A World Without Cash

The last time you bought something, did you use a card, cash or something else? If you automatically thought "who uses cash nowadays", you're far from alone. More and more people are eschewing physical currency for digital dollars, and this move seems largely supported by big banks as well some countries. Proponents argue a cashless society has no shortage of benefits for everyone involved, but critics suspect there are more than a few dangerous possibilities at play -- and something sinister may be afoot.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome

(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is not They call me Ben. We are joined as
always with our super producer Paul Cash. A credit decond.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Now,
we'll we'll answer this question in a second, but we
want you to think about this as well while you're listening.

(00:47):
What was the last thing you purchased, literally with the
last thing you purchased before you turned on today's episode,
did you use cash? Did you use a card or
ben Bucks or a person who still writes a check?
If you said a card. In fact, if you're one
of the people who just heard those questions and scoffed
and thought it's twenty who on earth bothers with cash?

(01:11):
Then congratulations, you're not alone? So so what about us?
If as long as we're not, you know, confessing to
anything illegal. Once the last thing you guys bought, was
it drugs. It was drugs, wasn't No, mine was was
going to be groceries. Quick story. I was at a
Kroger local grocer, and uh, as soon as I've got
about probably a hundred dollars more, maybe even than that

(01:35):
worth of food in my card, I take it up
to check out and all of their network goes down
and yeah, and all have got on me our cards,
and I go, oh, well, I can't put this on
the old corporate card anymore. I was really hoping to
get away with it, and I would have it wasn't
for those darned kids. Has kids, Okay? Anyway, Um so

(01:56):
I ran across the street and I got cash out,
which I never do anymore, took it back over there,
and by the time I got back, the network was up.
So really, it's not a story. I didn't have to
use my cash. Don't rob me. I'm not carrying it
on my person. But you did, so you ultimately ended
up purchasing with a card. Yeah, I'm sorry, No, no, no,
It makes sense though, because it's it's the only reason. Yeah, yeah,

(02:17):
unless I'm traveling, and you know, that's really the only
time I'll take out a little bit of extra cash
as it like, maybe something will come up that I
won't anticipate. But other than that, do you carry cash? Guys?
I keep on my cash in my shoe, all of
it for a power move. When I have to like
give someone some cash, I pull that out of my

(02:37):
shoe and see if they'll take it. That's actually from
an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm that it's never happened
to me. It'll take your shoe cash? Yeah, I used to.
I used to carry uh cash in a couple of
different parts of my person when I was traveling in
sketchy areas and then also when I am in cities
and he use public transit a lot. It's just an

(02:58):
old habit to always have. Don't This may sound paranoid,
but I'm sure I'm not alone in this. I strongly
believe in not carrying all of your stuff like that
in one area. You know what I mean? If you
have something your wallet, having twenty or fifty bucks in
your shoe is also not as crazy as it sounds.

(03:20):
You know, it's a smart idea. Uh this this interesting? No,
did you did you? What did you buy? Is there
anything that pops in mind where like your last purchase
or something with cash in general in general. I but
I went to the breakfast bar at Whole Foods this morning,
and I actually paid using my Apple Pay on my phone,
where you can just hold it up to the r

(03:41):
F I D reader and then you put your fingerprint in,
and then you put in your pin and you're done.
And this as long as these systems are in place,
we see a lot of advantages for a cashless society. Right.
You don't have to haul around large amounts of bills,
you don't have to worry about counting out or receiving change.

(04:02):
It really can be when everything works as simple as
putting your phone up to the r F I D reader,
and it puts a level of difficulty between you and
a potential person who's going to rob you, because they
can't just take your card and then immediately use it. Generally,
there's some steps you have to take. Yeah, and again
in theory. Right, So that's today's question. What happens in

(04:26):
a world where these sorts of interactions mad at the
grocery store, knoll at the breakfast buffet. What happens when
those cashless transactions are the norm. What happens when they're
the mandate. Well, here are the facts. For anybody in
the audience today who happens to be a dragon sitting
atop a pile of cash, treasure, blood, and gold. Don't

(04:49):
worry just yet. Cash is still king, as they say,
at least four Now. That's because it represents, even today
the most frequent method of payment in the US O
overall that that equals out to about thirty one of
all consumer transactions. And that's more than electronic transactions credit cards,

(05:10):
debit cards, or of course checks. That's worldwide. That's just
in the US, just in the US. Such a surprising
statistic to me. The US also lags behind some countries,
which will will explore a few examples in a moment.
But this also makes me think, when's the last time
you saw somebody write a check? It's I mean, who what?

(05:33):
Who even takes checks anymore? Is my question? I write,
I the last time I saw a check or road
a check even interactive with the check, it was for
UH rental agreement. That was what it was for me too,
And I didn't have any checks. You have to go
get check, go get checks to write a check, and
they don't ever sell just one check unless you get

(05:54):
a cashier's checks, right, that's right. I'm trying to think
of other methods. I'm pretty sure some doctor's offices, like
if you're paying a cop or something, Well will accept
a check. On the grocery stores, they also both have
demographics that will tend to include older people exactly. It
just seems yeah, you're right, especially the older people. That's
just more of like a you know, old school way

(06:17):
of paying that people don't want to fully phase out
because it makes certain customers uncomfortable. They want to be
able to do things the way they're used to being
able to do things. But inherently, checks are very inefficient
means of paying because it takes a while for the
money to come out of your account. There's the whole
joke of don't cash this till Monday, you know, like
in the mail, checks in the mail, or a k A.

(06:37):
I'm writing you a check that at this particular point
in time isn't any good. That's a thing that that
that that that that is a sort of a pitfall
of of check writing and accepting really more than anything.
But unlike credit cards, checks do not incur interest in
that way. So that's one appeal people could see. Also,
some people have the comfort, especially if they're locked into

(06:58):
the technology, they have the come for of physically writing
out their ledger, balancing their check book. You know, for
some people that can feel the way that people have
certain religions feel when they are handling roseries. I say
certain religions, but you know, like Catholicism, I guess would
be the main one. I'm not a rosary surgeon or doctor.

(07:20):
I think there are more stern Orthodox Yeah, I just
know that that's one of them. So was that the
beads thing? Yeah, yeah, so we see that despite the
fact that so many transactions do still occur in cash,
for a number of years, the United States and many
many other places have been moving away from physical currency.

(07:45):
It's true. Fewer and fewer adults are using printed or
minted US currency bills and coins at all. Now there
are some people who are just like, why would I
touch cash? It's it's dirty smells. We have some, uh,
we have some filthy statistics about about physical currency. In
earlier episodes, you don't like touching change, but how do

(08:07):
you feel about cash? I'm okay with it, You're okay
with it? The tactile nest of it all works for you. Yeah,
and thank you for checking, by the way. Yeah, yeah,
it's a lot more thonge contact with the bills, though.
Thong contact. That's what I'm there for. You mean, like
in the club. I'm assuming in the club or club.
I guess, Well, the thong is what you make of it,

(08:29):
you know. Well, you know I keep my cash in
my shoes. Some people keep cash in their thong. Yeah,
you might even have a like a little extra compartment
maybe at a hip. Wait, is a thong not a shoe?
I thought we were talking that's a type of flip flop. Yes,
that would the thong is saying is a component of
the flip. I guess you could call them thongs. Wait,
so if people say that, then what are we talking about?
Paul shrugs and says, yes, I was talking about underwear.

