CLASSIC: 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):
Welcome back to our classic episode Friends and Neighbors. Fellow
conspiracy realist. You know, guys, one thing that I love
about New York and New York City and Japan in particular,
is that in areas of both of those societies there's
still very much a cash is king mentality.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hmmm, interesting. Well, you know the problem with cash. It
takes a long time to trace, even with those little
numbers on the sides of each one.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Right traceability. A lot of us listening to this episode
automatically thought, who uses cash nowadays? Now me, right, right?
I use cash pretty frequently, as I believe you do
as well, Matt. We know that the move toward the
digital currency and digital dollar is supported by big banks

(00:56):
as well as some countries. So in this classic episode,
we are going to explore a world without cash. From
UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled
with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn
this stuff they don't want you to know. A production

(01:19):
of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Hello, Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is no They.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Call me Ben. We are joined as always with our
super producer Paul Kasher credit decand most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
You to know.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Now, we'll answer this question in a second, but we
want you to think about this as well while you're listening.
What was the last thing you purchased, literally, well, 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 you a person who still writes a
check if you set a card. In fact, if you're

(02:10):
one of the people who just heard those questions and
scoffed and thought it's twenty twenty. Who on Earth bothers
with cash? Then congratulations, you're not alone? So what about us?
If as long as we're not, you know, confessing to
anything illegal. What's the last thing you guys bought?

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Was it drugs?

Speaker 2 (02:28):
It was drugs?

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Wasn't no?

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Mine was going to be groceries? Quick story. I was
at a Kroger local grocer and as soon as I've
got about probably one hundred dollars more maybe even than
that worth of food in my cart, I take it
up to check out and all of their network goes down,
and yeah, and all I got on me are cards,

(02:51):
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 anyway. Okay, anyway, So 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.

(03:13):
Don't rob me. I'm not carrying it on my person.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
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.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
But it's the only reason. Yeah, yeah, 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?

Speaker 3 (03:35):
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 it out on my
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. They'll take your shoe cash. Yeah, I used to.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
I used to carry cash in a couple of different
parts of my person when I was traveling in sketchy
area is and then also when I am in cities
and used public transit a lot. It's just an old
habit to always have. Don't This may sound paranoid, but
I'm sure I'm not alone in this. I strongly believe

(04:13):
in not carrying all of your stuff like that in
one area. You know what I mean, If you have
something in your wallet, having twenty or fifty bucks in
your shoe is also not as crazy as it sounds.
You know, it's a smart idea. This this interesting way, nol.
Did you did you? What did you buy? Is there

(04:33):
anything that pops in mind where like your last purchase
or something with cash in general? In general?

Speaker 3 (04:38):
I thought, I went to the breakfast bar at Whole
Foods this morning, m hmm, and I actually paid using
my Apple Pay on my phone, where you can just
hold it up to the RFID reader and then you
put your fingerprint in and then you put in your
pin and you're done.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Wow. And this as long as these systems are in place.
We see a lot of 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.
It really can be when everything works as simple as
putting your phone up to the RFID reader.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
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.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah, then again in theory, right, So that's today's question.
What happens in a world where these sorts of interactions
Matt at the grocery store, Noel 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.

(05:48):
For anybody in the audience today who happens to be
a dragon sitting atop a pile of cash, treasure, blood,
and gold, don't worry just yet. Cash is still king,
as they say, at least for now. That's because it represents,
even today the most frequent method of payment in the US.
Overall that that equals out to about thirty one percent

(06:10):
of all consumer transactions. And that's more than electronic transactions
credit cards, debit cards, or of course checks.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
That's worldwide or no, that's.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
US base, that's just in the US, just in the US.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Thirty one such a surprising statistic to me.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
The US also lags behind some countries, which we'll explore
a few examples in a moment. But this also makes
me think, when's the last time you saw somebody write
a check?

Speaker 3 (06:38):
It's I mean, who even takes checks anymore? It's my question.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
I write, the last time I saw a check or
wrote a check, even interactive with a check, it was
for rental agreement.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
That was what it was for me too, And I
didn't have any checks. So you go check, go get
checks to write a check, and.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
They don't ever sell just one check unless you get
cashier's check.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
That's right, that's right. I'm trying to think of other methods.
I'm pretty sure some doctors' offices, like if you're paying
a cope or something, we'll accept a check.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
And grocery stores they also both have demographics that will
tend to include older people exactly.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
It just seems yeah, you're right, especially the older people.
That's just more of like a you know, old school
way 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

(07:38):
whole joke of don't cash this till Monday, you know,
like checks in the mail, checks in the mail, or aka,
I'm writing you a check that at this particular point
in time isn't any good. That's a thing that that
that is a sort of a pitfall of check writing
and accepting really more than anything.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
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
the technology, they have the comfort of physically writing out
their ledger, balancing their checkbook. You know, for some people
that can feel the way that people have certain religions

(08:17):
feel when they are handling rosaries. I say certain religions,
but you know, like Catholicism, I guess would be the
main one yes, I'm not a rosary surgeon or doctor.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
I think there are more than just Catholic Eastern Orthodox.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah, I just know that that's one of them.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
So was that the beads thing? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (08:34):
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. It's true. Fewer
and fewer adults are using printed or minted US currency

(08:57):
billsing coins at all. Now there are some people or
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.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
You don't like touching change, But how do you feel
about cash?

