IS THE MARK OF THE BEAST IN YOUR WALLET?

As a cab driver my hatred for plastic payment is well known. As I say, we cabbies need to buy gasoline and lunch, etc TODAY NOT TOMORROW OR NEXT WEEK. It really irks me that a bunch of politicians have mandated that people can expect a cab driver they hail off the street will accept their piece of crap plastic in payment. Flag my hack, and I want CASH you moron. 

However just the other day I was reading in the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ to Saint John, and a chill ran through me. It was the part where was said that the Beast caused all people to receive a mark in their right hands or foreheads, and without that mark no one could buy or sell. 

For years now there has been an ongoing attempt to get everyone to use plastic to pay for every damn thing they buy. "Cash back" (actually electronic credits) offers, extended "frequent flier miles", and other goodies are used to ensure that you mindlessly stick a damn plastic rectangle in the face of every waiter, clerk and cabdriver you pay. 

(For a while they tried to sell us front-line service providers on accepting plastic since people tend to tip more than when they actually see the money leaving their hands, but most of us didn't buy it, so they worked on governments and employers to FORCE US to.)

The ultimate objective is to have a "cashless economy" which would benefit society by making it impossible to use cash for wrong or "immoral" purposes; and to make attempting a robbery pointless. How wonderful. 

How wonderful, until you realize that once we reach that point, it paves the way for limitless inflation where - unlike the Wiemar Republic in post-WWI Germany where people pushed wheelbarrows full of currency to the store to buy a loaf of bread; or in present day Venezuela where paper money is weighed instead of counted (one dozen eggs for 35 pounds of peso notes) - even if one thousand dollars is worth one penny, a million dollars will still be easily stored and countable on the little magnetic strip. Sure people will still bitch, but they'll bitch less if it isn't inconvenient. Money won't have to be printed, just authorized. And the more divorced from reality the general public is, the easier it will be for corrupt politicians to sway them. 

How wonderful, until people find out (after it's too late) that at a minimum in a "cashless economy" a PERMANENT RECORD is made every time you make any kind of purchase; detailing AT A MINIMUM how much you spent and who you paid and when and where. And as a bonus, what you were spending it on. 

The point of a "cashless economy" is NOT to make things more convenient for YOU. It is to make life easier for the banks, who can use the money your card accesses to loan out at interest; to make things easier for the blowholes who send you junk mail based on your purchasing habits; and ultimately to prevent YOU from spending money on things the "authorities" deem improper; among other things. 

A CASHLESS ECONOMY IS A PREREQUISITE FOR THE TOTAL STATE CONTROL OF YOU.  Now imagine:

Some day soon, the problems of identity and card theft will be addressed by some joker who decides that what we need is a "card-free" economy. What gets proposed is that a unique bar code or the equivalent accessing any individual's financial and personal information be tattooed onto the hand or forehead of that individual. Biometrics will be included to preclude a thief lopping off a hand or head to get access. Once that happens, no one will be able to have a yard sale or buy a  gallon of  milk without the government knowing about it. 

What do you wanna bet the last three digits of that code will be "666"?

Stop bowing down to the Beast, you fools. PAY IN CASH and refuse this sinister trend.