(08:51):
I always talking about selacious undergarments. Oh wow, don't be cool.
You knew what you were talking about. I had no idea.
My mom keeps her cell phone in her is here?
Is that weird? A lot of people keep their stuff knives, uh,
gas cards, probably beats, keepers, guns, bundles of cash, money, drugs.

(09:14):
You see that? Manna come back. It's still around. Money
clips are still around, as our money belts, which are
like the nerdy pocket protectors you wear abroad. Wait, so
is that like a Fannie pack exclusively for cash? Uh?
He doesn't have the carrying capacity of Fanning packs, but
you have. Most money belts will be worn under clothing
and they will strap around like a Fannie pack. Not all.

(09:36):
You can get some cool ones. They're like a doctor.
It's not the words, probably not doctor's clutch, but you
know what I'm talking about, the shoulder holsters for guns
that you see in different detective consective films and works
of fiction. This is this is interesting though. To to
get back to this idea of few people using printed currency.
According to the Pew Research Center, about three and ten

(09:58):
Americans said they go an entire week without touching cash
at all, and that number has risen in twenty used
to be a quarter of the population. But at the
same time, the people who said that all or nearly
all of their purchases were made using cash, the people
were the opposite of the card the card holders. That

(10:20):
number was and now it's fallen to and that trend
seems set to continue. There's a lot of research going
into this. On the side of surprise, the banking system
and Facebook and Facebook. Yes, Facebook wants to have its
own currency. I'll check this out. In the survey of

(10:42):
two thousand Americans, US Bank found it half of respondents
said they carry cash with them less than half the
time they're out. That makes sense. I can identify with that.
I get it. When they do carry cash, seventy said
they keep less than fifty bucks on hand and nearly
have less than twenty dollars when they're walking around, and

(11:05):
that I think makes a lot of sense when you're
talking about the amount of money you get generally out
of an a t M or something, which is I
would say primary, the primary way you get cash, unless
it's a gift or something um in. Those are generally
not always going to be twenties. So I can imagine
a twenty that you carry around because you might need it,
or forty maybe your emergency stash, right exactly if you're

(11:28):
in a situation where you need to pay for casually transaction.
As we know, there are a lot of places, especially
the larger cities, that are casually and they won't take
anything above a twenty. A lot of times, right, right,
that's absolutely true. We see a divided demographic. There are
social implications to the cash list society because there are

(11:51):
surprising divides between the way that we use currency, digital
or physical today. Even before some weird sci fi stuff,
we know that there are clear demographic divides here. One
of the first which should not surprise anyone, is age.
The second one should surprise people, But the first one

(12:13):
is age. We know that the younger you are, the
less likely you are to use cash. Funny thing, I
was actually at the courthouse the other day for jury duty.
I was very lucky, and then I actually got selected
to be on a jury and the you were lucky, well,
you didn't get I didn't get to the lucky Okay.
I was selected to be on a jury and the
case wrapped in that same day. And I had to say,

(12:34):
I actually, quite once I made peace with the whole
thing that I was gonna be there, you know, until
seven o'clock at night, and knew that it was pretty
much guaranteed to wrap that day. I really enjoyed the
whole process. But in the cafeteria of the of the courthouse,
they say twenties only accepted for purchases over a certain
dollar amount, which was a very specific caveat that I've

(12:55):
never seen before for accepting twenties. Was really really too Yeah,
I've seen I've seen that before, and then it's usually,
I would say, rather than something the farious that typically
is going to be the due to the fact that
the tills only have so much change they can make.

(13:16):
You know, it makes sense, and you probably can't go
to a bank and get that crack down to fives.
That makes sense. And also how many people, how many
people make a tiny purchase to break a twenty so
that they can pay for parking or they can pay
for some other related incidents. I didn't think about the
parking deal because that's a big part of going to
the courthouse is paying for parking. They don't validate it

(13:36):
at the courthouse, Yeah, definitely don't. The benefits of citizenship
do not go that far. Nope. So let's drip back
to these demographics really faster. Yeah, I don't want to
hit on age, which again makes I think a lot
of sense when you're thinking about this issue. Um, so
younger people, let's call them millennials, tend to ditch physical
cash for you know, stuff, that you can do on

(13:57):
your phone, or things you can use virtually like credit, debit,
digital payments, Apple, pay venmo Zel. It just goes on
and on PayPal um. In fact, more than one in
ten millennials use this thing, their digital wallet, the thing
on your phone that you probably have access to right
now if you wanted. They use that for every purchase.

(14:18):
And that is according to a separate report made by Experience, right,
so that's not Pew Research anymore. That's experience. And we
see that overall, thirty four percent, let's call it one
third of adults under the age of fifty typically don't
use cash. That's that's a crazy number. People over fifty

(14:38):
years old, the numbers much lower. Only of people over
fifty say, I've gotten a whole week without using physical currency.
But here is one of the distressing demographic divides. This
is the one that should give us food forethought. We
do see divisions along at economic lines, along the lines

(15:01):
of just straight income. It turns out that no matter
who you are in the US, if you have an
annual household income of over seventy five grand, you are
more than twice as likely to avoid using physical cash
than someone who's making thirty dollars or less per year.
That let's look at this a different way. Lower income

(15:23):
adults in this country are four times as likely as
higher income adults to say that they make all or
almost all of their purchases with cold, hard scratch cheddar
pony pony bones is another one, right, do we have
another one? Pony on them? Uh? Bread, bread is good,

(15:47):
like like bread. I want to bring back bread. Scrilla,
scrill is good, he said, scratch already, scratch scratch. Well,
that's a cool thing. This quote, out of context will
sound strange. That's the cool thing about a capitalist society,
you know, love it or hate it. People can use
almost any term to describe money and everyone else in

(16:08):
the room will get it, you know what I mean. Yeah,
it was a couple of toe knuckles short on that.
So I got the hamburger instead of the cheeseburger. Yeah
it was. It was. I couldn't believe they wanted me
to spend more. Slounced to upgrade to that. Clowns scounced yes, yeah, exactly.

(16:29):
This is already a controversial topic, the idea of a
world without physical currency, but it's only going to grow
more controversial over the next few years and we're going
to see programming wars about it. This is going to
be a hearts and minds conflict, especially in developed countries.
There are experts out there who will tout the benefits

(16:50):
of a cashless economy, and they have valid points. They'll say, well,
it's more safe for people working in retail, the people
who work at all night convenience stores and have that
sign that says we keep no more than x amount
of dollars in the register and it's time release. We
can't let you into the safe. That doesn't matter. What
are you gonna stick people up with a thumb drive
in the future and say transfer all of your digital

(17:11):
money to to me. That's gonna make it a whole
hell of a lot harder. Sounds sci fi, but I'm
pretty sure that's something that could happen. Those card readers,
you can just put it in your cell phone and
if somebody has a gun and a friend has a
cell phone with a card reader, you're talking about square

(17:31):
based robberies, robbering and in robbing an individual, that's what
I'm taking them out of their pocket, holding them up
and saying swiper. That's actually a really good point matter
that happens a lot. That happens a lot doesn't really,
I've never heard reports of that, but it makes perfect sense.
People getting robbed and forced to go to a t
M S happened. That's very common. But that's still a
cash situation. But it starts with the card. It does.

