Annoying tech libertarians think that I'm an ardent luddite about the idea of a cashless society because I think the government cares what kind of cheeseburger I order, which is inane. I care because you can't use panhandling money in a McDonald's staffed by touchscreens connected to POS terminals that only accept cards or phone e-wallets.

A human with a cash register is always preferable because that way of doing things isn't bottlenecked through the need to have a bank account with a card or an activated, charged cell phone. Cashless, automated commerce is about cutting the poorest strata of society out, and instituting a relatively-high baseline of social legitimacy to even order off the dollar menu.

And tech industry shitheads KNOW this. Otherwise they'd be going in on schemes to make e-wallets something that poor people can use more easily, and taking a predatory skim off it. That'd be anethetical to their goals of turning cities into antiseptic social projects where undesirables just sort of conveniently disappear. It's hostile economic architecture.

Poor people & the cashless economy (1/2)

@Zero_Democracy The tech industry proper isn’t in the ‘e-wallets accessible to poor people’ niche because credit card companies got there first.

For the past ~decade, there’s been a rack of gift cards in every corner store and grocery I’ve gone into. Among the options are general-purpose cards from Visa, MasterCard, and AmEx. At least so far, you can buy them for cash in denominations as little as $5. But? At the point of sale, you have to pay an activation fee on top of the value loaded onto the card itself. Only part of it goes to the brick & mortar store, to compensate them for display space. At least according to the one non-franchise convenience store owner I asked, the lions’ share of that fee goes to the c-card company.

(The next step up is reusable pre-paid credit cards—works like a debit card sans bank account—which also typically charge a fee to add cash to their balance.)