Speaker 1 (09:15):
I'm okay with it, You're okay with it.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah, the tactile ness of it all works for you. Yeah,
and thank you for checking, by the way, making sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
it's a.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
Lot more thong contact with the bills though.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
Thong contact.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
That's what I'm there for.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Oh, you mean like in the club.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
I'm assuming in the club or dug club.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
I guess, Well, the thong is what you make of it,
you know, Well.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
You know, I keep my cash in my shoes. Some
people keep cash in their thong.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Yeah, you might even have a like a little extra
compartment maybe at a hip.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Wait, is a thong not a shoe? I thought we
were talking.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
That's a type of flip flop. Yes, is a component
of the flip flop. I guess you could call them thongs. Wait,
so if people say that, then what are we talking about?

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Paul shrugs and says, yes, I was talking about underwear.
I was talking about sillacious undergarments.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
O Oh wow, that don't be cool. You knew what
you were talking about. I had no idea. My mom
keeps her cell phone in her brazier. Is that weird?

Speaker 1 (10:07):
A lot of people keep their stuff at knives, Uh,
gas cards, probably bundles of cash, sheepers, guns, bundles of cash,
money rugs.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
I want to see that make a come back.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
It's still around. Money clips are still around, as are
money belts, which are like the nerdy pocket protectors you
wear abroad.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
Wait, so is that like a fanny pack exclusively for cash? Uh?

Speaker 1 (10:33):
It doesn't have the carrying capacity of fanning packs.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
But yeah, most.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
Money belts will be worn underclothing and they will strap
around like a fanning pack.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Not all.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
You can get some cool ones. They're like a doctor.
Uh it's not the words probably not doctors clutch, but
you know, I'm talking about the shoulder holsters for guns
that you see in different detective course, stective films and
words of fiction. This is this is interesting though. To
get back to this idea of few people using printed currency,
According to the Pew Research Center, about three and ten

(11:05):
Americans said they go an entire week without touching cash
at all, and that number is risen in twenty fifteen.
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 holders. That number

(11:27):
was twenty four percent and twenty fifteen, and now it's
fallen to eighteen percent, and that trend seems set to continue.
There's a lot of research going into this on the
side of surprise, the banking system.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
And Facebook and Facebook.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yes, Facebook wants to have its own currency.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
I'll check this out. In this survey of two thousand Americans,
US Bank found that half fifty percent of respondents said
they carry cash with them less than half the time
they're out. That makes sense. I can identify with that,
get it. When they do carry cash, Seventy six percent
said they keep less than fifty bucks on hand, and

(12:06):
nearly fifty percent have less than twenty dollars when they're
walking around, And that I think makes a lot of
sense when you're talking about the amount of money you
get generally out of an ATM or something, which is
I would say primary, the primary way you get cash
unless it's a gift or something sure, and those are
generally not always going to be twenties. So I can

(12:28):
imagine a twenty that you carry around because you might
need it, or forty.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Maybe your emergency stash, right exactly, if you're in a
situation where you need to pay for casual in transaction.
As we know, there are a lot of places, especially
in larger cities, that are casually.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Yeah, and they won't take anything above a twenty a
lot of times.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Right, right, that's absolutely true. We see a divided demographic.
There are social implications to the cash list society because
there are 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.

(13:12):
One of the first, which should not surprise anyone, is age.
The second one should surprise people, But the first one
is age. We know that the younger you are, the
less likely you are to use cash.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
Funny thing. I was actually at the courthouse the other
day for jury duty. I was very lucky that I
actually got selected to be on a jury, and you
were lucky. Well, I didn't get to the lucky Yes, okay,
but I was selected to be on a jury and
the case wrapped in that same day. And I have
to say I actually, quite once I made peace with
the whole thing that I was going to be there,
you know, until seven o'clock at night, and knew that

(13:46):
it was pretty much guaranteed to wrap that day. I
really enjoyed the whole process. But in the cafeteria of
of the courthouse, they say twenties only accepted for purchases
over a certain dollar amount, which was a very specific
caveat that I'd never seen before for accepting twenties.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
That's odd, really too.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
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 right, you know, it makes sense. They probably can't
go to a bank and get that crack down to fives.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
It makes sense.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
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.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
I didn't think about the parking deal because that's a
big part of going to the courthouse, is PA for parking.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
They don't validate it at the courthouse. Yeah, definitely don't.
The benefits of citizenship do not go that far.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
Nope. So let's come back to these demographics really fast. Yeah,
I want to hit on age, which again makes I
think a lot of sense when you're thinking about this issue.
So younger people, let's call them millennials, tend to ditch
f physical cash for you know, stuff that you can
do on your phone or things you can use virtually
like credit, debit, digital payments, Apple, pay venmo Zell. It

(15:11):
just goes on and on. PayPal. In fact, more than
one in ten millennials use this thing. They're digital wallet.
The thing on your phone that you probably have access
to right now if you want it. They use that
for every purchase. And that is according to a separate
report made by experience.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
Right So that's not pure 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 years old, the number is much lower. Only twenty

(15:48):
three percent 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 for thought. We do see divisions
along economic lines, along the lines of just straight income.

(16:09):
It turns out, 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 thousand
dollars or less per year. That let's look at this
a different way. Lower income adults in this country are

(16:31):
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 bones is another one, right, do.