(17:52):
But you could argue that you could track the robbery
if someone used their square and you can. But think
about so, we have many people listening today who have
found uh, fraudulent charges on their cards. The bank will
hopefully return that refunded whatever. But the person who did that,

(18:16):
you know, who took that cash or made usually made
a purchase somewhere. They don't have to worry about it.
They're gone, they've schedaddled to the horizon, and are you know,
like capering around the pile of other stolen credit cards
they have. But that so we already see holes in
the argument of safety, right. We also see to the

(18:38):
point you just made, know what, we also see that
there is an ease of tracking otherwise suspicious or occulted
payments that exist in the gray red and black markets.
For anybody wondering what the gray red and black markets
are and what the difference is between them. The black
market is all the illegal dark Web stuff. The gray
market would be things that are not inherently illegal but

(19:00):
maybe skirt some of the regulations in a transaction, you
know what I mean. The red market is all about
human trafficking. You know, you're right. The red market is
organ trade. Okay, Yeah, I thought we were going there,
but I wasn't sure. I thought, and check out our
shows on on the red market, and every show we
do somehow touches on the black poket at some point.

(19:24):
But but with this we also see a lot of criticism.
So just as there are proponents on the side of
the concept of a cash list economy, there are vocal critics,
and they're asking, could a truly cashless society just be
another step along the path toward an all powerful or
welly and dictatorship. Will this spell the end of financial

(19:48):
privacy if such a thing still exists today, which is
a different question, And then what will a world without
cash mean? And what happens in the future where bills
and coins literally just become collectible items, you know, like
old stamps. Are the critics in short right to be concerned.

(20:10):
We'll learn about that right after a word from our sponsor.
Here's where it gets crazy. The short answer is absolutely.
And it seems that both the proponents of this concept
and the opponents of this concept are going to see

(20:30):
their theories in action. The rubber will hit the road,
and much sooner rather than later. In fact, the cash
list society already exists in some places. It's much further
along than we might like to think. Right So in Sweden, um,
right now, only one percent of the economy operates on
on currency, on cash, on on on paper and coins.

(20:53):
That is a tenth of the rate elsewhere in Europe.
We know the Swedes are are always up on the
latest train ends um, so that makes sense, and they're
really good at kind of streamlining things and making things
pretty efficient. So it's interesting to see how it's working
out there. And this is only one eighth of the
rate here in the United States of of folks in
areas that are that are going cash less. So the

(21:15):
New York Times says it only about one in ten
Swedes paid for anything anything at all in cash in
twenty seventeen. That's amazing. Think about that. You have you're
one of ten people in Sweden you meet up once
a year and you say, what did you buy? Because

(21:35):
you have weird Swedish parties. I don't know that means
that only one person in the room. It's been cash
on anything. You should call that number, ask a Swede
and see if they bought anything with cash. That's great,
that's a great idea. Unfortunately they pulled the number. You
kind of a longer call a Swede. It is a shame.
I had a lot of fun with that one, and

(21:56):
I hate phone calling. You actually called it, Yeah, I
just you know, it's one of the things you talk about,
but but you never do with Ben, you're a man
of action. Well, I spoke with a one time particularly
sticks out my head. I spoke with a delightful retired
lady and uh it was it was a great experience.
I hope she's doing well. I don't think she listens

(22:17):
to the show. So what are what are the big
the big red flags, the big concerns about you know,
you know, we always think of Sweden as everyone's happy
and idyllic and living in uh you know, tiny homes
or whatever and not spending cash. Uh, they seem happy,
they're rock and abba. You know that's right. That has
to be the only way. But what's that's what's the issue.

(22:39):
If they if they say they seem like they like it,
they seem like they have a good quality of life,
Where does where does it break down? Yeah, yeah, that's
the that's the twenty billion dollar question or one dollar
depending on how inflation works out. We have easily discernible
concerns about a cashless economy, and no doubt in this
show we will be preaching to the choir partially. First,

(23:04):
we have to look back at what we've already proven.
We've proven there is an inherent economic divide between the
halves and the have nots when it comes to cash.
If you the less money you make, the more likely
you are to use cash in general. That's very broadbrush,
but so far everything we found proves that this is
the case. This means that it is highly likely that

(23:27):
a purely digital society could spell disaster for low income
residents people who tend to use physical currency. So introduce
some jargon here, which is I think a little bit disturbing.
There's there are a couple of industry terms. One is
unbanked and one is underbanked. They mean what they sound

(23:49):
like underbanked means that there's a financial institution that says, hey,
this person should be more included in our system. And
unbanked means I don't know how, but this joker is
living under the table there only in cash for everything.
They've deleted their Facebook, you know, etcetera, etcetera. It has
these implications that if you are not participating in the
financial system, you are either deprived or potentially dangerous. It's

(24:14):
um it's a little bit of what you call it
Chomsky esque Bernese esque packaging. Well, we can see how
that somewhat makes sense, especially if you think with my
migration issues here in the unit in the United States alone,
like just residency, and if you are here by some
means that is outside of the legal ways of staying

(24:37):
here in the United States, then the only way to
go is to not have a bank account and to
use cash for everything, because that if you were to
get a bank account, your identity would be attached to
it and you be found out. It's the same as
voter I D laws. There's arguments that that disenfranchises people
because it affects you know, people that are in poverty

(24:58):
who may be can't can't get an idea or for
for whatever reason, or living outside the law in some capacity, yeah,
or never have enough money at any one time to
keep in a bank, so to the to the point
where they're not being charged for not having enough money
in the bank at all time, because let's not forget
that is absolutely a thing. Yeah, which is so insane

(25:21):
waiting for the privilege of getting your money out. Future
historians will take note of that. I would hope on
this point, we also see the problem of prerequisite paperwork. Right,
you want to bank account and you don't have proof
of residency one maybe proof of identity too, and is

(25:43):
similar to the voter I d stuff. This is uh,
this is a way. I know it feels like a
strong word, but this is a way to potentially financially
disenfranchise people and then they are forced to work with
the smaller and smaller slice of the financial pie that
does allow cash dealing. Right now, there there is a trend,

(26:05):
the downward trend. Fewer and fewer people are quote unquote
unbanked or underbanked. But between five and eighteen percent of
people living in this country currently don't possess credit cards.
And I would say, well done. You know, no judgment
if you have one. Uh, they they are useful, right
if you're responsible with them. But there are a lot

(26:26):
of people who have very valid reasons that they don't
want to interact with credit cards. And this this leads
us to the ultimate question regarding this first concern. Should
paying customers, potentially paying customers be barred from stores or
restaurants because they don't have, you know, uh, an American
Express or a Visa or a Discover or of course

(26:49):
that the last word in credit A diners club that's
still a thing, maybe gone the way of checks, it's
still around. Really, surely diners Club is still around. Who
wants to dine and not being a club? Is that
similar to a triple a or is that? I think
the idea is that you subscribe to it and it

(27:11):
gives you discounts at at a pit places that accepted
or something. It was the first card really, it was
like the first you were called payment card company in history.
I think Now technically it's owned by Discover, so there
you go. It's diners Club is no longer independence institution,

(27:33):
though you know they want to hold onto that branding.
I watched one of the old commercials you can still
see them on YouTube. Can we can we talk about
something here, guys. Yeah, the concept of not not using
digital currencies or credit cards out of preference because they
use just somebody doesn't like it. Because my dad is

(27:55):
one of those people where he very much will be
carrying around cash on purpose to do everything he's gonna
do for that day or for that trip or that week.
He will make all the purchases in cash and then
he's done with it. And that's tremendously convenient, right, because
then that makes a purchase stand alone, right, and his
books are are balanced because he did that one transaction

(28:18):
of taking the cash out, right. So this leads into
the huge second concern, which is privacy. And this is
a concern that should be uh in the forefront of
everyone's mind. It's only becoming more important over time because,
like you said, Matt, many people who do not use
credit cards avoid them out of preference rather than necessity.

