Austria’s conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer wants the right to use cash enshrined in the constitution, he told Austrian media in remarks published on Friday (4 August), an idea the far-right Freedom Party has been pushing for years.
Austria’s conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer wants the right to use cash enshrined in the constitution, he told Austrian media in remarks published on Friday (4 August), an idea the far-right Freedom Party has been pushing for years.
Cashless systems right now are privatized systems that are set up to be more exclusionary than cash. (I admit, there are niches where they do help inclusion, such as for blind people, but still.)
And this shows in really simple examples: I can give a child cash and tell them to get ice-cream without compromising my bank account and without the child needing to know any of my secrets or needing to have a bank account. I can give a homeless person cash without telling them my name or bank account and without them needing a bank account.
If there were a state-provided privacy-first cashless system that worked for everyone age 5+ which didn’t need to refinance itself on the back people going into personal debt, I’d be mostly for it. The only thing missing then would be the intuitive spending control you get from using physical money but maybe there’s a solution for that.
But right now, there are few giant multinationals plus local banks who make a lot of money on the current system and they will do everything to prevent this kind of idea for obvious reasons.
I am pretty sure you can find out how many people there are who are excluded by current cashless systems, if you try.