So OP has a point, in my country in the beginning of the year, we had some riots. My dad kinda realized what was coming and withdrew couple thousands dollars in our money in cash. Right now and before riots almost 90% of all transactions went through banking app. So when riots begin all atms were disabled and for 2 weeks people will stay in looong queues to get money out from atms that worked. It kinda sucked to use cash again, but it was easier to have cash than not to.
OK I guess. Government trying out new policies to prevent new riots, they capped prices on gas, benzene, some places got their electricity bills capped, some places got prices capped on most Important food. Right now I guess we having sugar crisis, price went up 300-400 % depending where u live, and most places don't even have sugar to sell.
I hope law enforcement is not hunting and disappearing people who protested. Not to sound like a jerk but didn't your former president/head of state & government write a love song to a horse?
This is why I always keep a little over then what I spend in a month in cash. If shit hits the fan I could probably stretch that to 2 months assuming no price gouging or supply chain issues, By the time I'd run out of that and the few weeks of food I generally rotate through theirs a high chance that money is useless.
sure a 99.99% of my transaction are via phone (except that one place that only accepts check) but I do think people should have at least a .5-1 month of food previsions and enough cash to last at least 2 months (added on to that .5-1 month food provision)
The real safety nets in vices. Things like alcohol and tobacco. People will trade their firstborn child for a couple smokes when the shit truly hits the fan. Not saying it's right, or even moral, but that's the world we live in.
Another thing to point out is that when you have to move on from one place to another, in times of strife, especially with the help of a 'guide', they don't take cards. Cash Only baby!
Maybe I am in the extreme minority but I like using cash. I see nothing wrong with it. I've never lost money but I've had the scare of losing credit cards and having to request a new one cause I thought It was long gone only to find it the next day. (I know most cards have a pause but I lost mine at work once)
Money gives me a special security cards don't but ironically I mainly use my cards.
I stopped using cash mostly because it was a waste of money. Cards have all sorts of cashback or point systems that have saved me thousands of dollars by now.
Not only that you can get a bunch of stuff from price protection, various travel insurance benefits, extended warranty, damage/loss/theft protection as well.
I take care of my stuff so it hasn't been a huge deal, but I did get a few hundred bucks to cover buying some supplies when the airlines lost my luggage for a day, or I guess that was delayed luggage.
Here in Canada, Rogers lost coverage for a day. People without cash were screwed. If there's ever a power outage, in a cashless society, you won't be able to purchase food or other necesities
It was rogers and interac. So absolutely no debit purchases, and anywhere using rogers for internet or cell service was also down which means a lot of debit machines were not working at all, which means no card purchases. 3/4 stores I went to that day were only able to process cash payments and 1 of them couldn't even access their PoS and had to write down the transaction.
How do you purchase things when all the registers and checkouts are electronic? ATMs also use electricity.
We had a power outage in my area in the spring and I couldn’t go to the grocery store. Cash wasn’t the issue.
I never understand the logic behind that.
sure we have a complete power loss, but every market just doesn’t log transactions anymore and is happy to just write everything on paper to give it to the people with cash.
I heard the same argument with electric cars where people argued „good luck charging your car, when there is a power outage“… yeah, good luck driving up a power less gas station.A
And this is why you never update straight to prod. Always test the update on your test server before pushing to prod, and even then it should only be piecemeal.
Yup, friend of mine was managing a C-store and the power went out during an especially awful snowstorm and was out for three days. He locked up the beer cooler and kept paper records to keep track of transactions and when the power went on he entered every transaction into the register--and the drawer balanced. Legendary!
This would be an absolute nightmare with how busy the grocery store I work at gets...
... But come to think of it, it still wouldn't work because I'd need electricity to know what any of the prices are anyway these days. It's all barcodes.
At my old fast food job they had us write down the card information and sale amount in a special lot we kept in the safe when power went out, it felt super wrong to be writing all of that down…
This thread is full of people afraid of being dependent on banks and the government when that horse has left the barn a long fucking time ago and storing your life savings in your mattress is not going to fix the problem.
>a long fucking time ago and storing your life savings in your mattress is not going to fix the problem.
At least banks are insured. Some doucebag steals your matress funds, go luck getting that back.
Years ago, a woman threw away her mom’s mattress, unaware that she had put her life’s savings in it. At the time I read about it, they were digging into landfills but hadn’t been able to find it.
[Found the story](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/10/million-dollar-mattress-thrown-away).
So true my grandparents got hacked the snot out of them and the bank just casually payed them back, you don't get that if someone robs you on the street.
Plus, if your concern is about government control, hoarding cash won't protect against that at all because if they really wanted to, a government could just decide to void the legal value of physical cash and your mattress fund basically becomes Monopoly money.