(28:41):
So do we start telling these people then that they
must use these methods of payment while everyone knows very
well that we're essentially making these people contribute to increasingly
thorough and sophisticated profiles of their individual lives. Each and
every time they make a purchase. And then do we

(29:03):
just uh, do we just be pollyanna about it, as
as Dan would say, Do we just sort of fiddle
d d our way around the fact that this is
one piece of a larger profile that may involve other
aspects of your personal life? Do we ignore those implications?
We cannot. We will dive further into the rabbit hole.

(29:25):
After a word from our sponsors, we're back. Let's go
a little further away from the light of what's proven
and explore the shadows beyond the things that could happen

(29:46):
it might happen that haven't happened yet, or most distressingly,
the things that may be happening now despite the fact
that no one's really talking about them on your local
new who is Affiliate? This is the first one. What
if private financial powers are pushing cash less currency as

(30:07):
a way to rest control of money from the state.
Is this may feel kind of small for for some
of us, but the fact of the matter is that historically,
the the ability to print money, the ability to be
the person who determines the value of whatever these coupons

(30:28):
or articles of faith. Maybe uh, that ability the sovereign
creator originator of currency. This, this power is something that
is tremendously important to states. It's up there with having
the ability to legally kill people. It's up there with
having the ability to have a standing army. Right, this

(30:50):
is this is a life and death thing economically for
a lot of state actors. How do you pay for
a standing army If you can't print your own currency,
You've gotta rely on somebody else. How do you maintain
an army if you cannot be the one who determines
the value of money? You know what I mean? So
what if this, what if this becomes something where let's say,

(31:10):
the United States of America or Sweden, New Zealand's whatever,
whatever place you wanna you want to name. What if
there's a situation where country's entire currency then becomes controlled
by a consortium of financial powers or a single financial power,

(31:32):
you know what I mean? What if what if Chase
Manhattan one day decides to you know that they think
Nigeria is a problem, so they just remove their access
that financial network where they say, because we are the source,
because we are the faucet through which this financial fluid flows,
we will cut off the faucet and like, I mean,

(31:55):
you could argue bad pr move. Sure is it They're
right to do that? Yes, if they control it. I mean,
might makes right in this situation, you know, especially if
they have the backing of other antagonistic state powers and
Nigeria rightly says, hey, we should be in charge of

(32:16):
our currency, and then maybe Western powers say, nah, we
talked to the folks at Chase Manhattan and got a
pretty good case. We're gonna make this a win win
for everyone. Right. It's weird. It reminds me of resource
extraction problems in other countries, like with oil and the
control of over oil fields and whether it's a state
run thing or a privately run thing. And then what

(32:37):
happens when somebody comes in and wants yours, wants to
control yours, like a foreign entity wants to come in
and control your currency or the transactions at least litaker
in your country. I mean, and you know, evidence proves
I don't know why this is why everybody is still
pretending this is some sort of controversial hot take. Evidence

(32:58):
proves that the reason Western powers got involved in Libya
and create a regime change was entirely because the French
government wanted to retain hegemonic control over the currency. And
I'm not I'm not defending Mama Gadaffi. I'm not picking
a horse in the race. That's just what happened. And

(33:19):
you can you can google it, you can search it,
because at this point the truth of that conflict does
not matter too, I mean to the people who would
censor it. Yeah, of course, babe, it's past the news
cycles whatever, right, and that point quick to We talked
about that for like two weeks. Dusty Tomes of currency

(33:40):
and international trade? Why why would you dedicate time to
that man? The Mandalorian season one is out. Huh, maybe
a baby Yoda was on currency? People would care more?
Or the child? Speaking of currency and baby Yoda, did
you hear that Builder Bears coming out with a baby
Yoda plushy fly off the shelves. Man, that's gonna become

(34:03):
its own currency. I tell you the kids, they love
the baby Yoda. You know who else loves the baby Yoda? Everyone?
Literally everyone else's yeah, we'll get your get your cash
less wallets out, start scanning them at the Builder Bear.
I mean, make no mistake, right, that's what people want

(34:23):
you to do. That's what the people in control of
the money want you to do. They want you to
not spend cash to buy your Yoda build a bear.
Well and funny to the language that even like you know,
Apple uses in terms of the app on your phone
that stores all your your money and your cards that
you can scan in. They call it a wallet. Everyone's
using that terminology because people are comfortable with that, you know. Um.

(34:46):
But at the end of the day, they're trying they
it would behoove them to to move away from a
cashlest economy. Everyone just want they want people to spend
money online and have it be one click purchases using
your thumb print, you know, like, so you don't even
have time to think about it, rights we do, we
do see some interesting psychology at play there. And this
this has moved, to be absolutely crystal clear, This has

(35:09):
moved far beyond some kind of boardroom conversation or some
professors different opinions arguing in a civil manner, the the
war for how you spend money, and it is turning
into a war that this this war has gone to
the streets. If you live in the Western world, you

(35:30):
have seen banks shutting down, branches shutting down, a T. M.
S right, automatic teller machines. This is they're not for nothing,
are they doing this? This is an attempt to push
consumers into using those digital payment systems first, and using
that digital banking infrastructure, because again, there is tremendous power

(35:53):
in owning the system. I would also say there's a
profit motive. This isn't necessarily this isn't inherently nefarious if
you believe what the the official statements of the banks say.
There's a clear cost cutting motive here, because if you
have a branch, you have to have staff, you have

(36:14):
to have security, you have to pay these people, right,
and if you replace them with a self service app.
You know, your your banking app. You can check on
your phone. You can just use that information to buy things.
You can put your card number in your Amazon account
and what have you. You can take a picture of
your check if you just got paid and it gets deposited.

(36:36):
What that's pretty nuts, right, And you have to wonder
about the technology there. Sorry, that just that blew my mind.
When I watched my wife do that, I went, you
can white, No, I know, you can't take that to
the bank right now. I didn't believe it at first either.
I think it has some security issues. But when you
when you put everybody into a system like this, you're

(36:58):
saving executives of the banking institutions a ton of money, right,
and that does translate to the bottom line, saving shareholders
cash as well. You're also allowing um in a way,
you're allowing another revenue stream, a passive revenue stream, and you,

(37:19):
the customer, by the way, you get nothing. It's a
Willy Wonka moment, right, or it could be we believe
in nothing Lebowski. That's what I make. So that makes sense,
and it's a business. There's nothing wrong with that. But
also people need to be aware that your transactions in

(37:40):
an entirely electronic system become another package that can be
sold to data aggregators without anything other than your blanket
approval because you didn't read the terms and conditions when
you clicked. But who would who would do that? Who
would not read the terms and conditions? Literally everybody. I

(38:00):
was gonna say, all of the employees who just lost
all their jobs to the app? But wait a minute, though,
it is all these transactions are encrypted, right, I mean
what are they selling? They're selling just the contents? Like yeah, okay,
that makes sense. So you can't exactly tie it to

(38:21):
an individual per se, but you can tie it to
a demographic or well, yeah, I wonder how it's used
if it's if it's anonymized in that way, Like how
granular do you think that information gets for folks that
buy it? It's still evolving? Really yeah? Yeah? Interesting? And
this I mean think about how if you are an
Apple iPhone user, depending on the model of iPhone you have,

(38:45):
think about how if you spend time doing routine things,
your phone, depending on the settings, will just start proposing
alerts or alarms for you. Right that It's it's a
similar to similar reach into your brain. So banks did
a Comcast move or Exfinity or whatever you wanna call it.

