How precisely do the police seize the assets of tens of thousands of people simultaneously?
They can't. This is a completely different issue, one which doesn't go away if cash isn't involved. The police could just as easily decide to seize your car or your watch or your computer or the clothes off of your back. On a one-by-one basis.
It's mass surveillance vs. targeted all over again.
By ordering the banks to close their accounts. People are not holding significant portions of their wealth in physical cash outside of the banking system. Apart from it being absurdly dangerous, there's also not anything like enough physical currency to do that. Not to mention investment accounts, deeds to property, etc.
Businesses being forced to accept all the risk and inconvenience of accepting cash to protect people from having their assets is somewhere between a security theater and a straight up pipe dream.
Businesses should accept cash as a signal to potential customers that they are not some snobbish high-tech cashless only establishments.
Also, there are a million other regulations that businesses have to deal with from license and insurance to the number of fire extinguishers. Asking businesses to accept cash is not a life-or-death decision from a business cost point of view. If anything, it means more potential customers and better PR.
I believe the point is that it would require orders of magnitude more resources - a prohibitive amount of resources - for an overbearing government to strip citizens of physical assets, vs. the ease and subsequent temptation of doing so digitially
The people out number the military by nearly 300-1. If you think a million soldiers are going to occupy the USA without resorting to obscene levels of violence (such that money is not your concern) you're a bit mistaken.
> The people out number the military by nearly 300-1.
Armed military and paramilitary government agents, including active and reserve military and internal security services are about .9%,of US population, not the .3% you suggest: 1.4 million active, 800k reserve, 700k police, for 2.9 million of 330 million.
Factors that push it in the other direction are desertion rates if we're talking domestic military occupation and fighting fitness -- how many police and reservists are actually able and willing to occupy a country with a likely insurgency for an undermined amount of time. Some percentage of that 2.9 mil number are not front line combatants. But also if the occupation is only in a single region then the denominator is much lower or if parts of the population side with the military.
They can't. This is a completely different issue, one which doesn't go away if cash isn't involved. The police could just as easily decide to seize your car or your watch or your computer or the clothes off of your back. On a one-by-one basis.
It's mass surveillance vs. targeted all over again.