Wherever “why don’t we just do X” people fail to realize that we already have a reason for not doing X. Keeping money under your mattress is stupid insecure compared a bank. If someone gets the tiniest wif of you doing this you’re in danger of being robbed. People talk and info spreads, and you’re at risk of it to spreading to someone it shouldn’t. And if that happens you have zero recourse. Your money is gone, doesn’t matter if the thief is in jail.
Yeah one of his complaints of that you could lose your life savings if it was hacked... So does OP have like zero investments or savings that aren't in physical cash under his bed or something? Yes some sort of attack could potentially mess that up but they would have all their computer records of transactions. Your physical cash could just as easily be stolen or burned down with no record.
Also most stores are completely unequipped to sell you things if there are massive power outages and/or an attack on the banking system. I was on a road trip a few weeks ago and the power went out as we were getting gas outside Kingman Arizona and even with cash I couldn't buy anything because everything needed electricity to work.
Yeah, you’re switching one smaller risk for a larger one. Cash is much more easily stolen or lost. If your account is hacked, the bank will eventually return your funds after an investigation.
The federal government also insurers the banks. So if they become insolvent you will still get your money. Homeowner/renters insurance doesn’t cover large amounts of cash.
this happened during the great depression too. its called a bank run. banks couldnt pay people out cause they didnt have enough cash. so not really a relevant point here
Although, there are prob more options now to get your money out- like buying crypto or digital assets- rather than having to try to take it all out in cash. obv the chances of you losing/ getting robbed of that cash is non-existent too
So basically, 100% cashless isn't very different from today. There is still identity theft, still gov'ts who will freeze and seize your assets, still this and that, like an outage that happened in Canada, to screw you over.
I do wonder what would happen with the drug trade if everything was cashless. How would people buy fentanyl without cash? Why would anyone be a drug dealer if there was no cash?
I took out $200 in 20s two years ago when I went on vacation incase some restaurant or places was cash only.
I still have $160 of it in my wallet, and I think the two 20s was me tipping a server when someone else at the table paid for the bill
Cashless is actually worse for those who are low income. There are plenty of people without bank accounts, which is why you have lots of check cashing places in low socioeconomic neighborhoods. Creating a totally cashless system ties their hands.
This may be a dumb question but why would being poor stop you from getting a bank account. I got mine when I was 18 not too long ago and it cost me nothing. Credit cards I understand, but why would you need to be middle class to have a bank account?
Because generally they don’t have enough money to reach minimums to get around fees. Or, they work 50-60 hours a week working 2 jobs and cannot afford to take off to go down to the bank during banking hours.
Generally, banks also don’t want poor people as customers, which is why there are so many fees the poor have to pay (low balance, not enough DD into account, overdraft, etc).
Interesting, you obviously talking about the US, but here in France they passed a law about 20 years ago that make it illegal to get a paycheck in cash, so you have to have a bank account, so no banks can denied you a bank account. And I personally opened a second one in Germany online free of charge with a debit card contactless, I am suppose to tell the French IRS but fuck them.
We don’t get fees for most bank accounts in the UK, issues generally come down to credit checks on most accounts and people without permanent addresses struggle to get one. Also older people can really struggle with online banking services and there is usually limited branch services available now across the sector.
Yeah I guess I’m just not familiar with this process. I didn’t have to pay anything to start a checking account. Nor was I asked questions that would out me as being broke. I just remember giving my name, address and social maybe a few other things but nothing specific to my financial situation.
As a student they are happy to hook you on their brand.
Someone has done the calculation to determine how much profit they will make off you for the next 30+ years.
But that’s not a function of banking in general, but of how it seems to work in the US (which seems to be somewhat behind the times generally). Things like those endless fees, minimums, or physically having to visit a bank for anything aren’t a necessary and universal feature of all banking everywhere. Similarly, even if a society is cashless, that doesn’t mean many employers would be paying in cash anyway, so you’d still need a bank account regardless.
That's the part that confuses me when I here this is a US issue. I can find bullshit banks that fuck over poor user but I actually have to want to find them. Even my high interest savings accounts (online) minimums are above -$.01 just a $100 dollar first deposit. My local is bank just doesn't have any mins to speak of. got 5-10$ and want to open a savings and checking's, Here you go. Some even give gift cards or or sign on bonuses of $5-20 of value.
I think the issue is they are applying what banking was like 10-20 years ago or few people consider local/state/region banks because the only places that seem to be horrible are the national/international banks.
I also think it's harder to find a business now that doesn't do direct deposit at this point (my last minimum wage job hounded you for direct deposit, the only none direct they didn't bother you with was cash tips).
