The dangers of a cashless society

Sir, – As long as cash, or physical money, is in lawful circulation, we will all enjoy a type of freedom maybe we have taken for granted all our lives. Once digital money is inclusive or when all physical cash has become obsolete, banks, governments, and the large tech companies will be able to work hand-in-hand to decide where you can buy, what consumer items you can buy (and not buy), and in what quantities you can buy. Vast numbers of people will be cancelled, meaning they won’t be able to digitally access the internet and specifically the technological systems in place for buying, selling, and working. Even today, if you don’t have a bank account you can’t work. What if one’s bank account is blocked? How can employers pay you in a society where digital money is inclusive? People will then have to rely on others for their buying and selling needs. But what happens when these people too are cancelled? It’s all sold to us as “convenience” or when nothing more inconvenient or authoritarian could ever be imagined.

All we have to do is demand that cash transactions continue. Keep paying by cash. Choose the cash payment option rather than paying electronically. These technological systems will be used maliciously against people. They already are.

At least for now cancelled people, or non-people, can resort to cash transactions and they can attain cash legally in a number of ways. Not so if we allow cash to disappear from legal circulation. – Yours, etc,

LOUIS SHAWCROSS,