In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously
The simple answer is to reject the cashless society.<p>In the medium to long term it&#x27;s simply incompatible with any reasonable definition of freedom. Surveillance is bad enough, but a system that allows governments to arbitrarily &quot;turn off&quot; thousands or millions of people at the push of a button is too powerful to not be abused.<p>Even the mere existence of such a system has a chilling effect. Which I suspect is precisely what these people want and is exactly why we can&#x27;t give it to them.<p>I&#x27;ll take inconvenience over slavery any day of the week.<p>This isn&#x27;t some sort of anarcho-libertarian paradise opinion, I have no issue with there being a well functioning justice system.<p>But yeah, if you want to seize assets, get a court order and go and lock someone in a box and take their things, don&#x27;t take the cowardly way out and pretend that you&#x27;ve just flipped a database key and it&#x27;s not really a big deal.<p>By the same token, if you tell me there&#x27;s been a murder on my street I&#x27;ll give you the CCTV footage of my door cam. If you ask me for a backdoor, I&#x27;ll tell you where to shove it. That&#x27;s what being a member of a free society is, that seemingly minor distinction is one of the most important things we have and better minds than mine have sought to elaborate on why.<p>Even a child is able to understand that force is still force regardless of whether it involves the direct visible physical kind.