Speaker 3 (16:45):
We have another one? Wasn't there pony bones? That's a
good one. Wan them. Okay, I don't know bread. Bread's good.
I like I like bread.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
I want to bring back bread. Yeah, scrilla, scrilla is good.
You said scratch aren't here? Scratch greatly catch. 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 the room

(17:14):
will get it. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
I got like forty drags.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, it was a couple of toe knuckles short on that.
So I got the hamburger instead of the cheeseburger.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah, it was. It was. I couldn't believe they wanted
me to spend ninety nine more sclounced to upgrade to.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
That are scounced Yes, yeah, exactly. 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. They're experts out there

(17:55):
who will tout the benefits of a cashlest 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 released. We can't let you
into the safe. That doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
You know, stick people up with a thumb drive in
the future and say transfer all of your digital money
to me. That's gonna make it a whole.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
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.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
Talking about square based robberies. Yeah, robbering and robbing an individual.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
That's what I'm taking you out of.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
Their pocket, holding them up and saying swiper. That's actually
a really good point. Matter that happens a lot. That
happens a lot. Does it work. I've never heard reports
of that, but it makes perfect sense.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
People get would robbed and forced to go to ATMs happened. Yes,
that's very common, but that's still a cash situation.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
But it starts with the card. It does. But you could,
are u you that you could track the robbery if
someone used their.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Space 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, refund
it whatever. But the person who did that, you know,
who took that cash or made usually made a purchase somewhere.

(19:26):
They don't have to worry about it. They're gone, they've
skidaddled 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 point you
just made know what, We also see that there is

(19:47):
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 maybe skirt

(20:08):
some of the regulations in a transaction, you know what
I mean.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
The red market is all about human trafficking.

Speaker 3 (20:15):
Yes, I'm just kidding.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
No, you're right, the red market is organ trade.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Okay, yeah, I thought we were going there, but I
wasn't sure. I thought maybe you had something up your sleeve.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
And check out our shows on the red market, and
every show we do somehow touches on the black market
at some point. But with this we also see a
lot of criticism. So just as there are proponents on
the side of the concept of a cashless economy, there
are vocal critics, and they're asking, could a truly cashless

(20:43):
society just be another step along the path toward an
all powerful or wellyan dictatorship. Will this spell the end
of financial privacy if such a thing still exist today,
which is a different question, And then what will a
world without cash mean? And what happens in the future

(21:05):
where bills and coins literally just become collectible items, you know,
like old stamps. Are the critics, in short right to
be concerned.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
We'll learn about that right after a word from our sponsor.

Speaker 3 (21:26):
Here's where it gets crazy.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
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 their theories in action. The
rubber will hit the road, and much sooner rather than later.
In fact, the cash list society already exist in some places.
It's much further along than we might like to think.

Speaker 3 (21:51):
Right So in Sweden right now, only one percent of
the economy operates on currency, on cash, on paper and coins.
That is a tenth of the rate elsewhere in Europe.
We know the Swedes are always up on the latest trends,
so that makes sense, and they're really good at kind
of streamlining things and making things pretty efficient. So it's

(22:13):
interesting to see how it's working out there. And this
is only one eighth of the rate here in the
United States of folks and areas that are going cash list.
So the 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.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
You are one of ten people in Sweden you meet
up once a year and you say, what did you buy?
Because you have weird Swedish parties, I don't know. That
means that only one person in the room has been
cash on anything.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
You should call that number, ask a Swede and see
if if they bought anything with cash in twenty seven.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
That's a great that's a great idea. Unfortunately they pulled
the number. I no longer call a Swede. Shame. It
is a shame. I had a lot of fun with
that one, and I hate phone call.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
You actually called it? Yeah, ask why not? I just
you know, it's one of the things you talk about
but you never do. With Ben, you're a man of action.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
Well, I spoke with a one time. Particularly sticks out
my head. I spoke with a delightful retired lady and
it was a great experience. I hope she's doing well.
I don't think she listens to the show.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
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 you know, tiny homes or whatever and not spending cash.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
They seem happy, they're rocking ABBA twenty four to seven.
You know, that's right, that has to be the only way.
But what's that's what's the issue. 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.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
We have easily.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
Discernible concerns about a cash list economy, and no doubt
in this show we will be preaching to the choir partially. First,
we have to look back at what we've already proven.
We've proven there is an inherent economic divide between the
haves and the have nots when it comes to cash.
The less money you make, the more likely you are

(24:22):
to use cash. In general. It's very broad brush, but
so far everything we found proves that this is the case.
This means that it is highly likely that a purely
digital society could spell disaster for low income residents people
who tend to use physical currency. So to introduce some

(24:43):
jargon here, which is I think a little bit disturbing,
there are a couple industry terms. One is unbanked and
one is underbanked. They mean what they sound 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

(25:05):
the table. They're only using cash for everything, They've deleted
their Facebook, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It has
these implications that if you are not participating in the
financial system, you are either deprived or potentially dangerous. It's
a little bit of a what do you call it,
Chomsky esque Bernese esque packaging.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
Well, we can see how that somewhat makes sense, especially
if you think with my migration issues here 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 here in the United States, then the

(25:46):
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'd be found out.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
It's the same as voter id laws. There's arguments that
that disenfranchises people because it affects, you know, people that
are in poverty who maybe can't can't get an idea
or for whatever reason, or living outside the law in
some capacity, yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Or never have enough money at any one time to
keep in a bank. So to the point where they're
not being charged for not having enough money in the
bank at all.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
Times, because let's not forget that is absolutely a thing. Yeah,
which is so insane going for the privilege of getting
your money out.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Future historians will take note of that. I would hope
on this point we also see the problem of prerequisite paperwork.
Right you want a bank account and you don't have
proof of residency one, maybe proof of identity two. And
similar to the voter ID stuff, this is this is

