A Cashless Society

MS#1679/586  words

The Cashless Society

a column by

Harley L. Sachs

The latest news from my old classmate in Sweden is that they are a cashless society. All transactions are done with debit or credit cards. Banks have no tellers. Currency and cash are obsolete. This is now. Let’s see where all this can lead to here in America:

For the Ididerod every dog has a microchip under the skin so no one can switch dogs. At a US hospital every newborn baby is tagged so when a woman tried to steal a baby she got only as far as the ward door before the alarm went off and all doors were locked. No more switched dogs or stolen babies. In this retirement building our wandering Alzheimer’s residents cannot leave their floor without triggering an alarm.

Moose and other animals, even gophers are collared in the wild and tracked. If a collared animal dies, it can be quickly found. Some criminals wear such bracelets and you can put one on your wandering kid.

Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, claimed he had an identity chip embedded by the government. Well, why not everybody?

Our building has done away with exterior door keys. Every resident has an electronic fob to open the exterior doors, a fob that is programmed so if it is lost or stolen it can be instantly deactivated. Such fobs are used for commuters’ cars that go through toll gates without having to stop. They trigger an automatic withdrawal of the toll fee from the driver’s account. The record also shows when the car passed which gate.

In some states there’s a plan to put your entire violation record on the magnetic strip of your driver’s license. Why not also your entire medical record? A woman I met carries hers on a flash drive necklace.

The obvious next step is to embed everyone with an ID tag that is also their ATM entry. No need to carry, forget, lose, or have your cash card lost or stolen. It’s part of your body, and if someone cuts it out it won’t work without the pin number.

 This is absolutely possible. All the information is stored and accessed in the cloud. Every transaction you make with Amazon.com goes into the cloud. If your Kindle gets overloaded, you can store the extra books in the cloud to retrieve later, and Amazon knows all the books you’ve bought.

The grocery store where I have a so-called member’s club card, knows everything I eat and drink. They can use this information for stocking the stores for certain neighborhoods and age or ethnic groups. The police used credit card purchases to track down the source and buyer of materials used for making a bomb.

Think of the implications beyond what Sweden already has. Embed the ATM bank card in a chip. In my short story “Therapy.com” everyone wore an embedded “peanut” that tracked them. So identified, no one could be mugged without the cloud knowing who was there are the time of the crime. Spouses would know where their partner was and who was with them in what motel room. Lost or kidnapped children could be found immediately.

Think about it: a cashless and cardless society where every transaction is known and every person’s location is tracked. Think of the implications for illegal immigrants and for legal tourists. The implications of this next technological step are profound. Sweden, here we come.

This is going to be tough on beggars who don’t take credit cards. No more “change, Mister, please. Anything helps.”