(39:07):
So there was when net neutrality was still a huge debate. UH.
Comcast was one of the companies lobbying intensely to remove
net neutrality to be able to sell you a an
Internet agreement the same way that you would agree to
a cable package a la carte certain channels, right right,

(39:29):
So you can you can pay for basic Google or Wikipedia,
but then if you want to go visit something else,
you have to pay the internet service provider. So of
course it's a cash grab, obviously, but the main, the
main point, the reason I bring this up is that
when asked about this, Comcast said things like, well, we

(39:51):
talked to consumers and they want more choice. That's what
we're giving them. We're giving them more choice. That is
such book. Well guess what the banks are saying, Hey,
all these customers, they want to do everything online, they
want to do everything electronically. We're giving them what they want.
But that's such circular or like you know, inherently flawed logic,

(40:13):
as they're saying, we're gonna give you more choices by
limiting your choices than selling you back the choices you
originally add at an ala carte premium in the Comcast case,
and this one is just they're just saying, hey, we'd
rather do this the fast way through my phone or
whatever than having to go to a bank, do cash,
do that kind of thing. Well, think about it, think

(40:33):
about the argument this way. Let's let's walk through it.
The argument for the financial institutions is, hey, we're not
saying people have to do this. We are reacting to
what our customers want because we are vary customer focused.
You know, we're we're here to make you guys happy.
But what they're what they're actually doing, if you look

(40:53):
at the behaviors and you look at the policies and
play their activities can form much more closely to a
concept from behavioral economics, which is called nudging. And we've
talked about this a little bit when we talked about
opting in or opting out on a driver to be
an organ donor and a driver's license application. If people
are automatically opted in, then they're much less likely to

(41:17):
opt out. Also, shout out to uh to a listener
you wrote to us and brought up a fantastic point.
They said some people would be against being organ donors
on their license because they genuinely believe that if they're
in a traumatic injury and they're you know, they're in
a touch and ghost situation in a hospital, and they

(41:38):
are marked as an organ donor, in some cases, the
medical professionals might just let them go or not try
as hard to keep them around. Shout out to Sterling, Yes,
thank you so much, Surling. That was a fantastic point.
Nudging is like that. Let's say everybody does option A.
It doesn't matter what option A is it could be

(41:59):
a rito bowl. It could be uh, it could be
paying with cash, you know, it could be uh, what
what are those what are those things that used to
be on the front of pants, the little wrinkles, pleats plates, Yes,
it could be pleated pants. Option A, but you want whichever,

(42:20):
whatever business you are, you want people to do Option B.
People are more used to option A. They understand it,
they get it. That burrito bowl makes sense to me.
I like to pay with cash. I've always had these pants.
What you do instead, instead of saying you have to
pay with a card, or you have to order the
case of dilla, or you have to wear unpleated pants,

(42:42):
you just make it slowly and slowly more difficult to
get that burrito bowl. Now it's no longer on the menu.
You can still order it, but you have to make
it a custom order. You can still pay with cash,
but you have to go to one certain line in
the grocery store. You can still wear pleaded pay it's
but they're not making any new ones. You can see

(43:03):
this at work. If you've ever this is odd. But
if you ever been on a turnpike or a you know,
a road where you have to pay for the privilege
to a toll road where you have to pay for
the privilege to be on that road. Um where in
a lot of the lanes. When I was a kid
growing up, it was all you would pay cash to
get through or money basically. Right then it became well

(43:24):
you can pay cash, where you can pay with a
card of some sword. Well, then it became a system
where you can pay to put a thing on your
car that lets you run, like ride right through the
toll and but generally you could just they had to
think two lanes in a lot of places, especially on
the Florida Turnpike, where you could use that special cash
list system, But then everybody else got to go and pay,

(43:47):
and then you kind of over all the years, the
cash list system began moving further and further to the
right on the highway where all the lanes are. Then
that and then you can only really take one or
two lanes to pay with because the rest it's essentially
a subscription service. You're subscribing to the road exactly, and
that it's well, that's what you're doing with a card. Really,

(44:09):
you're subscribing to a company that is just going to
cycle money for you. You're you're subscribing to that sandbox.
Everything you buy or purchase use in that sandbox. Their
eyes are on it. Just not inherently bad. And also
there's to be completely fair, there is a great argument
about how you have how long it takes to make
that shift. You know, you'd leave a lot of people

(44:29):
out in the cold if you just turn everything cashless.
That's what we're saying. Right, Eventually that sandbox gets so
big that you don't get to play if you don't participate,
and in you know, because the sandbox takes up the
entire playground and no more swings. It's all just a sandbox,
exactly exactly. And in that case, for this, if you

(44:52):
add a million dollars in cash in a cashless society,
that doesn't matter until the moment you take that cash
to if I financial institution and they take that physical
cash from you and they put some bleeps in, some
bloops in their computer system, and now you're now you're
a millionaire who can use their money. That's crazy. That

(45:12):
is just I get the logic behind it. But if
you think about it, like explaining that to an extraterrestrial
or to someone who has never heard of money, that
sounds kind of arbitrary. Is there an argument that this
thing would also eliminate like some aspects of crime. Yeah,
because I mean, you know, the idea of money laundering

(45:32):
is turning dirty cash into some other form or whatever.
And if you can't spend the cash in the first
I don't know, you know what I mean, like or
you know again, drugs is a transactional cash economy in
and of itself, of scale, what happens then you know
exactly And not that I know this personally, but I
know a lot of drug dealers do take venmo. That's

(45:53):
that's that's a thing. You just be mindful of the
emoji you choose to use, right, So it's true. We
should also say that cutting costs, in addition to increasing
government surveillance potential, which I think is what we're getting at,
it also could save a lot of money for a
government because now think about it, you can shut down

(46:14):
the mint. You don't need to pay uh. Like in
the US, we pay a quasi public I believe is
the euphemism we use. We pay a quasi public entity
to create that stuff more or less out of nothing,
and then charge us for doing that. And now you're
out of that, you're potentially out of that relationship. So

(46:37):
you can save money on infrastructure, you can increase whatever
you want to call your surveillance system, probably call it
national defense or security. You know, something people will vote for.
But let's let's get back to the nudge. How do
we do this. There's a journalist named Brett Scott who
wrote a great piece for The Guardian over in the UK,

(46:58):
and Scott found a great real life example. Until I
heard your anecdote about toll roads, Bat, this was my
favorite one. This is still my favorite. We just pulled
the quote this. This should hit anybody. This should hit
at home if you've been to a grocery store and
here's the quote from Brett Scott. We can illustrate this

(47:20):
with the example of self checkout tills at supermarkets. Yes, again,
this is obviously the best example. The underlying agenda is
to replace checkout staff with self service machines to cut costs,
but supermarkets have to convince their customers. They thus initially
present self checkout as a convenient alternative. When some people
then use that alternative, the supermarket can cite that as