(26:52):
a way, I know it feels like a strong word,
but this is a way to potentially financially disenfranchise people
and they are forced to work with the smaller and
smaller slice of the financial pie that does allow cash dealing.
Right now, there is a trend, the downward trend. Fewer

(27:13):
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.
They are useful, right if you're responsible with them. But
there are a lot of people who have very valid

(27:34):
reasons that they don't want to interact with credit cards,
and 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,
an American Express or a Visa or a Discover or
of course the last word in credit a diner's club.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
That's still a thing. Seemed to have maybe gone the
way of checks.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
It's still around. Surely, surely diners Club is still around.
Who wants to dine and not be in a club?

Speaker 2 (28:12):
Is that similar to a triple A or is that?

Speaker 3 (28:15):
I think the idea is that you subscribe to it
and it gives you discounts places that accept it or something.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
It was the first card really, it was like the
first you would call payment card company in history. I
think Now technically it's owned by Discover, So there you go.
So diners Club is no longer independent.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
Institution, though you know they want to hold on to
that branding.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
I watched one of the old commercials. You can still
see them on YouTube.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Can we talk about something here, guys. Yeah, the concept
of not using digital currencies or credit cards out of
preference because they you just somebody doesn't like it because
my Dad is one of those people where he very
much will be carrying around cash on purpose to do

(29:07):
everything he's going to 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.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
And that's tremendously convenient, right, because then that makes a
purchase stand alone.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
Yes, right, and his books are balanced because he did
that one transaction of taking the cash out.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
And he's right. So this leads into the huge second concern,
which is privacy. And this is a concern that should
be 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. So do we start telling

(29:49):
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 just be pollyanna about it, as

(30:14):
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'll dive further into the rabbit hole. After a word
from our sponsors, we're back. Let's go a little further

(30:44):
away from the light of what's proven and explore the
shadows beyond the things that could happen, that might happen
that haven't happened yet, or, most distressingly, the things that
maybe happen happening now despite the fact that no one's
really talking about them on your local news affiliate. This

(31:07):
is the first one. What if private financial powers are
pushing cashless currency as a way to rest control of
money from the state. This may feel kind of small
for some of us, but the fact of the matter
is that historically, the ability to print money, the ability

(31:30):
to be the person who determines the value of whatever
these coupons or articles of faith may be. That ability
the sovereign creator, originator of currency. 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

(31:52):
with having the ability to have a standing army. Right.
This is a life and death thing. Economically for life
to state actors.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
How do you pay for a standing army if you
can't print your own currency, You've got to rely on
somebody else.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
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, the United States of America
or Sweden, New Zealands, whatever whatever place you wanna you
wanna name. What if there's a situation where a country's

(32:29):
entire currency then becomes controlled by a consortium of financial
powers or a single financial power. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (32:39):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
What if Chase Manhattan one day decides to you know,
that they think Nigeria is a problem, so they just
remove their access at 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.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
And like, I mean, you could argue bad pr move.
Sure is it their right to do that? Yes, if
they control it?

Speaker 1 (33:10):
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 our currency, and then maybe Western Powers say, nah,
we talk to the folks at Chase Manhattan. We've got
a pretty good case. We're gonna make this a win

(33:30):
win for everyone. Right.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
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 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 that occur in your country.

(33:55):
M h.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
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 or hot take. Evidence 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

(34:19):
not defending Momar Gadaffi. I'm not picking a horse in
the race. That's just what happened. And you can you
can google it, you can search it because at this
point the truth of that conflict does not matter to
I mean to the people who would censor it.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yeah, of course, baby, it's passed the news cycles whatever, right,
And that went quick too. We talked about that for
like two weeks.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Dusty tones of currency and international trade? Why why would
you dedicate time to that?

Speaker 3 (34:51):
Man?

Speaker 1 (34:51):
The Mandalorian season one is out? Huh maybe a baby
Yoda was on currency? People would care more or the child?

Speaker 3 (35:00):
She speaking of currency and baby Yoda? Did you hear
that Build a Bear is coming out with a baby
Yoda plushy fly off the shelves. Man, that's going to
become its own currency. I tell you the kids, they
love the baby Yoda. You know who else loves the
baby Yoda?

Speaker 1 (35:15):
Everyone?

Speaker 3 (35:15):
Literally everyone else.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
It's yeah, yeah, we'll get your get your cashless wallets out,
start scanning them at the Build a Bear.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
I mean, make no mistake, right, That's what people want
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.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
Well, and funny too, 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.
But at the end of the day, they're trying they
it would behoove them to move away from a cashless
economy everyone. They want people to spend money on the

(36:00):
line and have it be one click purchases using your thumbprint,
you know, like so you don't even have time to
think about it.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
Right, we do. We do see some interesting psychology at
play there, and this has moved to be absolutely crystal clear.
This has moved far beyond some kind of boardroom conversation
or some professors different opinions arguing in a civil manner
the war for how you spend money, and it is

(36:29):
turning into a war that this war has gone to
the streets. If you live in the Western world, you
have seen banks shutting down, branches, shutting down ATMs, right,
automatic teller machines. This is not for nothing are they
doing this. This is an attempt to push consumers into

(36:51):
using those digital payment systems first, and using that digital
banking infrastructure, because again, there is tremendous power in own
i mean 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 official statements of the banks say.

