By Nicola Grant
The way we negotiate the exchange of goods and the payment of services has, for centuries, been determined by the prevailing economic system. From barter, to early coins, precious metals and coupons, to cash, cheques and increasingly digital payments.
In every economic structure right through to today, the way we’ve paid for things has always been through a system skewed to the benefit of the merchant.
Now, the latest evolution sees us confronting the possibility of a ‘cashless society’.
The signs have been there for some time. For many people, cheques were once the way to pay bills and buy bigger items. Not anymore. For years now, banks have been steadily closing local branches. Once, there was an ATM, or a ‘hole in the wall’ in every high street, shopping centre and petrol station. Now you have to seek one out and chances are when you do, you’ll be charged for withdrawing your own money.
Truth
All of this is regularly presented as people ‘choosing to pay digitally,’ as if the move to a cashless society is a popular movement forcing the banks and other financial institutions to accommodate our wishes. The truth is a lot different.
These changes are being driven from the top down; not the bottom up. They are not based on making life easier for working people. We live in a society dominated by the relentless pursuit of profit. Capitalist society aims to make as much profit out of us as possible: with a cashless society that becomes so much easier.
As Brett Scoot, author of ‘Cloud Money’ wrote, “Cashless society is a bank-controlled society. We must recognise every cash machine that is shut down as another step in the financial institutions campaign to nudge you into their digital enclisures”
Powerful interests
The extent to which banks, financial institutions and big corporations reach into our lives through credit cards, debit cards and apps has never been greater. What is presented as natural and inevitable is, in reality the work of very powerful interests. The target is the digital footprints that paint a picture of our lives. Once we were treated as consumers. Now we are computer algorithms and statistics, revealing our lifestyles, our purchases, our preferences, our intentions and our likely next moves.
Every time we make an online purchase, shop in the supermarket or pay a bill and every time we use an internet search engine – that information is recorded and stored. It’s commercial gold dust and is used to create further sales and profits, even to the point of setting different prices for the same product based on age, locality or shopping habits. Research suggests that people will spend up to 25 per cent more when they use digital money.
But not everyone is included. People on low incomes, many older people, immigrants and people with a disability, for example, may have limited or no access to digital payment methods.
No access
1.2 million people in the UK don’t have a bank account or access to a bank card. 20%of people still shop and pay bills exclusively with cash.
One and a half million homes in the UK don’t have broadband or internet access. In rural Ireland up to 20% of the population are without internet access.
Like most technologies, the internet and digital payments have a huge potential to improve the quality of life for millions of people, but it is how those technologies are used, for whose benefit and in whose interest they are applied and ultimately who controls them that matters most.
Profile and Profit
The current, profit driven, capitalist economy uses it to profile us and profit from the data digital transactions provide. They use it to raise banking transaction charges which disproportionately affect smaller traders and they use it to exclude the vulnerable and the disadvantaged from online access to healthcare, education, public services and citizen engagement.
Worldwide, the lack of access to the internet results in a growing digital poverty which impacts more on women than men. It excludes almost 60% of the African continent and in Latin America more than 40% of homes are without internet access. For those who can access it, it is up to sixteen times slower than in more developed countries and twenty times more expensive.
Stampede
The push towards a cashless society is being driven, in their own interests, by banks, financial institutions and big corporations. In the stampede to maximise profits, many people are being ‘digitally excluded’ and marginalised. Who controls the technology, how it is used and, in whose interest, lies at the heart of this debate, not just locally but globally.
Access to broadband internet, and the acquiring of digital skills, is now a social and economic necessity. Like other essential utilities it should be taken into public control and be accessible to all at the point of use.
That will help to address the digital deficit, but wresting control of the data it generates has now become a 21st century challenge for Socialists.
ENDS
CLANRYE NEWS 