(47:42):
evidence of a change in customer behavior and say, hey,
I'm just this is Matt now, hey, that's what they want.
Right back to the quote, which they then used to
justify a reduction in checkout employees. This in turn makes
it more inconvenient to use the checkout staff, which in
turn makes customers more likely to use the machines. Then
slowly they'll wean you off staff completely and nudge you

(48:06):
just gently towards self service. And that is certainly a
thing that has been happening, and you we can see
it over the course at least in the waves that
have been coming over the past what decade, for sure.
I mean, And also think about think about how irrelevant
the data they pull is. If you want something to

(48:29):
sound like a good decision, sure it's it's a good
decision if you say fifty plus percent of our customers
prefer self checkout, But you can also say eight of
our customers immediately jumped on self checkout, which is an
indicator of a positive trend, because it was zero, so

(48:49):
it doesn't matter. The numbers don't really matter well. And also,
I mean, just the reality of of having let's say
six self check out lines or lanes available, whatever you
want to call them. Terminals and you've only got two
people on staff who are actually working in the supermarket
checking people out. Right, Now, that's less less you have

(49:13):
to pay into insurance. Well yeah, it's all of that,
but it's also if you're a customer standing there. You
even if you want to go and actually interact with
a person and do it that way, it's gonna move
a lot slower. And you know it is just by
the fact that there are only two of those versus
six of these, right, so the line is going to
move faster with the the self checkout anyway. It's just

(49:37):
there's so much psychology. I love that we're talking about
this nudge in this way. Yeah, I mean, to be
completely clear, this is just one person's opinion, one person's perspective.
I'm all about minimizing human contact. If I have a
self that's fine, you know what I mean. That's going

(49:57):
into data collection thing, which I know have hobby. It's
about earlier. It's like when when you call an automated
line for utility bill or something, and now because they
want to gather vocal data on you, not because they
hate you, but because they want to they want to
sell that to help increase the sophistication of voice recognition technology.

(50:19):
I hate that it's too much like talking to a person.
Let me push one, let me there's one, then let
me push four or nine or whatever, and keep it moving.
I hear you. I think just there was the last thing.
I think. Um, Primarily, I'm just speaking to the number
of people that are being put out of jobs through
these like something like this, and will continue to be

(50:39):
put out of jobs and may not be able to
find a suitable job for them anywhere else, because it's
the kind of thing where you don't need to have
a ton of education. There's a lot like this is
a good job, supermarket can be, It can be, it
can be a great job, and it's just one of
the things that it's going away like so many other
positions and on on our planet for for someone who

(51:03):
just didn't happen to go and get a degree in
one field or another and drowned in debt. Right well here,
let's let's emphasize that too. I don't want to lose
what you're saying. I think it's profound. We are moving,
in theory, potentially, if everything works out, we're moving towards
a post work economy. The kind of the post scarcity

(51:24):
stuff you hear about in fictional universe is like Star Trek. However,
before we get there, even if we do a really
kick ass job of it, before we get to the
post work economy, we're going to walk through the dark
woods of the post worker economy, wherein people still have
all the same human needs, but the system has changed

(51:47):
such that the task we have to do to satisfy
those needs, like having a job or participating the coupon system,
those options will be gone. And this, this is a
this is a real and frightening thing. You just gotta
watch ads all day. You just have to watch ads
all day, like in Black Mirror, and your allocated funds
have to go, you know, have to be spread out

(52:09):
a certain amount every quarter, and your blinks and attention
are accounted. Cover your cameras for people. So so, I mean,
I think I'm the only one at this table here
it doesn't have their camera cover. I cover on my laptop,
I cover my I cover one of the cameras with
a sticker that says YEA. Because I'm trying to work

(52:30):
on being a more positive It's one day at a time, guys,
So let's go back to Scott, because Scott also traces
this purely de corporate profit. He says, quote, payments companies
such as Visa and MasterCard want to increase the volume
of digital payment services they sell, while banks want to
cut cost. So it is a win win for those

(52:52):
two genre of entity. But he continues with a little
bit of psychology about the nudge, and it's this the
nudge is it's a two part con Maybe that's unfair
for me to call it that it's a two part process.
Do you want to call it a con be my guest.

(53:12):
I didn't call it that was that was that was
That was me And again that's we have to be
very careful. That's one person's opinion. So first, the idea
is that we we increase the inconvenience of using cash
A t M s and physical branches. We increase the
barrier costs to it. Right, it's harder to find one,
maybe the hours are more and more limited, and so on.

(53:37):
Maybe fewer places except cash like Starbucks is starting to
experiment with cash less cash lest shops and so on.
So the second step is it's not enough to make
it a pain in the ask to do this stuff,
to really sell the nudge. Then we need to aggressively,

(53:58):
almost militantly promote our chosen alternative, our chosen successor of behavior.
We're making people learn that they want digital. We're presenting
it to them as though it is their idea, right,
and then they are functioning under the illusion that they

(54:20):
have chosen it. I am so glad I can use
this now, and I got to be able to use
this because the alternative was just so terrible. And you know,
of course this again, this is not inherently insidious. This
is a profit motive, right, and for many people, at
least according to the Bank's research, for many people, this

(54:42):
is the way they want to go. Yeah, it's pretty crazy, agreed.
So so let's look at let's look at the possible scenarios.
Let's let's get real dystopian. Yeah, the favorite right, right, right?
Uh so, hold onto your yea stickers and so on.
So let's say we live in cashless economy. It's it's annominalate.

(55:05):
Pain with cash in this world is as unusual as
seeing someone in the grocery store pay with a physical
check and you're like, this line is gonna take forever now,
and then look, I got I got stuff to do.
They're counting out nickels, what the hell you know? And
then we have an escape from l a scale event
that wipes out all electricity, all computer networks, everything, it's

(55:26):
all gone. What do we do? Right? We start from scratch,
We go back to conk shells and and and shiny rocks,
the barter system. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if
that's what we were going, but that's certainly one that's
like the most dystopian version of this situation, I think.
And it could happen. Oh yeah, well it happened in
Europe for about twelve hours okay, back in June. Uh

(55:51):
when Visa went down. Their system was went down. So
that was pretty crazy, right. It's kind of like what
happened with me that one time at the grocery store
where just you can't make any transactions anymore. Oh god,
what do I do? Immediately? Start looting? Is what you do? Well? No,
that's that's the that's the only reasonable thing that you
could I would I would say, first things first, ulu

(56:13):
late loudly, and then take a take a knife and
cut cut cut your forearm, not deep, just just deep
enough to bleed so they'll be like, well, this guy's
not playing around, and look what he did to himself.
Drip it right on the glass scanner thing on the
on the self checkout, smear it in the shape of
a pentagram, and and and that'll be your payment, and
then loudly insists you were paying the blood price and

(56:35):
then write a check. So, uh yeah, so it is.
It is a thing that's happened before. In the case
in Europe, people had cash, they had euro They could
fall back on that and say, well, that's a real
pistol that my card doesn't work. I luckily, you know,

(56:56):
I've got ten euro or something. But that didn't work
for everybody because when the system was down, the same
system that they would use to withdraw physical cash was
also not functioning. Right, I'm sorry, I feel like quick backtrack.
I feel like get buried the lead there a little
bit ben Ulu late, Yes, Lulu late? Is that like no, no, no, no, no,
that exactly what it is. To get the full image,