(37:13):
There's a clear cost cutting motive here, because if you
have a branch, you have to have staff, you have
to have security, You have to pay these people, right
and if you replace them with a self service app,
your banking app, you can check on your phone. You
can just use that information to buy things. You can

(37:34):
put your card number in your Amazon account and what
have you.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
You can take a picture of your check if you
just got paid and it gets deposited.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
What That's pretty nuts, right, And you have to wonder
about the technology there.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah, sorry, that just blew my mind. When I watched
my wife do that, I went, you can wide, no, no,
you can't take that to the bank right now.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
I didn't believe it at first either.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
I think has some security issues. But when you put
everybody into a system like this, you're saving the 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 in a way you're allowing

(38:20):
another revenue stream, a passive revenue stream, and you, the customer,
by the way, you get nothing.

Speaker 3 (38:29):
It's a Willy Wonka moment, right, Or it could be
you believe in nothing Lebowski. That's what I'm making.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
So 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 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

(38:58):
the terms and conditions when you clicked what Who.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
Would Who would do that? Who would not read the
terms and conditions? Literally everybody?

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Yeah, as I say, all of the employees who just
lost all their jobs to the app?

Speaker 3 (39:10):
Oh boy? 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 the Yeah, okay, that makes sense.
So you can't exactly tie it to an individual per se,
but you can tie it to a demographic or you

(39:32):
can tie it. Yeah, I wonder how it's used, if
it's if it's anonymized in that way, like how granular
are do you think that information gets for folks that
buy it.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
It's still evolving.

Speaker 3 (39:42):
Really yeah, oh yeah interesting.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
And this I mean think about how if you are
an Apple iPhone user, depending on the model of iPhone
you have. 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

(40:04):
it's a similar to similar reach into your brain. So
banks did a Comcast move or Exfinity or whatever you
want to call it. So there was a when net
neutrality was still a huge debate.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
UH.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
Comcast was one of the companies lobbying intensely to remove
net neutrality to be able to sell you an Internet
agreement the same way that you would agree to a
cable package like a la carte certain channels, right right,
So you can you can pay for basic Google or Wikipedia,

(40:40):
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
talked to consumers and they want more choice. That's what

(41:01):
we're giving them. We're giving them more choice.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
That is such bulk.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
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.

Speaker 3 (41:16):
But that's such circular or like you know, inherently flawed logic,
as they're saying, we're going to give you more choices
by limiting your choices than selling you back the choices
you originally had at an a la carte premium in
the Comcast case.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
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.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Well, think about it, think 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 very customer focused. You know, we're here to make
you guys happy. But what they're what they're actually doing,

(41:59):
if you look 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

(42:23):
likely to opt out. Also, shout out 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 they're in a touch
and go situation in a hospital and they are marked

(42:45):
as an organ donor in some cases, the medical professionals
might just let them go or not try as hard
to keep them around.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Yeah, shout out to Sterling for writing to us.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
Yes, thank you so much, Sterling. 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
a burrito bowl, it could be uh, it could be
paining with cash, you know, it could be uh, what
are those what are those things that used to be

(43:16):
on the front of pants, the.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
Little wrinkles, cleats, pleats.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
Yes, it could be pleated pants Option A, but you
want whichever, 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

(43:41):
saying you have to pay with a card, or you
have to order the casadia, or you have to wear
unpleated pants, 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

(44:02):
certain line in the grocery store. You can still wear
pleated pants, but they're not making any new ones.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
You can see this at work if you've ever this
is odd. But if you've 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,
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

(44:30):
became well you can pay cash or 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 i think two lanes in a lot of places,
especially on the floor to turnpike, where you could use
that special cashless system, but then everybody else got to

(44:53):
go and pay, and then you kind of over all
the years, the cashless 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 cash.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Because the rest it's essentially a subscription service. You're subscribing
to the road exactly. And it's true, well it's what
you're doing with a card. Really, 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,

(45:29):
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 out in the cold if
you just turn everything cashless.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
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 in it, you know, because the sandbox takes up
the entire playground and no more swings, it's all it's
all just a sandbox, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
And in that case, for this, if you add a
million dollars cash in a cashless society, that doesn't matter
until the moment you take that cash to a 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 a millionaire who can use their money.

(46:17):
That's crazy. That is just I get the logic behind it,
But if you think about it, like explaining that to
an extraterrestrial or to someone who's never heard of money,
that sounds kind of arbitrary.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
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 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 yeah, or you know again,
drugs is a transactional cash economy in and of itself,

(46:51):
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 a thing.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
You just be mindful of the emoji you choose to use.

