Comment on Cashless shops operating illegally in Netherlands & Belgium; corporate disobedience
activistPnk@slrpnk.net 8 months agoI’ve taken some individual actions which can only make a difference collectively, progressing in difficulty:
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Started off switching back to cash in all the simple scenarios (paying grocers, restaurants, fuel). Some credit cards give the biggest rebates in those categories precisely because the credit card adds no benefit to those types purchases.
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When dining with a group of people, insist on getting your own separate bill. Otherwise if just one person insists on using a credit card, the whole bill would be paid by that card & the resto would have no metric showing that they were fed in part by a cash payment. Restaurants have been baited¹ by Visa so it’s important to offset that tactic by making sure restaurants get cash payments. ① Visa offered a $10k bonus to restaurants who commit to refusing cash for 1 year. That’s an easy decision for an owner to make if all their payments are by card anyway.
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If a business is needlessly cashless (e.g. they are a brick and mortar establishment), boycott them.
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Buying other goods with credit card sometimes have extended warranty benefits. I eventually decided to give those up & pay cash. But then I found that cash is more widely accepted at street markets and prices are often quite low (esp. for 2nd hand).
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Boycott Amazon just because they are probably the most harmful retailer anyway. Once you take that step, it’s easier to nix online shopping entirely because there’s not much competition left anyway. Buy local.
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Boycott products from members of betterthancashalliance.org. E.g. #Unilever. That’s a huge range of products. Note that Bill Gates is a key player behind the #betterThanCashAlliance.
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File complaints and put of a fight whenever the gov. forces you to pay electronically to a government office. You can boycott the private sector but you can’t quit taxation, so it’s important to make the biggest stink when a public service requires non-cash payments.
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Pay utility bills in cash. Yeah it’s a hassle but in some cases you can reduce billing frequency to quarterly & they’re happy to accept large advance payments as well.
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When donating money to a non-profit, don’t let them dictate terms. They have no leverage. Get their mailing address to mail small cash donations, or find out which conferences they will appear at and pay them in person.
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In the US you can pay taxes in cash. Not sure about other countries.
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If you run a business of course consider making it cash only. If you’re in a country like Belgium where accepting electronic payment is an obligation, offer a 10% discount to cash payers.
max@nano.garden 8 months ago
Thanks! Not only is this a great list of actions, but it also has helped me see this whole issue from a new perspective. More specifically, I multiple times I have tried to switch to cash-only because of privacy reasons, and I eventually become discouraged. For example, I recently gave up again. I have a shared card with my girlfriend, and she doesn’t really care much about privacy, so I felt like I was punishing myself for not good reason by paying with cash if my girlfriend next was going to pay with our card anyway.
But now that you have framed it from the point of view of those accepting cash, it does give me an additional source of motivation. It’s not only about my personal privacy, but also about pressuring vendors to accept it. This makes it worth it even in cases where there might not be a privacy benefit. Starting now, attempt #I-lost-count begins.
activistPnk@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Another thing to consider is when you pay by card, there are fees. You don’t see the fees but the merchant does. The merchant receives less money than you paid. That profit margin goes to the same segment of the financial industry that is attacking the cash option. So IOW, it feeds the adversary who works against us (the consumers).
I first thought when I pay my accountant, I want her to receive 100% of what I pay because she does good work and she deserves all of it. Thus cash, check, or anything that does not diminish her share is doing her a favor at no cost to me. Almost like giving her a tip at no cost to me (except maybe postage - but that’s still money better spent anyway). Well that idea extends to other businesses as long as you’re not shopping at a scummy shop like Amazon or Walmart. You probably want to support the businesses you choose to patronize if you choose ethical vendors to start with.
I used to pay using a rebate card. I eventually decided the ~1% kickback is prostituting myself cheaply. I gladly gave up the rebate to take back my privacy (and thus control). I made the same decision with grocery loyalty cards. the 1% savings is not worth the data they fully exploit. So I ditched the loyalty cards & pay cash.