(57:17):
It's it's lulation. Cut yourself a little, just enough to
bleed everybody. Drip yeah, hold your arm horizontal parallel to
the floor, and then cut north to south. Don't ever
cut east to West. So God, thank you just for
me like cutting, cutting the body, the human body, even

(57:40):
just talking about it in that way. Yeah, it's not
my favorite thing. That's why I'm saying. Guys, imagine if
you're in line at a grocery store and you see
that happen, freaked out, right, But this is the this
is the fall of society. This is not Visa going
down for twelve hours. So okay, let's say that there
was a digital only system, right, yeah, and the power
goes out for an extended period of time, like a week,

(58:03):
and there is no more cash, There is no way
for people to trade cash. No one has access to cash.
We've decided we don't use cash anymore, and we've got
zero power. What happens right now? Right now, you would
have your phones perhaps, right or something some electronic device
that was charged enough during the initial stages. Potentially if

(58:23):
you think ahead, you've got a couple of those power
bricks laying around that are charged. Maybe, But think about
that on a citywide scale. On you know, if a
whole city's power was out, So what becomes currency then
power stored energy? I don't know, I'm just asking, I
guess just what I'm saying is it becomes a serious

(58:44):
issue with a cashless society not to have something to
fall back on in the case of an emergency. Right,
will we go to a barter system and it would
have to be that. How long would it? It would
depend on how long it lasts, right, because the initial
move would probably be to institute some sort of dealing
on credit system. But if the records are gone then

(59:04):
and you know, it gets ugly real quick. Well, let's
say let's say that doesn't happen. Let's say somehow the
house of digital cards remains steadfast despite the occasional drafts
of wind. Then we move into another problem. If this
stuff works perfectly and nothing goes wrong on that front,
we run into predictive profiles. So earlier we said they're

(59:26):
collecting all this information is you move in and out
of the sandbox. Now this find this is just one
piece of you, right, where As Whitman said, we're vast,
we contain multitudes. The financial footprint is just a single
piece of you. But like your thumb, it's linked to
the rest of your body overall. So assume this financial

(59:48):
information gets linked with medical backgrounds, right, and DNA testing
your propensity for certain maybe disorders or certain uh, manifestations
of physical things. It gets tied to your employment history, right,
it gets tied to your social affiliations because you're on
social media. It gets tied maybe two, you get flagged

(01:00:08):
for controversial purchases like firearms for instance, or maybe in
another country where planned parenthood is illegal, you get tagged
for pain for something that would be a contraceptive or uh,
you know, terminating a pregnancy. And it also gets linked
up with your Google travel information where you've actually been

(01:00:29):
in real time for the past x years that you've
had that device, your GPS, and it does go back
the permanent record is real. And then let's say it
gets linked to a criminal background if someone has something
like that. How far away are we from a world
in which you can legally be detained before you commit
any sort of crime just because there's a profile set

(01:00:52):
against you, and that this profile has reached something in
its algorithm where it says, for instance, uh, you know,
this person is now more than fifty likely to let's
say default on a carlo. I mean they essentially already
do that when making the calculus as to whether to

(01:01:13):
give you the loan in the first place. That's true,
let's link it to something scared. What if they what
if I'm agree with you, that same calculus could be
applied to scarier things, right, right, right? So like let's say,
let's say instead your financial information is linked with your
medical background, and you are buying We're just making this up.

(01:01:37):
Your your purchases are indicative of the development, the nascent
development of a medical condition that your background says runs
in your family. And then your insurance gets pre pulled
because they say, you know, the stuff this person is
buying is indicative of a very expensive thing that we
don't want to pay for it, right, And the legality

(01:01:59):
of that in our society in America, I imagine this
is super gray, right because can't I mean, you know,
can't your insurance provider deny you for any pre existing conditions?
I mean it's all self reporting, I guess. But they
can find out that you were lying, and they could
theoretically find out you were lying based on set algorithm

(01:02:22):
and say, oh, we were just doing our due diligence.
We had access to this information. What did you expect
us to do? We're looking out for our interests and
let's ignore the fact that life is a pre existing condition.
So yeah, that's maybe that's another episode, but you're absolutely right.
The technology and the trends are there, even if we're
not there yet as a species or as a society.

(01:02:44):
There's there's one last one, which is an oldie but
a goodie. It's the gritty reboot of using control of
a currency as a weapon. And this this happens all
the time. We've read Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Fantastic.
Now it becomes more dystopian in an age of digital currency,
now that we're just trading ideas without any physical representation.

(01:03:09):
One great example of this, which is still ridiculous to me,
is remember when the Amazon Kindle came out right and
people are like, oh, this is so convenient, I don't
have to haul around tombs anymore. And affordable. It was
super affordable. That was a big part. They were selling
the tech at a loss, right the way that Sony
sold the PlayStation three and four at a loss because

(01:03:29):
they were making money on the back end. I don't know,
on the cashless part, on the app, the app store
or whatever, the transaction and the games, and I don't
know why I did that. Weird voice. But it's true.
So when the Kindle came out, tons and tons of
people got this, and they got it as a gift
for their relatives, the readers in their life. They got
it for themselves, especially people have traveled a lot, so

(01:03:51):
on and so on. But then, as reported by The
New York Times, people found that some book, one book
in particular, was being remotely wiped from their digital libraries.
It didn't matter that they paid for it, it it didn't
matter that they possessed it as defined by their agreement
with Amazon or the publisher. It just disappeared. So imagine,

(01:04:15):
now take it one more step, and it's not a
very large nor very steep step. And let's say we
are political activists, or we are members of an oppressed community.
I mean vegans. Vegans got tracked by the FBI for
their diet and they weren't doing anything disruptive. So perhaps

(01:04:38):
this oppressed community we're in, let's say we're like the
weaker population in western China, and we're an increasingly open
conflict with the state level government. If we have physical currency,
we can make non approved purchases. We can buy maybe
radio parts to create our own radio station, things like that.

(01:04:59):
We digital currency. It is technologically feasible in the case
of this happening yet, but it is technologically possible for
a single entity to instantaneously a race all of the
currency you possess. You have gone from a million to zero.
I know that sounds crazy. One last detail there the

(01:05:22):
book that was removed from the Kindle Do you guys
remember which one it wasn't it was George Orwell. I
think that's a nice thematic circle. What are you saying?
He's saying they removed it because they didn't want people
to get wise to their scheme. It was obviously a

(01:05:44):
licensing issue. They only had they use to have it
there for a certain amount of time, and they ran
out of that period. Are you kidding? No, I don't
know what happened. That's the only thing I can imagine washing.
I don't think there's just a gets funny. I think
it's funny. I think it's gallas humor. I don't think
they were scooby Doo enough to be like, oh, these

(01:06:05):
pesky kids are gonna find out about the threat of
a surveillance state. Jessup, did you notice that almost all
the kindle purchases are reading this nineteen dreadful, dreadful, What
what's to be done? A bit worried they may begin

(01:06:26):
thinking about their own situation. No, we wouldn't want that.
The hyperloy most best. Just nip it in the bottom,
old bean, go ahead and wipe it, wipe it all,
tally ho. Now back to the meeting and Pip pip. Yes, yeah,
that's a that's a reenactment. We were reading quotes. That's

(01:06:46):
a conversation. That was an Illuminati boardroom conversation at Amazon. Yeah,
at Amazon. It's up to you to figure out what
Jeff Bezos was doing. He actually he is in those meetings,
but I think it's mainly to bring coffee to those dudes.
There's an Illuminati lounge and most big corporations. Yeah yeah, yeah,
we've got one. It's not as nice as I would like.

