I'll lose some of you with this.
I'm OK with that.
Recently, I was fined by the IRS for paying employee withholding funds with a personal check. Not for refusing to pay, or shorting what I owed, but because I paid with a check.
By law, the IRS requires electronic transfer of funds to make those payments.
I tell people that we're moving toward a cashless society, eventually requiring the implantation of a chip in our bodies. Not only will this chip be required to buy or sell, but also to track our movements.
People roll their eyes, etc.
Well, here's what happened when a man recently tried to pay his mortgage at Bank of America with cash:
On my dollar bills, it says:
This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.
Is it now?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hey Cowboy, thanks for the heads up. This is horrific.
ReplyDeleteI've been living in Italy, where they just passed a law making cash transactions over €1000 (about $1300) illegal. They're planning to reduce that to €300. That's some serious shit, but we've got an unelected Goldman Sachs guy running the place (Mario Monti).
I want to come back to the States to buy some land (way too expensive here) and get into local food production. Good to know what I'll be up against (the same damn thing).
I figure it this way. Every bad, destructive idea in our modern industrial economy is based on money. Only money dictates that it "makes sense" to put tap water in bottles and ship it from point A to point B, then take other bottled water and ship it from point B to point A. Take the money incentive out of most activities and who would do them? They'd be considered insane!
If we can provide ourselves with food, shelter and clothing, we don't need money except to pay taxes, which, if we remain "poor" we can also manage to avoid to a large extent.
This electronic gambit, anyway, is going to fall into its own trap. Here in Italy, because some online places wouldn't take my US cc, we got a pre-loaded cash card. Now, the new thing is that we can't use the cash card without having a cell phone, because they came up with a new transaction security scheme which involves them calling your cell phone with an SMS PIN, which you then have to enter to complete the transaction. I don't *have* a cell phone. Trying to force people into ever-more-elaborate control systems is just going to drive everyone underground.
At the same time they are wasting resources in these efforts, the real resources are dwindling anyway: it's a game with ever-diminishing returns. They're gonna set the couch on fire to get the change outta the cushions.
At some point there isn't going to be the infrastructure to run their cashless schemes, so they'll ultimately be defeated.
Best of luck with your ranching. I read about your land/tax/inheritance issues. I would just figure out a scheme to give it all away: give it to your workers, give it to a land trust, create a non-profit foundation, something like that. We're only renting what we think we possess anyway. I have a bunch of "wealth" in the stock market and I plan to buy land with it, give the land to a land trust, and live off of it for the duration of my life. Not having kids, I'll find some young farmers and adopt them. That's the general idea, something along those lines.
You might like to read "Sacred Economics" by Charles Eisenstein, if you have not. He also has a lot of free material on the Internet: http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/text.php
I think the move to a moneyless society will be a good thing.
Sorry I missed this comment until now.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the contribution.
And good luck to you and yours,
don