Estonia is well on the way to building the world's first high tech panopticon.
Low tech panopticon - by Friman
Relinquishing Liberties to Fight Evil
According to Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the outgoing Estonian President, democracy would be better protected in a cashless society. His argument goes along the lines that cash enables corruption, and corruption is bad for democracy.
Such arguments from the ruling elites, follow a long tradition of calls to relinquish certain civil liberties for the purpose of fighting some evil. Most often of course these days, that evil is terrorism. However the elites are creative: organized crime, child porn, copyright infringement, money laundering, and of course corruption, are some of their other favorite excuses.
Unfortunately relinquishing civil liberties will not actually stop whatever it is the ruling elites claim to fight against. Terrorism didn't stop in spite of years of NSA eavesdropping on the entire Internet. Similarly corruption won't stop in the absence of cash. After all there is a near endless supply of products and services anyone can offer a corruptible official.
The most likely outcome is that we lose another basic freedom, gain nothing in exchange, and end up with a state that has even more power and control over our lives.
Maybe a better way to fight corruption is to make sure that laws can't be applied arbitrarily, and that permission from the state isn't needed for every minor activity. Those are the kind of issues that increase an official's ability to create problems for citizens and essentially what provides officials with extra "income opportunities".
Estonia vs. Digital Liberties
It is worth noting that Estonia has moved quite far in the direction of a cashless society, which caused some serious problems for at least one person I know, when he was frozen out of his bank accounts by the Estonian state.
The reality of a cashless society is not rosy, it gives the state a switch with which it can make anyone's life nearly impossible. This is not the kind of power a state should have over every individual.
Unfortunately Estonia does not really have a strong tradition of protecting digital liberties: every so often there are calls to ban anonymous commenting and require online media portals to know the identities of every person who posts a comment. Some sites have already implemented that.
Communication providers in Estonia are obliged by law to send a real time copy of all data and voice calls to a government computer system. This way the state can freely decide who they want to spy on, without the pesky need to present warrants to telecom operators.
I myself am engaged in a lengthy battle with the Estonian state over the legal status of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which the Estonian state is trying to hamper as much they can.
High Tech Panopticon
Using modern technology, the Estonian state attempts to increase its ability to monitor and control what everyone does, in essence creating the world's first high tech panopticon.
President Ilves' call to ban cash is but a logical step to achieve that objective.