The flip-side of the coin

Commentary by Patrick Keller

A few weeks back, readers heard from Editor Chris Clegg about a future when money (cash money) is obsolete. The reasons to move toward a cashless society are many. Money degrades over time. It can easily be counterfeited and is hard to track. The thousands of different currencies around the world cause headaches for investors and consumers alike as values fluctuate daily. The problem with a cashless society is the form of control it wields over people. It comes down to a case of the haves versus the have-nots. According to World Internet Stats, Africa has the second largest population in the world, next to Asia, with a population of 950 million people. Yet, they have the smallest number of Internet users of any region at 3.5 per cent, or 51 million users. By contrast, North America has 337 million people, with the highest penetration of Internet users in the world. With 248 million North Americans surfing the net, 73.6 per cent of us have a digital leg-up on the rest of the world. As Clegg pointed out, barter is still the major method of commerce in many parts of the world. It must be, as money, especially credit, is a distant dream for the billions of poor people who live a hand-to-mouth existence. The move to a cashless society will further estrange these people already struggling to survive in this brave new world of cash and credit. Conspiracy theorists point to the Orwellian overtones of a money system based on world-wide digital networks. One example already in place is the new RFID (radio frequency identification) credit card. This newest gold standard of credit card promised to eliminate fraud by emitting radio frequencies that confirm a user’s identity. The New York Times recently ran a story revealing that virtually every RFID credit card tested, including Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, was vulnerable to unauthorized charges, putting consumers at risk of identity theft. Card numbers, card holder’s names, and expiration dates could be ‘siphoned off’ through purses, backpacks or wallets without consumer knowledge or consent, using a simple radio frequency reader made from over-the-counter parts. In a cashless society, power outages or network failures would render people broke, even temporarily. By the simple click of a mouse, a person with ample credit can be suspended in a state of poverty, while another’s worth can be multiplied with a second click. Many feel that the push toward a cashless society is the last gasp of a debt-ridden society. At $805 billion dollars, Canada’s debt works out to roughly $27,000 per person, or $45,000 per worker. The U.S. debt is relatively the same. At $10.5 trillion dollars and rising $3.41 billion daily, each American “owes” about $35,000. In fact, every dollar we possess is owed several times over to someone else. The thinking is that a move to a cashless society would obscure actual debt while greasing the way for micro-payments and “tiny taxes”, easily collected via debit cards. But beyond debit and credit, cash or cheque, there is a further system being proposed. The idea of a moneyless world is not a new one, but it is one that is gaining steam. It’s hard to imagine how the world could run without money, and yet it has for billions of years. The oldest written evidence of money dates only to 1200 bc: A receipt for a daughter sold for 12 scheckles. All money serves to divide people. Many good people with good ideas are kept down due to a lack of it, and many bad people with bad ideas have too much of it. If all the money in the world were destroyed tomorrow, what would change?