For some strange reason people aren't all that keen on building something that'll increase their utility bills, pollute everything, and threatens to take their job.
Here in Michigan, people are all for auto factories, but the polluting, energy intensive, and job taking data centers are a big no no. They use electricity, they look ugly, and they use water. Can't have that.
> Here in Michigan, people are all for auto factories, but... data centers are a big no no. They use electricity, they look ugly, and they use water. Can't have that.
Because they know economics better than their politicians and academia.
Data centers saddle the public with their power and water capital expenses, for new generation and transmission which are used solely for the benefit of data centers. And get this, in many cases the data bros get sweet tax-free deals for many years.
All of a sudden, the entire economics establishment loves communism for the rich, where the rich get exclusive use of public utilities built and paid for by the public.
The media, academia and politicians silence is deafening, which is why people have to raise their voices if they want to be heard.
If your margins are so razor thin that the cost of handling cash is significant, you need to raise your prices. Cash is legal tender -- not accepting it for in-person transactions is really shitty (maybe shouldn't be allowed?)
I think there should be a "digital equivalency act" or something to hamper full digital capture, but my feelings aside, there's a few powers that dislike cash:
Free people like cash, but businesses with low-skill/low-trust workers dislike cash because despite the CC fees, there is less theft, less overhead with cash reconciliation, cameras to watch cash with, less safes to manage, less cash pickup services.
The IRS hates it because there is a cash industry (as there should be, imo, but I'm injecting too much opinion already) that doesn't report earnings. I personally know barbers, housecleaners, handymen that admit to reporting no or few earnings, and synthesize a living off cash and benefits. If you stop paying taxes, this actually works pretty well compared to a low-end tax-paying job. My housecleaner takes overseas vacations (like, thrifty ones in hostels) 2-3 times a year this way.
Banks (arguably the IRS again, deputizing them with KYC) squint at you when you deposit or withdraw significant cash - ask any weed industry participants. Untrackable currency is a natural catch-all for people they don't want to bank with, so it's just friction and headache naturally.
You can't even get coins counted for free at retail banks anymore. Cash handling is too expensive even for the place that ostensibly provides cash handling services to the general public.
It's not about "just raise prices", it's about some industries (e.g. upstart restaurants) that already have massive failure rates and have hyper competition. Even airlines don't make money on flights, and instead only on selling credits cards or other perks.
If your operating costs are some percentage higher for accepting cash versus the coffee shop across the street that doesn't, you're more likely to fail.
If everyone has to accept cash, then everyone has the same costs and the point is moot. At any rate, courts are required to accept legal tender, and I think that requirement ought to extend to businesses as well.
> At any rate, courts are required to accept legal tender
Assuming you’re talking about the US here: there is no such requirement, at least not at the federal level. Individual states may have their own laws, but see for example this notice [0] from a Texas federal court that they will no longer accept cash as of May 21, 2021.
The real problem for those businesses is way upstream of payment processing costs, namely in the cost of business loans, the general poverty of the American consumer, and (for brick-and-mortars) zoning. The latter is a matter of getting municipalities to relax restrictions put in place mid-century literally to support segregation, and the former two are a matter of forcing the wealthy to eat the costs of their poor decisions from the last few decades, rather than continuing to allow them to socialize related losses through avenues like scandalously low labor pay vis a vis productivity and various investment/asset market scams (which, through housing and passive retirement investment, they've roped in Boomers and older Gen-Xers).
If you wish to make an apple pie shop from scratch, you must first invent an economy that isn't hamstrung by legacy obligations from ventures that people who are long-dead somehow were allowed to finance with your paycheck. (Somewhere, a middle-aged nepo-baby is clutching her pearls at the thought, and I just think we should cherish, rather than shy from, the opportunity to throw her and her siblings under the bus.)
You're being more literal than I was. My point was that "a debt" is a broader concept than the GP comment acknowledges. A debt is incurred any time you propose or agree to buy something. And legal tender is the way you settle it.
But also, I think that most people would not consider any debt to be incurred for transactions where the payment and receipt of goods is done at the same time, like in a grocery store.
If there was a posted notice that no cash is accepted it's unlikely you'll get a criminal charge, but you can get civilly sued. Most places will just accept the cash then put up a picture saying "If this asshole shows up again, trespass him"
No, eating food & then paying is a debt. After the services have been rendered. If seller can pull back the items, never provided the service, no debt.
Does that justify publishing propaganda on your platform though? Editorial board should be media literate enough to know this. Of course, the LA times credibility has been tarnished since their billionaire owner bought it and started putting their thumb on things. Many journalists quit in protest due to this owner.
It's very clearly labelled as an official response from the Chinese government. So it's what the people they're accusing have to say, and that's why they published it.
Whether or not to believe them is left to the reader.
It still breathes legitimacy into this propaganda by hosting it as such without any qualification. People might be inclined to believe the PRC, after all it is in the LA times, how untrue might it even be, they might think. Editors ought to be aware of the power of their platform. The chinese ultimately wanted to put this story in the LA times and they were allowed to do so.
Roald Dahl would agree with you. Fiction is the perfect place to explore complex emotions around the unsavoury parts of life, in a safe manner where the reader is in control.
>Semple developed a pigment called the "pinkest pink" and specifically made it available to everyone except Anish Kapoor and anyone affiliated with him
That's not a misconfiguration, that's incompetence.
How do these people get hired?
reply