Cash banned in Louisiana

[Simplicio]

@brazil84

I would guess that you are right, but what’s to stop people from agreeing that a particular debt must be paid in gummy bears?

Nothing. But if they don’t agree, and the debtor wants to pay in whatever the cash value of the gummi bears would’ve been, then the creditor has to accept it (or at least, he can’t use the legal system to try and collect gummi bears instaed of the offered cash).

[Jophiel]

@Dallas_Jones

I seriously doubt if flea markets and garage sales are the intended target.

I doubt it as well. Which is the concept behind “unintended consequences”.

[Folacin]

@Simplicio

Nothing. But if they don’t agree, and the debtor wants to pay in whatever the cash value of the gummi bears would’ve been, then the creditor has to accept it (or at least, he can’t use the legal system to try and collect gummi bears instaed of the offered cash).

Is that right? Presumably, at this point we’re talking contract law (IANAL). If I agree to swap my van Gogh for your original Model T Ford, and you decide you’d rather keep the car, are you able to substitute some fair-market value of the car?

Although I guess I could ask for the painting back if you decide not to deliver the car.

[brazil84]

@Folacin

Is that right? Presumably, at this point we’re talking contract law (IANAL). If I agree to swap my van Gogh for your original Model T Ford, and you decide you’d rather keep the car, are you able to substitute some fair-market value of the car?

Although I guess I could ask for the painting back if you decide not to deliver the car.

Or what if there is something more fungible at stake. I agree to sell you my van Gogh for 3 ounces of gold, payable 30 days after I give you the painting. If you default, then presumably I can get a court judgment for an amount of dollars sufficient to purchase 3 ounces of gold. But what about before legal tender laws were in effect?

[Yllaria]

@Dallas_Jones

Wow, doing a search for actual reporting on this bill involves wading through a lot of PrisonPlanet type conspiracy crap. Had to click through to page 5 of a Google search. But the law is targeted at junk, or scrap sales.

http://www.nbc33tv.com/news/louisiana-politics/new-scrap-metal-law-in-effect

Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding

I think we have a winner. I haven’t seen a tally, but putting together comments from repair crews, it looks like our city has been paying somewhere between $50 - $100K per year for the last five years just to replace stolen streetlight wire.

The Police have run stings on recyclers. The law was changed to require an ID and a wait period for anything but cans. Selling used wire is supposed to require added hoops to jump through. It’s still happening. There are rumors of it being driven to Nevada or shipped to China, but that’s obviously speculation.

If the Lousiana legislature is being contacted by a bunch of broke and pissed off cities, that would generate some bi-partisan cooperation.

[Musicat]

@duality72

Probably The Transparent Society by David Brin.

@RTFirefly

Sounds like SF writer David Brin.

@BrainGlutton

Was the book Minority Report? 'Cause it’s just like that in the movie.

I think it was the David Brin book. I’m not at home right now, so I can’t just walk over to my personal library and take the book off the shelf. I hate it when I can’t do that.

[The_Tao_s_Revenge]

This law is so stupid. One you can get prepaid credit cards without giving out your identity. The “name” on the card is something like “valued customer”. They’re mainly intended as universal gift certificates, but I’ve used them to buy things online.

Instead of going to upfront and sensible route of just requiring ID to be shown and recorded when buying or selling second hand stuff they went the stupid, ineffective route.

Further I wonder how much banker cock was sucked passing this law? Checks, and credit cards mean bank accounts and credit cards with their normal fees.
Is there a way to buy something second hand without the financial industry potentially getting a cut (either through direct fees, or potential over draft fees)?

[Taber]

@The_Tao_s_Revenge

This law is so stupid. One you can get prepaid credit cards without giving out your identity. The “name” on the card is something like “valued customer”. They’re mainly intended as universal gift certificates, but I’ve used them to buy things online.

I think this is targeting people who steal copper wire and sell it to recycling centers. The perfectly legitimate recycling centers have no reason to try and hide their identity, it is the people receiving the money we want a record of.

[Bricker]

@Musicat

I can’t claim to be an expert in this technical interpretation, but I find it hard to believe that whoever wrote and/or inserted that wording on our bills intended it to apply only to debts (by your definition) and not ordinary, simple purchases.

Start believing.

We could start with the US Treasury website, which anticipates questions like these:

@treasury.gov

Legal Tender Status

Page Content
I thought that United States currency was legal tender for all debts. Some businesses or governmental agencies say that they will only accept checks, money orders or credit cards as payment, and others will only accept currency notes in denominations of $20 or smaller. Isn’t this illegal?
The pertinent portion of law that applies to your question is the Coinage Act of 1965, specifically Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled “Legal tender,” which states: “United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues.”

This statute means that all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise. For example, a bus line may prohibit payment of fares in pennies or dollar bills. In addition, movie theaters, convenience stores and gas stations may refuse to accept large denomination currency (usually notes above $20) as a matter of policy.

Or we could review the case I cited earlier: Genesee Scrap & Tin Baling v. City of Rochester, 558 F.Supp 2d 432, Dist Ct, W. Dist of NY, 2008:

In May 2007, the City passed Ordinance 2007-137 (“the Ordinance”), which provides in part that “[n]o Junkyard Operator, Junk Dealer, or Scrap Processor shall purchase or otherwise receive junk from any person without first ascertaining that such junk is the property of the person offering to sell or give away. All purchases shall be by check and the Junkyard Operator, Junk Dealer, or Scrap Processor operator shall not cash the check.” Dkt. # 5-3 at 16.