Speaker 3 (47:04):
Right, So it's true.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
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 the mint. You don't need to pay like
in the US, we pay a quasi public I believe

(47:28):
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
you can save money on infrastructure, you can increase whatever
you want to call your surveillance system, probably call it

(47:50):
national defense or security. You know, something people will vote for.
But let's get back to the nudge. How do we
do this. There's a journalist name Brett Scott who wrote
a great piece for The Guardian over in the UK,
and Scott found a great real life example. Until I

(48:10):
heard your anecdote about toll roads, Matt, this was my
favorite one. This is still my favorite one. We just
pulled the quote. 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.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
We can illustrate this 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

(48:47):
supermarket can cite that as 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 in
play ployees. 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

(49:10):
off staff completely and nudge you just gently towards self service.
And that is certainly a thing that has been happening,
and we can see it over the course at least
in the waves that have been coming over the past what.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
Decade, for sure, I mean, And also think about think
about how irrelevant the data they pull is. If you
want something to sound like a good decision, sure it's
a good decision if you say fifty plus percent of
our customers prefer self checkout, but you can also say

(49:46):
eight to ten percent of our customers immediately jumped on
self checkout, which is an indicator of a positive trend,
because it was zero, So it doesn't matter. The numbers
don't really matter well.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
And also, I mean just the reality of having let's
say six self checkout 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.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
Right, Now, that's less you have to pay into insurance.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Well, yeah, it's all of that, but it's also if
you're a customer standing there, even if you want to
go and actually interact with a person and do it
that way, it's going to 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 right,
So the line is going to move faster with the
self checkout anyway. It's just there's so much psychology. I

(50:44):
love that we're talking about this nudge in this way.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
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. I have a self jet that's fine, you
know what I mean. That's going into data collection thing
which I know have hobbyhorsed about earlier. It's like when

(51:08):
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. I hate that it's too much
like talking to a person. Let me push one, let

(51:29):
me push one, then let me push four or nine
or whatever, and keep it moving.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
I hear you.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
I think just this is the last thing I think. Primarily,
I'm just speaking to the number of people that are
being put out of jobs through these something like this,
and will continue to be 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

(51:54):
a lot they're like, this is a good job, a supermarket,
it can be, it can be eat job, and it's
just one of the things that it's going away, like
so many other positions on our planet for someone who
just didn't happen to go and get a degree in
one field or another.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
And drown and debt. Right, well, here, 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 toward a post work economy, the
kind of the post scarcity stuff you hear about in

(52:34):
fictional universes like Star Trek. However, before we get there,
even if we do it, 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 such that the task we have

(52:56):
to do to satisfy those needs, like having a job
or participating the coup on system, those options will be gone.
And this, this is a real This is a real
and frightening thing. And you just got to watch ads
all day. You just have to watch ads all day
like in black mirror, and.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
Your allocated funds have to go, you know, have to
be spread out a certain amount every quarter.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
And your blinks and attention are accounted. Cover your cameras
for people.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
Seriously, so so.

Speaker 3 (53:26):
I think I'm the only one at this table here
that doesn't have their camera cover.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
I cover on my laptop, I cover my I cover
one of the cameras with a sticker that says yay.
Because I'm trying to work on being a more positive place.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
This really does say yay.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
It's one day at a time, guys. So let's go
back to Scott, because Scott also traces this purely decorporate 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 two genre of entity but he

(54:02):
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. If you want to call
it a con, be my guest.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
I didn't call it a con that was you mean
that was that was?

Speaker 1 (54:22):
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
ATMs and physical branches, we increase the barrier cost to it. Right,
It's harder to find one, maybe the hours are more
and more limited, and so on, and maybe fewer places

(54:44):
except cash, like Starbucks is starting to experiment with cashless,
cashless shops and so on. So the second step is
it's not enough to make it a pain in the
ass to do this stuff. To really sell the nudge,
then we need to aggressively, almost militantly promote our chosen alternative,

(55:08):
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 have chosen it.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
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. Hm.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
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 Banks research, for
many people, this is the way they want to go.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
Yeah, it's pretty crazy, agreed.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
So let's look at let's look at the possible scenarios.
Let's get real dystopian. Yeah, favorite thing right, right, right,
So hold on to your yea stickers or so on.
So let's say we live in cashless economy. It's it's
anomally pain with cash in this world is as unusual

(56:14):
as seeing someone in the grocery store pay with a
physical check, right, and you're like, oh, this line's gonna
take forever. Now, look, I got stuff to do. They're
counting out nickels, what the hell?

Speaker 3 (56:24):
You know? And then we have an escape from La
scale event that wipes out all electricity, all computer networks, everything,
it's all gone. What do we do, right? We start
from scratch. We go back to conk shells and shiny
rocks the barter system, right, yeah, I mean I don't
know if that's where you're going, but that's certainly one

(56:45):
that's like the most dystopian version of this situation, I think.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
And it could happen.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
Oh yeah, well it happened in Europe for about twelve
hours okay, back in June twenty eighteen when Visa went down.
There's this 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?

Speaker 3 (57:12):
Immediately start looting?

Speaker 1 (57:13):
Is what you do?

Speaker 2 (57:13):
Well?

Speaker 3 (57:14):
No, that's that's the that's the only reasonable thing that
you could.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
I would I would say first things first, ulu late,
loudly yeah, and then take a take a knife and
cut cut, cut your fore arm, not deep, just just
deep enough to bleed. So they'll be like, well, this
guy's not playing around. Look what he did to himself.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
Drip it right on the glass scanner thing on the
self checkout, smear it in the shape of a pentagram. Yes,
and that'll be your payment, and then loudly insist you
were paying the blood.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
Price and then write a check.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
So yeah, so it is. It is a thing that's
happened before. In the case in Europe in twenty eighteen,
people had cash, they had euro They could fall back
on that and say, well, that's a real pisso that
my car doesn't work. I luckily, I you know, I've
got ten yuro or something. But that didn't work for
everybody because when the system was down, the same system

(58:09):
that they would use to withdraw physical cash was also
not functioning.

