I call for the elimination of all cash. Two of the biggest problems that we have
in our society today are the result of the presence of black markets and various
services and commodities like the black market in labor, the black market in
drugs, and the black market in guns, the black market and prostitution, and
the presence of violent crime, usually, surrounding theft.
How do you eliminate both of those problems without spending many more
dollars that we don't have on enforcement?
Well, you eliminate both of those problems by undercutting the medium in
which they exist. The medium in which they exist is cash.
You can only have a black market and some commodity or service, if you can pay for
that commodity or service in cash. No drug dealer is going to take a credit
card. No illegal gun runner is going to take a
credit card. If you can't give them cash, they go out
of business or anyhow they go out of that business.
Second, if you don't have cash in your pocket or in your cash register, then no
one can rob you. Sure, they can take your credit card and
commit identify theft, but, first of all, they have to be pretty
smart to do that, not just any old street hoodlum could do that.
And secondly, if they do that, their crime isn't going to be of a violent
nature. No one's going to come into a store with
a gun and steal your identity. People come into a store with a gun,
because they want to steal your cash, not because they want to steal your identity.
So we can solve two of the biggest problems confronting our society today,
namely problems surrounding black markets and problems surrounding violent crime by
eliminating cash and having all exchanges proceed electronically, rather than by
means of some tangible medium of exchange.
Well, that's a terrible idea. Sure, let's just get rid of all the cash,
so that all our purchases are electronically recorded and we have no
privacy or civil rights anymore. What you've just witnessed was an attempt
at refutation that is guilty of the fallacy of the straw man.
Let me explain. I was giving an argument just a moment
ago that a bunch of our problems could be solved very inexpensively if we got rid
of cash. Now, getting rid of cash wouldn't solve
all of our problems. There would still be other problems and
maybe we could solve those other problems in various other ways.
But then, my critic protested, that my conclusion that we should get rid of
cash, was a false conclusion, because it amounted to the elimination of all of our
privacy and civil rights. Now, I wasn't calling for the elimination
of our privacy and our civil rights. I was just calling for the elimination of
cash, and if that means that transactions are electronically recorded, well then,
maybe those electronic recordings can themselves be made private and protected
by various rights just as information like our Social Security number is today.
Now, without getting into the details of whether my argument against cash was a
good argument or a bad argument, the point I want to make right now is that,
my critic's protest against that argument was unfair, and it was unfair, because it
represented me as making a claim that was not the claim I was making.
The claim I was making was that we should get rid of cash, not that we should get
rid of all of our privacy and our civil rights.
But my critic was accusing me of making the claim that we should get rid of our
privacy and our civil rights. That's an unfair criticism, because that
wasn't the claim I was making. Okay? That's reputation by straw man.
My critic was trying to refute me trying to show that my argument was
unsuccessful. In doing so, he misrepresented my
argument. He described my argument in a way that
made it sound silly.