(01:07:09):
It's not here in Atlanta. No, no, it's in New York. Yeah,
of course in New York. But it's like Comin's in
New York. You guys can get fresh bagels. You run
the world. I don't know. They say it's a cost
cutting things for a different day, but this is this
is where it leaves us, right, this story is not
over and parts of this story haven't happened yet, but
it's quite possible they will. The trend toward digital currency continues,

(01:07:33):
cash still seems set to move along. Right when Kendall's
came out, a lot of people were making noise about
the so called death of the book. The book probably
won't die because it is cost effective, and there are
just so many of them out there, and they are
also unlike a kindle, unlike electronic methods of reading. They

(01:07:55):
are also very much air gapped. You know what I
mean if you that's why burning books is still a thing.
If you want to destroy the knowledge and books, you
have to destroy every physical copy of it, or you
have to destroy the knowledge of the language in which
the book is written. And between the two, the former
is much easier to accomplish. Right. It is weird that

(01:08:17):
they don't require any kind of battery or m WiFi connection, right,
And you don't have to subscribe, you don't have to
put your credit card info in I don't know books, man,
that's weird. Is so old school, so we know, and
maybe that's just I don't know, maybe that's a little
too alarmoust but cash is probably not going to go

(01:08:39):
away for some of the same reasons the books haven't
gone away. Also, the move toward digital currency is supported,
make no mistake by very very powerful forces, both in
the private sectors, the financial sectors, but also in the
public sectors too. If you want an authoritarian government, removing
physical currency is a great step forward. There's an arguable

(01:09:04):
case of tremendous potential profit for those entities that side
of the argument, and the customers most of the people
listening today, you yes, you specifically the end user of
currency in cash, you genuinely have very little say in
this matter. No, of course, the forces at play on

(01:09:25):
the other side of the conversation, they will argue that
the move to digital currency is a win win for
all parties, and those concerns we outlined are just that
there's sensationalists, their fear mongering. So ask yourself do you
believe their arguments? And if it turns out that even
one of those disturbing possibilities outlines here becomes a reality,

(01:09:48):
how would a society return from the precipice? Would there,
in short, be a way to reverse the trend if
it became clear the eight of people hated this, You know,
the way this game works, Uh, there's probably a human
interest story that shows the dangerous applications. Let's say it
goes viral and over half find over half of the

(01:10:13):
people who can protest this stuff start protesting it. Will
it step back? Is there a way? Where? Is it?
Like Pandora's jar. One thing we know that's absolutely certain
is this, when it comes to a cashless society, there
are plenty of things out there the banks and your
government do not want you to know, or at least

(01:10:33):
there is stuff they don't want you to think about
too long or too deeply until it's too late to
turn back. I don't know, Maybe maybe it's a rant.
I don't know, what do you what do you guys
think you could turn back now or learn the stuff
they don't want you to know now? And I think
you're right on there. Be it feels as though it

(01:10:54):
feels as that we have to go mostly cash less.
But I think the scariest thing is that last nudge
towards fully cash less, just because of those scenarios we
we built out there, Because everything right here towards the
end of this episode, it does feel like a dangerous
scenario of of digitizing completely that that for sure the

(01:11:17):
big picture dystopian kind of model and the fears there.
But you know, we have gotten to a place where
even like you know, a very small independent um entrepreneur,
or like someone in a farmer's market say, or a
crafts fair can take a card when that used to
be prohibitive. Now you got your squares and you just
put it on your smartphone. But you're also paying for

(01:11:38):
the privilege of getting paid. And that's a thing too.
It sort of takes advantage of people, you know, for
participating in this cashless system, whereas if someone gives you cash,
it's all yours. Or people are leaning now more towards
Venmo because there's no fees associated with that for some reason,
which is weird to me because I don't understand how
they make money. There is a way where you can

(01:12:00):
have now there's a new feature on Venmo where to
do that bank transfer and have you can instance, it's
like a little, you know, a negligible portion of the
total amount. In the same way when you do a
balance transfer on a credit card, they make their money
on charging you a little small percentage of the overall amount.
They get a big So wait, let's say, let's say
you're using Venemo, how long does it take for your

(01:12:21):
drug dealer to get paid? I worry about that. You know,
drug dealers is some you can be. It's it can
be a very lonely life. I'm just putting this out there.
You know, you get the money instantly, but you you
but you might maybe if you're a drug dealer or
any other small entrepreneur who's getting paid with venmo. Um,
you don't do the bank transfer right away. You do

(01:12:41):
it all all at once, once you've made you know
as a significant number of transactions, and then you do
it all at once. You wouldn't get paid twenty bucks
for a marijuana cigarette and then transfer that twenty bucks
right away. You'd wait until you've sold you know, uh
several Marri wanna sick just putting this out there. I
don't have Venmo. I've never used Venmo, I probably will

(01:13:04):
never use. I pay my rent with them. I feel
like you're really high roading me right now, dude. I'm
not high roading anybody. I'm just telling you that Venmo
is a giant informant. Venmo knows that all you're doing
is buying and selling drugs and every time you use it,
you are talking about it to the person that you
are selling or buying drugs too. I'm talking to you

(01:13:27):
out there listening every time you do it. I have
seen this occur. I've looked at it. You are literally
putting evidence you are right, that there is no He's right.
It's evidence of living in the moment, man, It's evidence
of having a good time, like yolo, I agree, but

(01:13:47):
like it's just so it feels so short sighted to
actually pay for just be careful guys, or just don't
buy and sell drugs. Like maybe it's short sighted on
the deal your side to get paid that way. I
don't know. I guess it works both ways because there's
a transaction of both ends and there's a record of
both into the You are now a known associate of

(01:14:08):
that person. I suppose that's true. We're all getting Kevin
Bacons into prison. Man. Ever since the post nine eleven
society and the Patriot Act, you know, that's that's the
way the n s A and the Alphabet Soup agencies
vacuum up potential terrorists. Doesn't have to be your friend,
doesn't have to be your friend's friend. It could be
your friend's friend's friend. I think it goes to six
degrees of separation. Actually, well, thank god they're more worried

(01:14:31):
about terrorism than small, low level drug deals. Right now,
you don't know. That's a big you never it could
switch on you. That stuff is gonna be on record
until oh wait, let me see apocalypse times. So maybe
just dummy it up, do some transactions and make you
look like a great person. Donate some money to a
cause that those authoritarians would agree with. But we want

(01:14:52):
to know what you think. Well, this episode has ended,
the show continues on, and you're the most important part
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You can also find all or some of us as
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(01:15:15):
Instagram tune in for some more strange adventures in the
near future, and m EP and Bowling hs W on Twitter.
You can find me exclusively on Instagram at how Now
Noel Brown. You can find Matt on Venmo. Yeah, all
of Venmo. I'm just watching what you're doing and all
the drugs you're buying, make sure to comment on all
his transactions, because that's the thing. People do it really well.

(01:15:36):
It's a it's a it's a feed, you know, so
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(01:15:59):
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(01:16:26):
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