> just as we should disallow removing citizenship.

However lots of countries do allow removing citizenship In the UK it is a political decision too. Lots of countries allow locking people out of other things (e.g. freezing bank accounts). I therefore doubt we an effectively prevent this.

I do not see the problem with physical tokens. They are simple, do not create a single point of failure (if I lose my phone I still have my cards and cash), robust to network and systems failures. What is the drawback? Having to carry a few cards?

▲

grey-area 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes and I find this deeply wrong - what politician would you trust with this decision? Debanking is also wrong in my view.

I think we should focus on laws against things like that which lead to tyranny rather than attempting to stop progress.

Cash in particular is expensive to produce/process and no longer honours the promise printed on it, it will be phased out as the transactions with it approach 0%.

Cards are really no different than a token in a phone and don’t work for long either in the absence of a network (both will work offline but do need to be reconciled). I haven’t habitually carried a card in about a decade, I think for similar reasons to cash they will die off by general consensus.

	▲	graemep 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Cards are significantly different from a token in a phone: 1. They are physically separate. They are not likely to be stolen at the same time as a phone. 2. They do not require battery. Cash has the same advantages, but even more so as it does not rely on networks at all. If you only have phones as a means of payment what do you do if you phone is lost, stolen or out of battery? How do you even buy a new phone!? I think phasing out cash is very short sighted. It is robust and reliable. There is a good reason the Swedish central bank recently recommended that people keep a certain amount of cash at home (1,000 SEK, equivalent to about £80/$108/94 EUR, per adult).

▲

wongarsu 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The drawback of physical tokens is that you can't use them online. I don't want to spend an hour waiting in queue at the city hall for something I can do online in 10 minutes.

The ideal state is having both physical and digital ID. But that will lead to a slow erosion of the willingness to carry physical ID, even if it stays available (which I believe it will for many decades. Even if national ID cards and drivers licenses were to go digital only, passports won't)

	▲	graemep 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I use credit cards online all the time. I have logins for government services so I do not need to queue (I had to verify my ID using an app once for one of them). Getting a new driving license (for a change of address) was done online.