People have been warning about it for years. There has been tremendous discussion about this, but with not enough care paid. Unfortunately, each passing day brings the possibility of a cashless society closer to reality, as Zero Hedge by way of ABC News Australia reports, that the head of the Australian mint is preparing to abolish the production of small coins, but will soon follow with larger ones, thus eventually getting rid of the use of the coin at all.
Australia’s five and ten cent coins could bite the dust as the coronavirus pandemic has supercharged the decline of coin circulation.
Leading up to the pandemic, coin circulation in Australia experienced a sharp decline in the use of 5 and 10 cent coins.
Royal Australian Mint CEO Ross MacDiarmid told ABC News that he expects 5 and 10 cent coins to be phased out of circulation in the coming years, adding that the pandemic has likely shortened the natural life of coins.
“There’s no doubt there has been a significant decline in demand for circulating coin over the last five to six years,” MacDiarmid said.
“Decline in demand for coins (is) roughly 55 to 56 per cent,” he said.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) recently published data showing the rapid decline of physical currency used in transactions over the last half-decade. The RBA pointed out an unprecedented decline in the use of cash because of the virus pandemic forced people to transact online and use contactless payments.
“ATM withdrawals in April were down 30 per cent from the month before and over 40 per cent lower than 12 months earlier,” RBA Assistant Governor Michele Bullock said in June.
“Rising inflation, coupled with the growth of online and contactless payments, are rendering the lowly silvers obsolete, despite their place as a mainstay in cafe tip jars, charity tins, and school canteens,” said ABC.
MacDiarmid said the outgoing coins would be redeemable at banks and can still be used in shops.
He said the government has carefully taken a look at the 50 cent coin:
“We are monitoring its use in circulation to see whether there’s a need somewhere in the future for a different 50c piece to be produced,” MacDiarmid said.
“It’s not something we’ve necessarily raised with the Government but it’s something that perhaps could be raised in the future,” he added.
MacDiarmid cited a figure, pointing to the steep decline of coins over the last five decades. He said there are only 4 billion coins in circulation, down from 15 billion in 1965.
The decline of physical money attributed to the virus pandemic has also been seen in the US over the last two months. A coin shortage has forced many businesses to only accept exact change and or only accept credit and debit cards.
The demise of the Australian 5 and 10 cent coins amid the rise of contactless payments, supercharged by the virus pandemic, along with the coin shortage in the US, forcing folks to use contactless payments as well, certainly suggests a cashless society is ahead. (source)
Moves toward the abolition of cash as a form of payment have been seen primarily in northern Europe, but it is also taking place around the world. The reasons for doing this are several, and none are for the good of people.
First, cash is not traceable easily. Therefore, people can buy things with cash or pay people in cash and thus avoid the need for having to deal with taxes. This is even more so than the purchase of “illegal” things, which while cited as a reason for “tracking” cash, is less of a real issue for governments than taxes.
Second, cash cannot be easily destroyed. Money as a number on a screen can go to zero with the press of a button. Cash, while it can lose its value by way of financial policy manipulation, is a physical thing. To lose it, one has to physically lose the object, or have it stolen or destroyed by mechanical means. It is a lot easier to rob somebody with numbers and a computer than physically removing and object from his hands.
Third, a cashless society requires a complex system of “fees” to run the processing machines, and thus banks and processing companies stand to make a lot of money from fee surcharges on general purchases.
Fourth, all purchases made in a cashless system can be tracked down to exact times. Thus people can pry into one’s personal business where they have no business looking for their own reasons, and in the hands of a legal situation, it can give a zealous prosecutor too much information, not even so much as to convict a guilty person, but potentially pin a charge on an innocent person.
Fifth, and most importantly, it is about controlling people. All it takes is the press of a button and one either no longer has or cannot access his money, and thus is helpless to whatever power in question is and what it wants to do to or with him.
There is no benefit to a “cashless” society unless one is one of the individuals involved in controlling the organs that will run the system and which will benefit oneself at the expense of one’s neighbors. There is no good that “cashless” transactions will bring as a universal reality for the common man except to further tighten a choke-hold around the average man until he is fully reduced to the condition of being a slave.
George Orwell, the famous 20th century science-fiction author, said that he saw the future as a ‘boot stomping on a human face, forever’. Indeed, Orwell’s vision is telling, and likewise the fact that Christ said He would have to return at some point, since it is clear that if things were left to be as they are, eventually, there would come a time at some point when power would be potentially so consolidated that there would be no more freedom anywhere, and that a Hindu-like caste system would emerge for the human race that would separate between a small, elite ruling class calling themselves divine with a mass of suffering, miserable human slaves that serve them, and while cashlessness is not the only option to realize this, it is certainly one part in the construction of such a system as it pertains to a global application and scale.
We are truly living in historic times, for little things such as this often have major consequences.