Speaker 3 (58:12):
Right, I'm sorry, I feel like quick backtrack. I feel
like get buried the lead there a little bit ben ululate, yes,
hulu late is that like, no, no, no, no, no, exactly
what it is.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
To get the full image, it's it's ululation. Cut yourself
a little, just enough to bleed and everybody drip. Yeah,
hold your arm horizontal parallel to the floor, and then
cut north the south. Don't ever cut east to west.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
So God, it's thank you just for me like cutting,
cutting the body, the human body, even just talking about
it in that way.

Speaker 3 (58:47):
Yeah, it's not my favorite thing. No, No, that's why
I'm saying. Guys. Imagine if you're in line at a
grocery store and you see that happen.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Yeah, you're right, it freaked out, right, But this is
the stope, This is the fall of society.

Speaker 3 (58:58):
This is not Visa going down for twelve hours.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
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, 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,

(59:22):
you would have your phones perhaps, right or something some
electronic device that was charged enough during the initial stages.

Speaker 3 (59:29):
Potentially, if you think ahead, you got a couple of
those power bricks laying around that are charged.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
Maybe, But think about that on a citywide scale. On
you know, if a whole city's power was out.

Speaker 3 (59:40):
Oh so what becomes currency then power stored energy? I
don't know, I'm just asking. I guess.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
Just what I'm saying is it becomes a serious issue
with a cashless society not to have something to fall
back on in the case of an emergency.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
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 and you know, it gets ugly real quick. Well,
let's say let's say that doesn't happen. Okay, let's say
somehow the house of digital cards remains steadfast despite the

(01:00:19):
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 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,

(01:00:41):
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 information gets linked with medical backgrounds, right and
DNA testing your propensity or certain maybe disorders or certain

(01:01:03):
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 to you get flagged
for controversial purchases like firearms, for instance, or maybe in
another country where planned parenthood is illegal, you get tagged

(01:01:25):
for pain for something that would be a contraceptive or
you know, terminating a pregnancy.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
And it also gets linked up with your Google travel
information where you've actually been in real time for the
past x years that you've had.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
That device, m your GPS, and it does go back. Yeah,
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

(01:01:58):
against you, and that this profile has reached something in
its algorithm where it says, for instance, you know, this
person is now more than fifty percent likely to let's
say default on a carlo.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
I mean they essentially already do that when making the
calculus as to whether to give you the loan in
the first place.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
That's true, Let's link it to something scarer. What if.

Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
All I'm agreeing with you, I'm missing that same calculus
could be applied to scarier things, right, right, right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
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. Your your purchases are indicative
of the development, the nascent development of a medical condition

(01:02:52):
that your background says runs in your family. And then
your insurance gets pre pulled, right 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.

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
Right, And the legality 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

(01:03:27):
set algorithm 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.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
Yep. And let's ignore the fact that life is a
pre existing condition. So I sure, 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. There's one last one,
which is an oldie but a goodie. It's the gritty

(01:03:56):
reboot of using control of a currency as a weapon.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
And this happens all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
We've read Confessions of an Economic Hitman, fantastic book. Now
it becomes more dystopian in an age of digital currency.
Now they we're just trading ideas without any physical representation.
One great example of this, which is still ridiculous to me,
is remember when the Amazon Kindle came out right and

(01:04:22):
people were like, oh, this is so convenient, I don't
have to haul around tombs anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:04:27):
And affordable. It was super affordable. That was a big
part of it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
They were selling the tech at a loss, right the
way that Sony sold the PlayStation three and four at
a loss, because they were making money on the back end.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
I don't know, on the cashless parts, yes, on the
app the app store or whatever, the transactions and the games.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
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 who traveled a lot,
so on and so on. But then, as reported by
The New York Times, people found that some books, one

(01:05:06):
book in particular, was being remotely wiped from their digital libraries.
It didn't matter that they paid for it, it didn't
matter that they possessed it as defined by their agreement
with Amazon or the publisher. It just disappeared. So imagine,
now take it one more step, and it's not a
very large nor very steep step. And let's say we

(01:05:28):
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
this oppressed community we're in, let's say we're like the
Weiger population in western China, and we're an increasingly open

(01:05:52):
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.
With digital currency, it is technologically feasible not have a
case of this happening yet, but it is technologically possible

(01:06:13):
for a single entity to instantaneously erase all of the
currency you possess. You have gone from a million to zero.
I know that sounds crazy. One last detail there the
book that was removed from the Kendle. Do you guys
remember which one it was? It was George Orwell's nineteen

(01:06:35):
eighty four.

Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
I think that's a nice.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
Thematic circle.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
What are you saying.

Speaker 3 (01:06:42):
You're saying they removed it because they didn't want people
to get wise to their scheme.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
No, it was obviously a licensing issue.

Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
It was a publisher.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
Think it was a publishing thing they had to I
don't think there's You do think it's funny.

Speaker 3 (01:07:07):
I think it's funny.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
I think it's gallous humor. I don't think they were
scoopy dow enough to be like, oh, these pesky kids
are gonna find out about the threat of a surveillance state.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
Don't Yeah, Jessop, did you notice that almost all the
kindle purchases are reading this nineteen eighty four?

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
Dreadful? Dreadful? What? What's to be done a bit worried.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
They maybe again thinking about their own situation.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
No, we wouldn't want that, the hoi pollois.