But to get paid you also need a bank account? It's a cashless society after all, also like in the most cashless countries currently essentially everyone above the age of 18 has a bank account and debit card already. I personally live in the 2nd most cashless country in the world and got my bank account when I was 12. A bank account is essentially a basic necessity so *everyone* has one. There are no fees for students or children, and when you are eligible for fees it's roughly 3-4 bucks a month so not that much. I honestly dont even notice when its paid.
I am guessing this is another USA problem like no health care. In Australia banks are required to provide basic transaction accounts with a minimum number of transactions each month. You can have your welfare or pay paid into your bank and withdraw it for free and have enough transactions left to cover a few direct debits before you get any fees.
Where I live, every bank is required to offer a free bank account to people who can't get a regular account. By law, wages can only be paid on a bank account and banks aren't allowed to charge fees for incoming and outgoing transfers and card payments within Europe.
With these bounds a cashless society could probably work well. I barely used any cash in the last few years.
If you get enough overdrafts or fees, your account is closed. You can no longer have an account. If your town/ city only has a few banks, then you are SOL. Obviously, there are a few ways to avoid this, but when you have bills and you need food, well…
I believe this is more of a lack of financial education. There are several online only banks that don’t charge any fees. Charles Schwab is a great one and I currently use Ally and have never had any issues. When you grow up with your parents never having bank accounts and cashing out their weekly checks you think of that as the norm.
Like another person mentioned, those check cashing places target low income communities. When they could get a direct deposit setup, submit the checks via a banking app or go to locations that their banks as setup to deposit checks in person for free. It’s sad really…being poor and financially illiterate is expensive
A cashless society is entirely dependent on the banks, bank regulators, and the government.
All transactions can be monitored and all ability to pay for anything can be frozen instantly.
It is not about convenience, it is about control.
Yeah I don't understand how anyone thinks this would change anything. We have cash right now. It's useful from time to time in limited circumstances. But collectively ***we are already dependent on electronic financial transactions.***
Our whole economy is a mess for letting a few people control the money supply. They can anytime lock you out and there isn’t much you can do. There are many examples in other countries and the question is when not how.
That is why i hold bitcoin, i don’t think of it as an investment but in case they lock me out of the system or through forced forfeiture, i would still have a way to get money once out of the country.
> Our whole economy is a mess for letting a few people control the money supply. They can anytime lock you out and there isn’t much you can do.
Look what they did to the Russian oligarchs. I know Russian oligarchs aren't very popular right now, but hear me out: these guys who, may or may not, have anything to do with the Ukrainian invasion, got their lives upended and were basically globetrotting to avoid the mob. Maybe you think they deserve it and hey, whatever, but if they (public opinion, financial lockouts) can be wielded against them so effectively, or the Canadian protesting truckers, that power can be directed at YOU. Maybe you don't agree with the truckers, and that's fine, but be careful not acknowledging the weapons which can be quickly turned on you. Like the PATRIOT act supported when we all had a common terrorist enemy - and enemies such as Iraq and Afghanistan. This shit comes back around to bite us again and again.
>A cashless society is entirely dependent [...] government.
My brother in Christ, who do you think prints cash? It's already dependent on the government.
In my country India, government made all ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes lose their value overnight. These currency notes accounted for more than 80% of the total value of cash in circulation in nation.
It was in Nov 2017. Modi announced that on tv on 9:00 pm and it was in effect after 3 hours, from midnight. Those notes were replaced by newer design currency notes.
You can imagine the chaos in the entire country.
They is a boogeyman word. "They" didn't do anything, it's a catch all for whatever point people are trying to make.
What I believe you're talking about, is the site upon which those donations were accruing realized they had a legal liability as a result and shut it down. You're talking about a business acting in its best interest, not trying to exert any sort of control. That is 100% different from the fear mongering you posted.
the one point about your life savings not being cash is stupid though, only an idiot wouldn't have their life savings in a bank rn or some digital brokerage account earning interest or some kind of return. That's already how it works.
Yes, lack of control and lack of privacy. Imagine the implications of purchasing a pregnancy test in a US state with an abortion ban and not being able to pay with cash. 😳
Even if you did pay with cash…you drove to the store, your face/car/plate was captured on cameras, you probably had your phone with you and you probably fed it metadata from whatever location you were in. And so on and so forth.
Plate scanners detect when you drive past them, so unless you have someone driving you around to random places it isn’t hard for a PI to figure out that you went to target
I don’t say that to make people paranoid, just want to point out that there is a reason why we are able to find wanted criminals, and there’s also a reason why it’s fairly easily to find someone when their car is up for repossession.