Genesee, a licensed junkyard operator that runs a scrap processing business in Rochester, then brought this action, challenging the Ordinance on a number of grounds. . . . that the Ordinance violates 31 U.S.C. § 5103, which provides that “United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts.”
.
.
.
In Porter v. City of Atlanta, 259 Ga. 526, 384 S.E.2d 631 (1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1004, 110 S.Ct. 1297, 108 L.Ed.2d 474 (1990), a vehicle wrecker service and its owner were convicted of violating a city ordinance making it unlawful for a wrecker service “to refuse to accept, in lieu of cash, any check which can be insured by a check approval agency …” Id. at 529 n. 4, 384 S.E.2d 631. On appeal, the defendants argued that the requirement that wrecker services accept checks violated Article I, § 8 of the Constitution because the ordinance thereby “attempt[ed] to legislate a change in legal tender.” Id. at 529, 384 S.E.2d 631. The Supreme Court of Georgia disagreed, stating,

This contention is without merit. The regulation does not require appellees to accept something other than legal tender to discharge a debt. The debt is discharged when the appellants receive payment in legal tender through a third party institution.

**What these cases demonstrate, then, is that checks are not legal tender in themselves, and cannot lawfully be made such by state or municipality fiat. They may, however, be used as a substitute for legal tender, because the payee ultimately has the right to present the check to a bank and redeem it for cash in the form of United States currency.

The Ordinance at issue here does not attempt to confer legal-tender status upon checks, nor does it deem cash not to be legal tender. All that the Ordinance does is specify the form in which payments for a particular category of transactions are to be made. The buyer must pay by check, but that check is a promise of payment in legal tender, upon presentation of the check to a bank.**

(emphasis added)

[The_Tao_s_Revenge]

@Taber

I think this is targeting people who steal copper wire and sell it to recycling centers. The perfectly legitimate recycling centers have no reason to try and hide their identity, it is the people receiving the money we want a record of.

So write the law to target people who sell copper.

Since the legislature didn’t take the obvios step of targeting metal sales specifically we can only concluded either:

a) They eat paint chips

b) They intended it for the whole second hand market

Quite frankly this law is bad, and Louisiana should feel bad.

[Farmer_Jane]

How does this stop people from buying stolen stuff and selling it on Craigslist or their own ‘garage sale’? Or eBay? So now shady pawn shop people just take it elsewhere - probably like they already have been.

[Farmer_Jane]

@Bricker

Start believing.

We could start with the US Treasury website, which anticipates questions like these:

Or we could review the case I cited earlier: Genesee Scrap & Tin Baling v. City of Rochester, 558 F.Supp 2d 432, Dist Ct, W. Dist of NY, 2008:

(emphasis added)

@ Bricker: I never thought of that. There’s my FYI Trivia for tomorrow’s class…

[brazil84]

@CitizenPained

How does this stop people from buying stolen stuff and selling it on Craigslist or their own ‘garage sale’?

I imagine that some things (scrap metal?) are probably pretty difficult to sell on Craigslist or at garage sales.

Also, if you have a weekly “garage sale” which just happens to have peoples’ stolen stuff there, the authorities will probably catch on to you pretty quick. Same thing if you are regularly selling stolen stuff on Craigslist.

[Magiver]

@BrainGlutton

I once heard the famous criminal-defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey give a campus lecture where he recommended making it illegal for anyone to possess more than $200 in cash at any time, and we should make practically all our purchases with credit cards, which leave a paper trail. It had nothing to do with tax evasion – this measure, Bailey was sure, would almost wipe out violent-crimes-for-profit, because all of them depend on untraceable cash.

It just shifts the monetary standard to something else such as money orders.

[Musicat]

@Magiver

It just shifts the monetary standard to something else such as money orders.

Well, then, we’ll just have to outlaw money orders.

[Triskadecamus]

So, instead of just specifying metal recovery, the political folks in Lousiana decided to guarantee an increase in the profitability of banking credit cards?

Tris

[UltraVires]

@Magiver

It just shifts the monetary standard to something else such as money orders.

I was thinking of that. If such a law were in place, why not carry pieces of gold for exchange? Or if it was too much gold, carry a piece of paper which guarantees payment in a certain weight of gold?

It seems that for Bailey’s plan to work, you would have to outlaw all forms of barter or carrying any type of property on your person. Hell, I could wear an overcoat that I could trade for drugs.

[Magiver]

@jtgain

I was thinking of that. If such a law were in place, why not carry pieces of gold for exchange? Or if it was too much gold, carry a piece of paper which guarantees payment in a certain weight of gold?

It seems that for Bailey’s plan to work, you would have to outlaw all forms of barter or carrying any type of property on your person. Hell, I could wear an overcoat that I could trade for drugs.

I honestly don’t see this happening. It’s impossible to police the legal use of money as a tender of debt. I suspect it won’t survive the first court case that challenges it.

[robert_columbia]

@The_Tao_s_Revenge

So write the law to target people who sell copper.

Since the legislature didn’t take the obvios step of targeting metal sales specifically we can only concluded either:

a) They eat paint chips

b) They intended it for the whole second hand market

Quite frankly this law is bad, and Louisiana should feel bad.

I, for one, welcome our new paint chip eating overlords.

[Skywatcher]

@Buck_Godot

I don’t see anything unconstitutional about it. Looking at the text of the bill (embedded pdf) that the law exempts non-profit entities (so most thrift stores) and people who deal in used goods less than once a month (so most garage sales), but people who run flea markets on a regular basis might have problems.

Flea markets, you say? I think you’re on to something there.