“Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon”
The United states used military power to defeat the slavers in the south(and to get their independence in the first place), and the allies used military power to crush nazi Germany and their fascist allies. Not every use of military force is unwarranted or “immoral”
The Mediterranean has a right to defend itself! Are you anti-seamitic?
All those cars and solar panels that Chinese companies counted on selling in the US must go somewhere. Every other country in the world (excluding the EU, although to a lesser extent than the US) isn’t hell-bent on sanctioning China, their production will be just redirected elsewhere.
And since the US, biggest net importer in the world, just stopped… importing, there will be more goods sought after by less money, AKA more supply (old supply + goods that can’t profitably be sold in the US anymore) but less demand (since the US just passed these new tariffs) and as you know, this is gonna make prices fall, maybe not a drastic fall but still.
Collcata verba sunt accuratius modulatiusque.
No wonder, all far-right projects like his need a common enemy to unite against. If there’s none, just buy one.
They’re on that killing whistleblowers and making weapons that murder innocents grindset
Well, they’re doing it, and there are (at least, that we know of) 8 US military bases and over 11k US military personnel on Italian soil, they killed civilians with impunity more than one time.
For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Cavalese_cable_car_crash
They’re usually tried in US courts where they’re handed a slap on the wrist and Italian courts can’t do anything about it.
Chad about to become gigachad
Can’t even get a decent standard of living by selling your soul to Satan now huh
Well he was world famous, I’m not from the US myself but most genX and older (~40+) knew about him and his trial at least superficially
The communist party in Cuba (like every other party) can’t “advertise” itself, it’s in the constitution ffs. If you wanted to pick a socialist country to portray as a “one party scary dictatorship” Cuba is the least fit. Cuba is a zero-party democracy in a way.
sharing a house with other people in an individualist society that until not too long ago, when it was still economically feasible, pushed everybody to get their own house as soon as they can is abject poverty
So is there a legitimate reason to want to be able to use large amounts of cash
Before answering this question we should define “a large amount” as it stands today, I, a private citizen with no criminal record, who hasn’t ever been investigated by fiscal authorities in my life, can’t spend more than €2000 in cash or else I’ll face a huge fine and I’ll be automatically considered a “money launderer” and a “financial criminal”
Now, to answer your question: personal data is digital gold, it’s only natural people don’t want their banks to track every thing they buy, your data won’t just be sold to the highest bidder. It will be sold and shared to the “1683 partners” you see on the cookie banners. Not wanting your financial and spending data to be sold and shared with thousands of (sometimes really malicious) entities. Not wanting the prostitution of your data, and, to the maximum possible extent not participating in this coercitive datamining system (you don’t really have a choice, every bank does this to some often cryptically disclosed if disclosed extent) is the legitimate reason I believe cash is a payment method that, when possible, should be used.
To clarify my position: I don’t oppose limitations on cash transactions necessarily because I want to buy something like a car with cash, buying a car still requires extensive paperwork and as such most privacy benefits from paying cash vanish instantly. I oppose the marginalization of cash because it’s leading to a bankized societiy, we are seeing it with our very eyes.
At least where I live you:
can’t get your paycheck in cash
can’t withdraw more than an undisclosed amount, else you’re suspicious and may be investigated, without your knowledge (oh, and the burden of proof is on you!)
Can’t receive many welfare benefits without a bank account
A bank account is nothing short of mandatory, yet there’s not national bank you can open an account in. School is mandatory, public schools exist.
Private banks offer many benefits such as:
Investing in fossil fuel companies.
Not ensuring a single cent of the money they should keep safe, a national fund ensures up to €100k,but if it was for the banks id let you guess.
Offering subpar and overpriced investment products with ludicrous fees to unsuspecting and financially illiterate but often hard-working people, eroding their life savings.
Seeing the above points, I tend to look with distrust at laws, regulations etc that aim at pushing people into banks. People should be able to live their entire life without opening a bank account if they want, and without being judged as criminals.
It’s not like this is impossible, there are places with way less financial crime than my country, than the USA or other countries who restrict cash who don’t marginalize cash as much, countries such as Japan or Germany.
but this is a privacy basically nobody chose to have anyway
If there wasn’t a societal unspoken obligation to have a bank account, many people would have ditched theirs a long time ago, me very much included, people are just coerced into accepting it. Not saying we should live like financial hermits, just that we should stop accepting the status quo, and that many people only use their bank account to receive their salary and withdraw it later, maybe put something away if they can afford it. That shouldn’t require your data to be mined.
It’s 100% because they want it to be traceable. I’m not sure, but I think I’m OK with that.
Yes criminals use cash because it’s private, but criminals also use:
Criminals use private technology because they need to hide from the police. That does not mean we need to ban or heavily restrict (current state of cash in parts of the world, such as the USA or the EU) private options and private technologies just because “criminals use them” if you accept a ban on privacy and an increase in surveillance in order to counter criminality, you will receive an omnipotent government and corporations spying on you with a mandate.
The criminals will just go even more underground. They always adapt, they always had and always will.
We must not sacrify privacy in exchange for “safety”
Normalize not bailing out failing big businesses, hope we can bring that custom over here.
So much for the free marketplace of ideas, I can’t even get Putinbucks in peace now…
China is doing something good: here’s why it’s bad.
I think we need more govt subsidies to green tech and less subsidies to the fossil industry, i don’t care if it’s all a big 8d chess move to make us all speak Mandarin Chinese, the important bit is not dying rn.