accept. It took me literally months to accept that negative rates make any sense after the first negative yields popped up. To help you understand, let's say I have a fresh apple and you want to have an apple today. In the textbook case I am willing to give it to you today, if you give me tomorrow two apples, because I prefer also to have an apple today compared to having ot tomorrow. This is fine, but what about me having a big basket of apples about to rot, and willing to have also some apples in the winter? There is no law of nature saying that there should be someone willing to give me more apples next winter if I give them to him today. In this case it is easy to see that a negative interest should apply to lending of apples. And it should be economics 101 to understand that artificially limiting prices will often cause welfare losses.

One big issue with society that would be completely cashless is that it will essentially grant ability for foreign governments to control people in different countries. There is an on-going case in Finland where Boris Rotenberg (allegedly someone who is in inner circles of Russia's leadership) is in OFAC sanctions list due to Crimea occupation, but he also has Finnish citizenship and he's not in EU's sanctions list. Due to being on OFAC list Finnish banks are refusing to accept payments coming from his Finnish account in fear of US actions (including fines and sanctions against the banks).

If you are not even allowed to do things in cash (and to be honest, it's pretty close to that in Finland already), you would also need to disallow banks from blocking transactions that are not breaking local laws. Otherwise in the worst case you are making it so that foreign governments have power to force people to commit crimes (like being unable to pay taxes since bank refuses to move the money).

Forget all the issues with government control and illegal transactions and human rights and whatnot for a second.

How are people supposed to transact in an emergency without cash? Say if there's an earthquake, the power/internet goes down, etc.?

Cashless society would be a pain for kids, homeless, people with trash credit history, etc. So either we need to force all banks to give their internet bank access and some sort of debit card to absolutely anybody who just asks that without any fees, or cash must be accepted.

There is a very good presentation on the Case for Electronic Cash by Jerry Brito of the Coin Center non-profit. I highly recommend people watch it to understand why cash is important to preserve an open, liberal society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmXDJpYF46E&fbclid=IwAR3tBKD...

I am essentially fully cashless at this point, I don't carry cash in my wallet or anything, but I still think it is incredibly important to have the option to use cash should I choose to. If for some reason I start getting rejected by banks, or dislike the restrictions that they are placing on me, it is a last resort that I can always fall back to. It prevents me from being fully dependent on private parties like banks, which I find valuable, even if I am unlikely to actually use it. I don't think that, as a society, we should be forcing people to hand over their private information to some bank in order to go through everyday life.

Recently the governor of "Norges Bank", the central bank of Norway made it clear he wants to enforce that shops have to accept cash.

The reason for this is that we might need cash in an emergency.

Sources (for those who master Norwegian) : https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%C3%B8ystein+olsen+kontanter&t=fpa...

> “If for example I go shopping, and it’s recorded exactly how much schnapps I’ve bought, that’s an invasion of my privacy,” he says.

Wouldn't a constitutional change only be limited to paying for gov fines, fees, and taxes with cash?

> Following a recent EU directive, Austrian banks are phasing out “ATM cards” and renaming them debit cards. And some banks are currently planning to equip the new debit cards with the ability to make payments online, as is common elsewhere.

I'm confused do they mean they are just getting the ability to pay with debit cards at stores in 2019? Or is this just adding the VISA part to debit cards?

This makes me incredibly happy: there is finally a western European democracy that makes the outlawing of cash a true political issue.

The EU has quietly taken away what I consider to be a fundamental human rights over the past 10 years (the right to buy something without the whole world knowing what that was), and no one noticed.

Did you know you can't buy a car cash in most EU countries?

[EDIT]: This is issue is nowhere on the political radar of most USians because it hasn't come to your shores. But it should, because it's coming.

What I find most interesting is how those parties seem to find out what people wants and incorporate it into their agenda. Very different thing is parties building their agendas, usually around authoritarian measures coming from some lobbies and then shoving them down our throats with massive amounts of propaganda.

There is no debate about cashless honestly, it's like debating if raping children should be legal or not, except that without cash you easily get to a society where powerful people rule the world (see Epstein). Those who argue against cash should be seen with suspicion and removed from their positions of power if they have any. I'd say even jail time should be considered when it comes to anti-cash lobbying, using the same penalty currently used by enslaved but multiplied by the total population.

Sounds absurd? Sounds like too much? It's the only way to keep those tyrannical maniacs in check.

In addition to privacy, another argument against credit cards are fees like interchange fees and assessments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee.

When I pay by card, banks and Visa/Mastercard get a cut of my purchase, which the merchant doesn't get (and I don't think they are allowed to pass on these fees to the consumer). When I pay by cash, the merchant gets 100%. I usually prefer to give my money to a local shop rather than to financial middlemen.

Every bank is a private company and can choose there customers. So if no bank want you (what reason ever) you just fall out of the system complete.

It's also worth noting that almost every bank in Austria charges customers for the 'privilege' of having a bank account...

Privacy is definitely at stake in cash-less electronic transactions, but going cash-less might be the only way to curb corruption in a country like India.

In India, only pathetic (<10-20%) percentage of people pay direct tax, what remains after corrupt bureaucrats take their share is what spent on development of the country.

It's no brainer on why cash transactions is the preferred mode for the corrupt. Cash-less electronic transactions, fool-proof audit backed by tech like blockchain seems like only option left to curb this menace and save the country.

As far as privacy is concerned, due to the loop-hole in the law, any citizen's bank account can be accessed by the authorities at any time; so cash-less transactions isn't going to change much here. Corrupt, don't use the bank accounts to store their stash anyways, at-least within the country.

But India is not ready for cash-less transaction anytime soon, as evident from the demonetisation of 2016 in which promoting cash-less transaction was one of the main arguments.

People will still do illegal/subversive/socially unacceptable things and be paid for them. So a "cashless" society would generate a massive demand for alternative forms of currency. There are already plenty of those, including digital ones, so this might in the long run be disastrous for national currencies. Which would be interesting but also disastrous for a lot of people in the meantime.

I don't see why cashless must mean non-anonymous. There are chargeable payment cards around the world that effectively are anonymous and cashless.

This makes me wonder how much fintech is regulated in regards to consumer privacy. You'd thing that with all the care that's being taken to (try to) ensure the safety of people's money, regulators would also consider their privacy.

If a seller is required, by law, to accept cash, what happens to online-only retailers like Amazon? Do they just close up shop and leave? Do they restrict online purchases to people within a reasonable drive of a retail location?

Other than food and drinks, I have not really bought anything using cash in last couple of years. Everything else it seems I have been buying using a debit card, online or offline.

So I am bit a lost on how this protects privacy. Is this only important in context of services such as legal prostitution, drug use etc where having cash transaction will feel safer? If that is the case, I am sure those businesses will continue to operate in cash-ful manner. If there are other use cases, please do share.

As an aside Austria is the first country I came across where the immigration website uses phrase "third country workers"[1], which is mildly disappointing to see.

[1] - https://www.migration.gv.at/en/welcome/

wouldn't this make digital services incostitutional? should provider in Austria like Netflix start accepting makes cash envelopes?

As a software engineer, I feel all money should be digital and the IRS should be replaced with an algorithm. Fairer and more efficient for all. As a human living in a fallible state, I don't ever want the government to have that kind of power and visibility into my private life.