It’s easy - tax evasion, money laundering, secret financing of things you wouldn’t want others to know. All perfectly fine reasons to fight for.
Cashless society is a controlled society. While some may misuse cash for illicit activities, many prefer it to protect privacy, maintain personal control, or avoid digital vulnerabilities. Dismissing cash usage solely for nefarious reasons overlooks legitimate concerns and individual freedoms, and equates privacy with wrongdoing, a perspective that might inadvertently erode fundamental rights and personal autonomy.
This is all technically true but cash is not the answer.
Right now there are so many easily accessible ways for governments to spy on people (cell phone geolocation, call metadata monitoring) that I’m not sure that for the purposes you think of you aren’t screwed already anyway. From this perspective fight for cash use becomes a bit theoretical.
The only people that I know of personally that are strongly for cash are either people that frequently skirt around taxes (“minor” stuff like car repair shops) and unfortunately conspiracy nuts. Genuine privacy oriented people exist but realistically the majority will be there for selfish reasons.
The societal cost of tax evasion, money laundering and financing organisations that legally require transparency (political orgs, NGOs etc) are massive and immediate.
What we really need is strong oversight of institutions, government transparency, rule of law and healthy democracy. Those are the things you want to enshrine in your constitution.
I agree that makes sense and is highly needed, but I always remember the civilization-old question “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (“Who will guard the guards themselves?” or “Who watches the watchmen?”). Balancing privacy with oversight is complex. Cash offers an option for privacy and autonomy. Striking a balance between individual rights and societal needs requires thoughtful governance, not necessarily the elimination of choices like cash that some citizens may rely on.
Right now there are so many easily accessible ways for governments to spy on people (cell phone geolocation, call metadata monitoring)
We don’t have to get rid of the other one, just because we gladly abolished the first already.
Also, I am still free to leave my cell phone at home, or anywhere else, while I am cheating on my wife.
Genuine privacy oriented people exist but realistically the majority will be there for selfish reasons.
Do you have any reliable source for this? I’d argue that the majority of people just want privacy. It is not up to the state nor tech companies to see what you buy, where, when, and how much you pay. This is not democracy. It is its opposite. Once this data is collected, it will be used to your disadvantage sooner or later.
