2012-02-24 Forbes.com - The Cashless Utopia Mirage

[Stephen Gornick]

This is Jon Matonis' latest post.  It doesn't mention Bitcoin but the arguments in favor of cash are the same arguments to be in favor of a cash-less digital payment system with user-defined anonymity like Bitcoin provides so I'm posting it here.

The Cashless Utopia Mirage

Let’s not kid ourselves, because the end of money, as we know it, really means the beginning of the transactional surveillance State, which makes this a serious debate about the boundaries of State power and the dignity of an individual.
[...]
With ultimate tracking capabilities, how does Wolman decide when a government’s “right” becomes a wrong?
[...]
Privacy, especially user-defined privacy, sits on a sliding scale that is defined by the individual. One person’s idea of privacy may be anonymity from all and another person’s idea of sufficient privacy may be privacy from aggressive marketing companies and governments but perhaps not from banks. The point being that it is the prerogative of the individual, not book authors or digital money consultants, to determine where one sits on that personal sliding scale.

 - http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/02/24/the-cashless-utopia-mirage

The comments are worth reading as well.

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The comments are worth reading as well.

The naivete displayed by David Birch in his comment is quite saddening.

[molecular]

The comments are worth reading as well.

The naivete displayed by David Birch in his comment is quite saddening.

Looking forward to the blog post he announced

[marcus_of_augustus]

By requiring a monetary system to function as an arm of law enforcement for govt. is placing ultimately impossible constraints on the system to function well as money, the market pricing mechanism, it's primary purpose. The govt. virtual monies, with its now massive attendant financial transaction surveillance apparatus, is a compromised inferior product that the market will eventually abandon when superior monetary products become available and ubiquitous.

I just cannot see how anyone can argue that compromising money with surveillance, law enforcement or other "socially-fashionable" desired properties makes any economic or monetary sense? It is setting the govt. monies up inevitably to fail, maybe that is the plan?

I'm glad Jon Matonis is around to shine his brilliant light in these dark, arcane corners ..... however grotesque the creatures one can sometimes find hiding in them.

[molecular]

I'm glad Jon Matonis is around to shine his brilliant light in these dark, arcane corners ..... however grotesque the creatures one can sometimes find hiding in them.

haha, well-said.

[TraderTimm]

< snipped >
I just cannot see how anyone can argue that compromising money with surveillance, law enforcement or other "socially-fashionable" desired properties makes any economic or monetary sense? It is setting the govt. monies up inevitably to fail, maybe that is the plan?

Marcus, great post by the way. I always enjoy reading what you have to say, if I haven't told you before - I did now!

I also wonder where the government is going with this monetary policy suicide. I can't help thinking that there's a few people who saw the dominoes in place, and are nudging the whole system towards collapse - because some of these policies seem absolutely insane to me. I'm aware of the saying "never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity", but by Satoshi, I can't even comprehend some of the things that are being done out there.

[sunnankar]

I also wonder where the government is going with this monetary policy suicide.

Bitcoin empowers individuals to send any amount of money to anyone anywhere at anytime and cannot be seized, frozen, confiscated or impeded. Sounds like science fiction; and was until four years ago. The future is here just not evenly distributed. And by all means, do not tell some about this classified form of value transfer. Asymmetric knowledge is a great aspect of markets.

[marcus_of_augustus]

I also wonder where the government is going with this monetary policy suicide.

Bitcoin empowers individuals to send any amount of money to anyone anywhere at anytime and cannot be seized, frozen, confiscated or impeded. Sounds like science fiction; and was until four years ago. The future is here just not evenly distributed. And by all means, do not tell some about this classified form of value transfer. Asymmetric knowledge is a great aspect of markets.

Quite ... and the ability to recognize good money is at the pinnacle of financial market analysis which leads to asymmetric market  knowledge.