Libertarians want absolute freedom in all circumstances, even if this means reducing governmental amenities and retracting technological advances.
Libertarians by nature detest impositions by governments and financial institutions.
Right wing libertarians such as Ron Paul dislike complex economic systems and have called for a return to the gold standard – a financial arrangement removed in the 1930s.
The gold standard was system where the value of a currency was defined in terms of the amount gold represented by the exchange of paper currency – a system discarded by many countries in the Depression era.
These days, bankcards and computer-generated apps are replacing cash and the libertarians are typically upset.
Bankcards and ATMs have a long history in Saskatchewan dating to the 1970s.
Saskatchewan and Alberta had the first financial institutions on the Canadian Prairies to use card-based, networked ATMs beginning in June 1977.
Later, credit unions in Saskatchewan introduced debit cards, which were usable wherever credit cards were accepted in 1982.
By the 1990s, most of us were carrying bankcards in our wallets and purses. Bank websites were supplanting personal interactions with tellers at regional branches since the early 2000s.
Digital payments gained partiality over banknotes in the 2010s, as recorded in article by the Independent in May 2015.
PayPal, digital wallets like Apple Pay, contactless and NFC payments by electronic cards and smart phones are preferred for transactions in 2020.
Electronic payments can be insecure, mismanaged and data can be easily stolen.
Yet, the convenience of electronic cash is obvious, even if the libertarians don’t agree.
Security measures for electronic payments are improving, as we buy groceries, gas, cigarettes and other goods with bankcards and apps, instead of pulling out masses of coins and bills from our pockets to spread over shop counters.
Electronic cash transfers are the bedrock of modern personal finance, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, when cash is considered grimy and disease-bearing.
Although COVID-19 is a genuine threat, the growing apprehension over physical cash is ridiculous.
According to SCOOP Business in June 2020, “There is no evidence linking cash to the transmission of COVID-10. Cash is sanitized before being delivered by cash companies to venues and ATM operators.”
To have cash as an option for buying goods and services, instead of being solely reliant on electronic payments, will always be desirable.
Sometimes, cash is the only option with services such as coin laundromats.
Cash is defended by a libertarian group known as Cash is Legal Tender, but these Luddites are more than champions of banknotes and coins.
From reading several posts, these libertarians on the far right share French philosopher Michel Foucault’s ideal of personal ethics in favour of the collective – a development founded upon Nietzschean self-creation.
Foucault believed all human-led organizations had grown far beyond the needs of the individuals who were engaged with them.
Thus, Foucault decided the participants in society were trapped in games of power.
But the pro-cash libertarians aren’t gathering online to discuss French poststructuralism and German nihilism. More exactly, the online, anti-bankcard sect are using social media to disperse the views of American pop culture paleoconservatives like Tucker Carlson, who once shared their libertarian ideas on economics long before he became a Trumpist.
The Cash is Legal Tender sect are right in defending cash – but their denunciation of organized societies is alarming and meaningless.
Society funds libraries, schools, roads, electrical grids and other public aims. Without communities, we’ve returned to the Hobbesian age of fear, loathing and self-interest.
Governmental organizations on all levels often misrepresent society – but the outright rejection of society is short-sighted and founded on ignorance.
Critical theorist Jürgen Habermas accused Foucault and other like-minded postmodern libertarians as uncaring individualists disguised as philosophers who disdained the constraints of governments, but in turn scorned progressive ideals such as emancipation and equality in a 1981 paper he wrote titled Modernity versus Postmodernity.
Habermas disliked Foucault’s libertarianism – but like Foucault, the German philosopher and sociologist hated dictatorships. Habermas promoted the idea of a public sphere, where societies were occupied in public debates and where every citizen had access to forming public opinions – a superior ideal compared to Foucault’s nihilistic individualism.
Cash is Legal Tender are spot-on for defending banknotes and coins – we still need cash for payment alternatives, but the group’s libertarian-based fears about governments, societies, technology and globalism are mistaken and conspiratorial.