Speaker 3 (01:07:39):
Best just nip it in the bottom, old bean, go
ahead and wipe it. Wipe it all, daddy.

Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
Ho Now back to the meeting and pip. Yes, yeah,
that's a that's a reenactment. We were reading quotes. That's
a conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:07:53):
That was an Illuminati boardroom conversation at Amazon.

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
Weirdly, 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.

Speaker 3 (01:08:07):
There's an Illuminati lounge at most big corporations. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
we've got one. It's not as nice.

Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
As I would like.

Speaker 3 (01:08:15):
It's not here in Atlanta, No, No, it's in New York.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
Yeah, of course, in New York. But it's like, come on,
it's New York. You guys can get fresh bagels. You
run the world.

Speaker 3 (01:08:24):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
They say it's a cost cutting thing for a different day,
but 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, cash still seems set to move along. Right
when Kendall's came out, a lot of people were making

(01:08:45):
noise about.

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
The so called death of the book.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
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 Kendal or unlike electron
methods of reading, they are also very much air gapped,
you know what I mean. That's why burning books is
still a thing. If you want to destroy the knowledge

(01:09:09):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
Yeah, it is weird that they don't require any kind
of battery or Wi Fi connection.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
Right, And you don't have to subscribe, you don't have
to put your credit card info in I.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
Don't know books, man, that's weird.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
That's so old school, so we know, and maybe that's
just I don't know, maybe that's a little too alarmist.
But cash is probably not going to go 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,

(01:09:58):
the financial sectors, but also the public sectors too. If
you want an authoritarian government, removing physical currency is a
great step forward. There's an inarguable case of tremendous potential
profit for those entities that side of the argument, and
the customers, most of the people listening today. You yes,

(01:10:21):
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 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 they're sensationalists, they're fear mongering. So

(01:10:43):
ask yourself, do you believe their arguments? And if it
turns out that even one of those disturbing possibilities outlined
here becomes a reality, how would a society return from
the precipice? Would there ensure be a way to reverse
the trend? If it became clear that eighty percent of

(01:11:05):
people hated this, and you know the way this game works,
there's probably a human interest story that shows the dangerous implications.
Let's say it goes viral and eighty percent over half
find over half of the people who can protest this
stuff start protesting it. Will it step back? Is there

(01:11:26):
a way? Or 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 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,

(01:11:48):
maybe it's a rant. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:50):
What do you guys think it could turn back now
or learn the stuff they don't want.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
You to know now. I think you're right on there, Ben.
It feels as though it feels as though we have
to go mostly cashless. But I think the scariest thing
is that last nudge towards fully cashless, just because of
those scenarios we built out there. Everything right here towards

(01:12:15):
the end of this episode, it does feel like a
dangerous scenario of digitizing completely.

Speaker 3 (01:12:22):
That for sure, the 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 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

(01:12:44):
paying for 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

(01:13:06):
where you can have now there's a new feature on
Venmo where to do that bank transfer and have Yeah,
it's like a little, you know, negligible portion of the
total amount. In the same way when you do a
balanced transfer on a credit card, they make their money
on charging you a little small percentage of the overall
amount they get a big.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
So wait, let's say let's say you're using Venmo, how
long does it take for your drug dealer to get paid.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
I worry about that. You know, drug dealers are some
you can be. It's it can be a very lonely life,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
I'm just putting this out there.

Speaker 3 (01:13:37):
You know you get the money instantly, but you you
you might maybe if you're a drug dealer or any
other small entrepreneur who's getting paid with Venmo, you don't
do the bank transfer right away. You do 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

(01:13:57):
a marijuana cigarette I and then transfer that twenty bucks
right away. You'd wait until you'd sold, you know, several
marijuana cigarettes.

Speaker 2 (01:14:06):
Just putting this out there. I don't have Venmo. I've
never used Venmo. I probably will never use Venmo.

Speaker 3 (01:14:12):
I pay my rent with them.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
I feel like you're really me right.

Speaker 3 (01:14:15):
Now, dude.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
I'm not high roting 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. To I'm talking
to you out there listening every time you do it.

(01:14:35):
I have seen this occur. I looked at it. You
are literally putting evidence you are drug dealing, so right,
the internet.

Speaker 3 (01:14:44):
Evident record of that, there is no He's right.

Speaker 1 (01:14:47):
It's evidence of living in the moment, man, it's evidence
of having a good time.

Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
Yolo.

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
I agree, But like it's just so, it feels so
shortsighted to actually pay for Just be careful, guys, sure,
just don't buy and sell drugs life.

Speaker 3 (01:15:03):
Maybe it's short sighted on the dealer side to get
paid that way. I don't know. I guess it works
both ways because there's a transaction of both things. There's
a record of both ends.

Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
Of the trues. If you are now a known associate
of that person, I suppose that's true.

Speaker 3 (01:15:16):
We're all getting Kevin Bacons into prison.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
Man. Ever since the post nine to eleven society and
the Patriot Act, you know, that's that's the way the
NSAY 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 separation.

Speaker 3 (01:15:35):
Actually, well, thank god they're more worried about terrorism than small,
low level drug deals.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
Right now, you don't know that's the thing, you'd ever
it could switch on you.

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
That stuff's gonna be on record until oh, let me
see apocalypse times.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
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. And
that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait
to hear your thoughts.

Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
That's right, let us know what you think. You can
reach us to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist
on Facebook X and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok ork
Conspiracy Stuff Show.

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