Ian B

Note: This posting began life as a comment on the similar article by Robert Henderson. SIG

The abolition of cash transactions is a very worrying near future scenario and one that should be of great concern to libertarians, or anyone who wants monetary privacy. The problem is that for most purchases, electronic really is very quick and easy and naturally advantageous. The days of pay packets bulging with twenty pound notes are sadly already long gone. I argued a long time ago among friends and those who could not get away from me that the obligation to accept one’s wages into a bank account is fundamentally unjust- since the money is being paid not to oneself, but to a third party- but it fell on largely deaf ears. But then I think monthly pay is a ludicrous injustice too, but most people don’t give a damn about that either.

(Anecdotage: my first proper job was in a West End Theatre; the not inconsiderable weekly cash payroll was done by a rather elderly and usually gin-addled woman who never made a single mistake. Nowadays people wait two months for their overtime from an HR Department. Progress?).

So I think the practical issues of using technology are not really much of an issue; the issue is primarily one of privacy. There are very few, if any, safeguards, left to prevent the State or anyone else suitably empowered simply removing money from a bank account. Even modest sums of cash are now treated with great suspicion under the “money laundering” regulations and require the individual to prove their right to keep their own money and explain its origin.

Moreover, I have seen several writers (one in the Telegraph, for instance) gleefully talk of how a cashless society would end black markets and illicit trading in internal contraband. It would also mean, of course, nice middle class people who do not do such things suddenly finding they can’t save a few quid by paying the proletarian tradesman cash in hand.

However, we have been teetering into this world for some time. I have experience of running an “adult” business on the internet (just rude cartoons, the most boring porny business imaginable, no nubile models canoodling on the shagpile sadly) and since this is an “undesirable” though legal business, one has to jump through arbitrary hoops set up by the credit card companies just to trade. Only a couple of “approved” credit card processing subcontractors are allowed (compared to a myriad for non adult businesses), who charge very high percentages of the fee per transaction. There are arbitrary other fees and ever more “compliance” regulations. The thing most people don’t realise as they mither about internet porn is that the credit card companies could pull the plug at any time.

From a libertarian perspective, they are entitled to do all this blah de blah, bollocks to that, but what matters is that it is a foretaste of the danger of purely electronic money as described in Robert’s article. As databases tie together (that was what “joined up governance” really meant when Blair started spouting it) it is entirely conceivable that one will find that attempting to buy a pint of beer will be declined because you have exceeded the limit set by your NHS Personal Health Manager (formerly known as a doctor) and there will be nothing you can do about it.

Unfortunately I do not think there is much we can do to stop this from the technology angle. All we can try to do is demolish the Progressive philosophy of governance which justifies this ghastly system of intervention that the technology has enabled to reach a new intensity.