Comment by cattown 11 hours ago
Use cash. Get cash out at the ATM, keep it in your wallet. Spend it at local businesses. Even if you can’t do it all the time do it as much as you can. Start today and stick with it.
Otherwise this is what we’ll be stuck with everywhere all the time. There won’t be a choice anymore if you don’t exercise that right. We’re already far down this slippery slope.
I wish you would put content in your post. Who are you referring to, what monumental efforts, who repressed them, and how?
Ah yes the Bolsheviks, famous for simping for big companies. It's funny how all the fake bull shit people think is happening in Communist China is actually going to happen in the EU and the United States in the next 10 years.
> advocating for mass individual consistent behavioral change is less than useless.
Again, the trend is to sound smart by saying it's hopeless. We behave much differently than prior generations in many ways. Heck, look at the rise of neo-right wing politics, the manosphere, YOLO investing, etc. Look at smoking, recycling, etc. Look at people using social media, when cell phones weren't universal for their parents
It doesn't require politics.
They're not the same, but they are in agreement about expanding the surveillance state and cracking down on protests. They don't agree on which protests to crack down on, with the exception of anti-war or anti-genocide protests which both deem unacceptable.
I completely agree with you, but you cannot stop this train. Cash will continue to exist only as a loophole to be exercised by rich and connected individuals. Everyone else will be robbed by police for having "suspicious amounts of cash."
> Spend it at local businesses.
The ones that still take it, anyway.
Yeah, people forget bills have a serial code, and if shops were required by law to validate them you could still mostly track all the money
Cameras and other means of tracking cannot remove me from commerce. The problem isn't just the tracking. Cash requires no oversight to transact. If I am required to use a payment network, there are many third parties who get a say in what I can do. That's the biggest issue.
On the plus side, once cash is de facto outlawed, the US Supreme Court will be forced to finally step in on the subject. The removal of cash will force banks to authorize bank cards and accounts, no matter who. A bit later after that, they will be forced to give access everyone access to payment terminals and gateways.
A reason to use cash is that transaction fees (like CC fees), over time, tend to eat up all the original money being transacted.
On the other hand, cash is a germ superhighway.
And advocating for mass individual consistent behavioral change is less than useless. If you want change you need political organization. The sum of public opinion is more influenceable than the sum of everyone's actions. Unfortunately, in the US it's not so simple as "vote for the party that's against this" as we only have two and neither are. Which means if you want to be effective you should throw your lot in with an advocacy group. In this case probably the EFF, maybe the ACLU?