Bye bye Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, and many others. They can go and play “America First”. We’ll have our own independent system by november 2025.
Bye bye Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, and many others. They can go and play “America First”. We’ll have our own independent system by november 2025.
Sadly not entirely true. The incredibly shitty previous government in Australia widely trialed a racist, classist cashless welfare card for indigenous people. Recipients got 80% of their welfare on it and it could not be used for alcohol, gambling or cash incase they spent it on drugs or porn or other “sinful” things.
As we become more dependent on digital systems there are new ways for our privacy and freedoms to be eroded which makes participatory democracy all the more important.
Almost all my transactions are contactless payments and it pisses me off that they all go through VISA when there is a perfectly good local network for debit card payments.
I’m not a fan of those food stamp regimes - but there is a fundamental difference between “you can’t use some money you got from the state for social reasons for cigarettes or alcohol” and “everybody has to spend 20% of his income in restaurants”
That sounds great, what’s your problem?
Honestly, not allowing welfare to be spent on alcohol or gambling seems pretty reasonable. I’ve seen much harsher restrictions that do seem excessive, but this one isn’t.
These systems are based on the flawed assumption that poor people and minorities are less able to manage money that others. It is hugely discriminatory and treated poor people (and specifically the most disadvantaged racial group in the country) like criminals and addicts. It removed personal agency and forced people to use specific retailers, preventing them buying used goods and fresh market produce. The program was expensive and the only people who benefited were the company running it. It is populist divisive nonsense.
Anyway the point is digital payment systems can absolutely be used in democratic states to enforce spending behaviours and you can even see how it starts with people here believing such a system is justifiable. Then it gets extended to other minorities. The elderly, veterans, disabled, unemployed.
Fortunately in a democracy we can educate people as to why overly simplistic solutions that appear to protect vulnerable people are in actuality a really bad idea.
Worse it’s how you then get actual alcoholics buy big cases of water bottles with deposit, drain out the water in front of the shop, then go inside and cash the deposit in exchange for liqueur.
If you don’t want people to stay alcoholics have fucking therapy in place. And none of that “zero tolerance” BS many folks need tapering: You get them to a steady state where they don’t binge, don’t have to suck dick for drugs, have some stability and thus room to breathe, then you come in with psycho-social treatment, and with that progressing and the underlying reason for the addiction vanishing the substance consumption itself can be further reduced. And even if they never get to zero such kind of treatment still lowers the total cost of addiction to society so even liberals should be on board.
Don’t change the wording here. The only thing that was stated is that alcohol and gambling were not allowed, and that’s what I agree with.