I haven't made up my mind, whether paper money is more useful than digital currency. I have been cashless for many years. Perhaps it helps that I have many 24x7 cashpoints around where I usually am. Perhaps it also helps that I can use cards everywhere. I don't feel the need to carry spare cash. If I was somewhere I can't or don't want to use my cards and no cashpoints around, my attitude might be very different.
I do think digital services are useful and more efficient. I haven't been to any bank branch in a very long time, except for posting in some paper cheques. The rare times that I have had to go in to a branch to resolve any issues have been a waste of time. In hindsight, it'd have been more speedily resolved by telephone. Perhaps the staff are just trying to kill themselves.
But this post is not about cashpoints or going cashless. This post is also not about digital services either. This post is not even about finance or retail or any other business.
This post is about mind bending, and about how it is being played around you. Open your eyes and educate others, or you will be left behind in the minority with no voice.
The cashless society is a con – and big finance is behind it[1]
There is a feedback loop going on here. In closing down their branches, or withdrawing their cash machines, they make it harder for me to use those services. I am much more likely to "choose" a digital option if the banks deliberately make it harder for me to choose a non-digital option.
In behavioural economics this is referred to as "nudging". If a powerful institution wants to make people choose a certain thing, the best strategy is to make it difficult to choose the alternative.
We can illustrate this with the example of self-checkout tills at supermarkets. The underlying agenda is to replace checkout staff with self-service machines to cut costs. But supermarkets have to convince their customers. They thus initially present self-checkout as a convenient alternative. When some people then use that alternative, the supermarket can cite that as evidence of a change in customer behaviour, which they then use to justify a reduction in checkout employees. This in turn makes it more inconvenient to use the checkout staff, which in turn makes customers more likely to use the machines. They slowly wean you off staff, and "nudge" you towards self-service.
Financial institutions, likewise, are trying to nudge us… The nudge requires two parts.
First, they must increase the inconvenience.
Second, they must vigorously promote the alternative. They seek to make people "learn" that they want digital, and then "choose" it.
We can learn from the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci in this regard. His concept of hegemony referred to the way in which powerful parties condition the cultural and economic environment in such a way that their interests begin to be perceived as natural and inevitable by the general public.
We can also learn from Louis Althusser's concept of interpellation. The basic idea is that you can get people to internalise beliefs by addressing them as if they already had those beliefs. Twenty years ago nobody believed that cash was “inconvenient”, but every time I walk into London Underground I see adverts that address me as if I was a person who finds cash inconvenient. The objective is to reverse-engineer a belief within me that it is inconvenient, and that cashlessness is in my interests.
Digital systems may be "convenient", but they often come with central points of failure.
The cash system allows for an unmonitored "off the grid" space. This is also the reason why financial institutions and financial technology companies want to get rid of it. Cash transactions are outside the net that such institutions cast to harvest fees and data.
Despite this, we see an alignment between government and financial institutions.
The call for evidence repeatedly notes the negative elements of cash – associating it with crime and tax evasion – but barely mentions the negative implications of digital payments.
[1] The cashless society is a con – and big finance is behind it
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