Sounds like beautiful fodder for a dystopia to me ;D But you make a good case against their widespread use. Still, I imagine some sort of middle-ground might be reached, as we already see a strong trend to move away from cash money in the real world (what with banks, at least where I live, closing counters at the bank and imposing extra fees on non-online transfers etc to discourage the use of non-digital payments) and stuff like amazon's physical shop aiming for a system where you don't need cashiers anymore, where you simply take the stuff you want, walk out, and all the goods you took are scanned and billed as you leave. Maybe the chips (or cards) require borderline physical contact to be read.

Edit: Your load might be tough, but you also write pretty long posts Shien. Maybe you could reach a compromise and cut down on size to accomodate for your available time?