Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 13/Sep 08:22

Cash is service of private rights

THE EDITOR: The Government is forcing issues once more in a very wanton manner, this time on "going cashless." Cash is a medium of exchange that never belonged exclusively to government. It originates in finance houses at the service of the depositors of their own wealth, namely, the people. Later in history the people agreed to promote laws to keep the medium reliable and efficient, alongside government legal tender. Removing cash detracts from both property rights and accumulated wealth and is a constitutional matter. But also is a step back from efficiency. Cash facilitates immediacy even where electronic cannot. Also, electronic will impose charges on every little move and this will happen incrementally, achieving its own status of "rights" – all of which is unjustifiable as something imposed. Further, electronic inserts a third party into the transaction, which becomes unpredictable and defaults to the third party. This is known to be a problem, eg, in landlord and tenant settlement and eviction. Third-party inserts have to be legislated just like bills of lading were; and to do this in every single sphere of transaction is impossible, let alone in a timely manner. It puts a burden of litigation on those who cannot afford it. In fact, online automatically engages a multiplicity of third parties who are getting over-arching rights – very different from the bills of lading market. This is its own kind of problem in many aspects, not merely "money," that is not getting addressed at all. That is not the worst of it. After "going cashless" financial institutions will find new media to accommodate the wealthy on mutual terms who can afford it, including avoiding electronic and insuring it, while the masses are left to struggle among imposed confined options with more and more "death by a thousand cuts" fees. What will ensue for everyone is trade in cash settlements via other currencies. Likely the US dollar will be the favoured unit and when US dollar volumes attain a certain level, the US will step in and presume a governorate of its currency. Something like Puerto Rico. A loss of sovereignty. Before that there would have been devaluation of the national wealth relative to currency volumes in all currencies. The Rowley government is bent on prioritising only certain constituencies including foreigners and it's obvious it never weighs disenfranchisement of the nation as it is bound to do. The Prime Minister's recent election agenda announcement admits to this as did the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The reason for the Constitution is to protect against all that; to identify and bind what it is enacting; and to facilitate what it already enacted. It is not the case that "the executive is given for what it wants to do." E GALY via e-mail The post Cash is service of private rights appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.