just yesterday on the pro-cashless WSJ article comments someone mentioned the fbi was a bad actor, and everyone jumped in saying there were so many rules added after JER that something bad would never happen again. sigh.
what's about the time difference that makes it better or worse?
i vote for my local representative exactly because he will use tax payer money to improve my street and make sure zoning rules make my buildings more valuable.
any winner takes all system are not very good to begin with. then you have the EU (actual EU, not countries in there) which fix this but screw up separations of powers
...this is already legal for some decades. if you are in a rewards program you agreed to have you anonymized sales history (i mean, they will not list "ate burgers" but "ate at fiveguys" is pretty similar).
after that you need some magic to deanonymize the anonymized data, but in the 90s plenty of people claimed to do that already. the famous case was infact with health insurance and burgers... but i can't recall any names.
> Bank transactions are trivially traceable and reversible by the state
instant, cashless, transactions are not reversible, and can be withdrawal instantly on the other end. sum that with the usual practice of employing disposables young criminals to quickly withdrawal the funds and you have even less risk than btc or cash based crime.
sheltered engineers in silicon valley or theoretical economist in boston... will never get how easy it is for criminals to sidestep rules.
first month with central bank digital currency, instant kidnaps were thru the roof.
the "solution" lower limits of how much you can transfer. what a joke.
now only 100usd per day can leave your pocket. wish i was kidding. even lower at night when traveling i have to wake up at 3am to make payments thanks to timezones.
people can raise limits, but if you pay for something expensive once you're probably marked forever as having lots of money in your pocket. with cash, that would be a one time opportunity to be robbed. with cashless, you signaled that forever you're a good target.