"We don't take cash," she said.
"Really?"
"Most nongovernmental organizations have gone away from accepting cash," she replied. "This is for our own safety."
Well, maybe, but she was carrying an iPad in order to process electronic donations. That was worth a lot more than the change I was going to give her, as a mugger would certainly know. Later that afternoon an environmentalist activist stopped me to ask the same thing, and also refused to accept cash.
Beggars cannot be choosers (a fact better understood by the actual homeless, or the various buskers playing instruments around Asheville, neither of whom refuse change when offered). I wonder if it is not allied to the general attempt to switch from cash to electronic funds, though, as those offer greater centralized control of our wealth as well as visibility on where and how we spend it. Left-leaning organizations gently nudge us towards electronic money, and offer us in return perhaps the virtue signal of having a donation to the Nature Conservancy showing up on our monthly statement.
Maybe it's just that they themselves want to collect our information so they can continue to dun us. A fistful of change, or even a $20 bill, is small potatoes compared to getting the credit card number and contact information of someone who proved willing to pay.
9 comments:
Not exactly the same, but I get phone calls all the time from organizations wanting a donation. I would tell them...send me an envelope and I'll send you a check, whatever I can afford when the envelope arrives. They wanted me to pledge an exact amount starting at $25 bucks and up. I'd tell them that being on fixed income, I might only be able to afford to send $10 or 15. That wasn't good enough, so now when they call, I just hang up on them.
I think your last guess is the correct one.
Any time I make the mistake of answering a solicitation call, for charity or politics, I immediately explain that I don't respond to any solicitation phone calls, no exceptions, thank them, and hang up without waiting to hear any more argument.
Normally my charitable gifts are responses to articles I read about an organization's good work. I tend to keep it local, though I'm fond of Samaritan's Purse. They behaved so well here after the 2017 hurricane that I'm happy to support their worldwide efforts.
If beggars cannot be choosers, then they must not be beggars. Your instinct on wanting a connection to exploit is probably the correct one.
In a similar vein, the 'two-factor authentication' paradigm is driving me a little crazy. This is where access to something that is already yours is meted out through a second obstacle, where you must relay a one-time passcode in addition to your password.
So, now instead of gaining access privately, your location is identifiable to those who might be curious, by virtue of the communication giving you the passcode. 'Its for security', they say, without noting that it's for their security, at the expense of yours.
It may be, as Aggie's comment suggests, that there is not only a correct explanation, but a major and minor explanation -- both correct, but one of significantly more importance than the other.
I noticed that the Biden administration's push for a digital currency is being sold on the outrageous claim that it will protect privacy, the one thing that it is actually intended to destroy. I remember this from William Gibson's debut novel, Neuromancer, which stated that in its imagined future (of about now) it was already difficult to conduct legitimate business in America in cash -- but in Japan, it was already illegal.
Yes, like the telephone push-button trees that are clearly for their increased convenience, not the customer's.
I lean toward a combination of collecting verified contact info (I've noticed that Square has collated my email address and Discover card number so I get an email receipt from any business that uses Square when I pay with my Discover card), eliminating the chance that the donation collector skims off part of the donations, and likely encouraging larger donations since people aren't limited to pocket change. I suspect that the trouble of fencing an iPad that's likely locked down fairly tight versus grabbing cash is enough to make a mugger look for a more readily disposable score, especially since somebody collecting credit card donations is probably sticking to upscale areas (noted that we are talking about Joe Biden's America, however). Habituating people to cashless transactions seems pretty low on the list of reasons to do this.
Maybe it's just that they themselves want to collect our information so they can continue to dun us.
Maybe it's riskier than that. You don't know who that street panhandler really is, or whether he's really representing a legitimate charity. He could be a hustler looking to get hold of your credit card data, which often will be tied to your bank data, so he can use the data for his own hacking of your financial account(s) or to sell to others for the purpose.
Regarding phone call solicitations, I've mentioned before a Chinese Gold Panda coin seller who cold-called me, while I was eating supper. I kept him on the phone talking about matters relating to gold for an hour. I was years before I got another solicitation phone call, an hour well spent.
Eric Hines
"...fencing an iPad that's likely locked down fairly tight versus grabbing cash is enough to make a mugger look for a more readily disposable score, especially since somebody collecting credit card donations is probably sticking to upscale areas..."
Yeah, I was talking about Asheville, the left wing Death Star in Western NC. The Asheville police department was not only defunded, the city council refused to fund police body armor. They're not going to try to save left wing activists from muggers. (Though they have been cracking down on the homeless lately, who are still quite visible but not nearly at the same levels as recently in the downtown area. I ended up giving the change to one of them instead.)
If you want to move a stolen iPad, I guarantee it's no problem. In fact there's a burgeoning economy for stolen goods of all kinds; I feel sorry for anyone trying to run a Lowe's or other similar store in the face of the shoplifting epidemic being funded by the drug running gangs with ties to the cartels. It's just below the point at which people are going to get tired of it and do something about it, assuming the Department of Justice doesn't step in to quash local efforts. Some local sheriff's races turned on that issue last year.
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