Originally Posted by
Epic
There are various ideas circulating things that would allow "cashless" bionic transactions.
Obviously such a mechanism could also be abused, for nefarious purposes, on a small or grand scale. Consequently I think that most people should and would refuse to get such a thing installed on their body.
HOWEVER, I outright reject the idea that there is a big conspiracy at play - it is simply the chaos of many different systems interacting, developing, deteriorating, etc.. IF an organisation with such a plan DID exist, we're all ****ed anyhow, tattoos or not.
Tattoos have existed, in many cultures, for thousands of years. Some of the earliest known uses of tattoos were to mark the body in ways that would make one unattractive as a slave. In other situations, tattoos have been used to denote that one already someone's slave - so to prevent theft or escape. The most recent, relevant example I can think of is the numbers tattoo'd on people in concentration camps and gulags of 20th Century Europe.
Lastly, barcodes tattooed on the skin are not really a viable way to install a "cashless" system, still less a system of population control - there are far better methods (for either purpose).