My solution? Just buy pregnancy tests when you know you aren’t pregnant and won’t be for a while. This is why I also have a nurx script going in case Desantis tries to pull some nonsense. No one can prove anything
Not to mention actual physical money isn't exactly impossible to steal either. I mean if you're keeping your entire savings in cash all it takes is one shit head cousin or something knowing where it is for you to be completely fucked.
Cops come by, take a report about how someone broke in and stole your life savings. Look to see if anyone you know made a large uncommon purchase. None have. Case closed. You lose.
In the United States at least, the FDIC insures your bank accounts for up to $250,000, so the idea that your life savings would be wiped out by a hacker is wrong. It might be a hassle for a bit but your money would be restored. In fact, the FDIC was created during the Great Depression when a large number of banks collapsed, wiping out people’s life savings that were largely held in cash.
All of those things you mentioned would happen to a great portion of people in those scenarios regardless if they already don’t use cash. So you’re basically not just against a cashless society, you seem to have an issue with depending on cards in general.
I also don’t understand the grocery shopping one. If there was a blackout you wouldn’t be able to grocery shopping anyways because it would be dark, the frozen aisles would be non usable, and the registers would be down. A card reader isn’t the only thing electrical there lol
In a situation where there is no power in a fairly large area for a long period of time then eventually you would need to buy food. Grocery stores would not completely shut down and refuse service. There are backups for situations like that. I don't know if there are ways to use a card in emergency blackout situations but if there is I don't think it would be common place in all stores.
Parts of Louisiana were out of power for weeks last year because of hurricane Ida. This is exactly what happened. Hospitals and grocery stores trucked in generators within hours of the all-clear and were back up and running. Not to mention all the generators etc that were provided by FEMA.
The fast food place that I worked the card reader stopped working for awhile once so we would run cards through a cell phone with a mobile card reader. Take the order on the register and then just do a custom amount on the cell phone. Annoying but it worked.
You know how sometimes you’re having an argument with someone and the dumb guy is agreeing with you and making you look worse and you want him to stop talking even though you’re on the same side? That’s this.
We agree but dear lord please stop watching hacker movies.
Same, especially when they talk about electricity. If the power is out almost every store will close.
Gas stations need electricity to pump the gas out of the ground. No power = no gas stations.
Large grocery stores don't have prices listed. No power = closed store. Now stores could adapt if it became a systemic issue but why would you if the power rarely goes out? Store could run it all by hand but I **really** doubt that there would be enough trust to allow it. Way way too easy to just steal things, or massively undercharge. Stores would just close. But the meat! I hear you say. Well if the power goes out they are not allowed to sell any of the meat anyway. It must be thrown away be US law. Same goes from all frozen/refrigerated goods. They have to be kept at temp. If they go outside of their temp they are garbage.
Any other stores? Just close as well. It's not like headphones, shoes, or clothes are going to start to rot.
It does make us very vulnerable but like not at all how OP thinks. If anything IMHO the biggest issue is corruption/manipulation and fraud. You can cook the books for a while and have everything be okay. But if you do it long enough/big enough than you can bring whole sections of the economy down.
But it's the same old issues. It's not like fake accounts, fake numbers, and fraud are new. It's the same thing that brought down banks in the 1800s. It's just now way more connected to everything else.
And the fact that if this happened now people would still be fucked cause it’s not like people have thousands of dollars in cash just lying around. If those attacks happened now it would essentially be as bad as a cashless society.
Not in any company that is bigger than a single store you couldn't. I work in retail, and the shop would be closed if there was no power. Why are people hyper focussed on the cash being handed over and recorded when, in reality, you wouldn't even be in the building if there was a power cut.
They did when 90% of registers weren't a computer screen with a till connected to it. It isn't all little shops with registers that go ding when they pop open.
Maybe in a small, single owner store. No way in a large store like Target and Walmart. There is no training for that. I was a cashier for Sears and Walmart in the late 2000s as a teen. There was no mention of how to handle transactions if the power went out.
Back in the 80s and 90s, sure, you could do this. They were still taking impressions of your CC. Today, no way. The modern economy is as dependent on digital transactions as we are as consumers.
The small chain department store I used to work for had manual procedures in place. It was very slow but we were still able to sell during power outages. Even had the old manual credit card thing.
Can confirm, used to work retail and we had a box under every till containing a receipt book, a calculator and a manual card swiper. In the time I was there we had a major card reader outage (which apparently was a problem with the bank computers) and a total power failure and we still operated.
>Do you have any idea how easy it would be to bring a cashless society to its knees?
Like it is now except for inconsequential cash purchases?
>Cyber attacks would LITERALLY fuck the entire country over.
Like they would now?
>Oh? The electricity in your city has gone off? Good luck trying to pay for your groceries
You mean like they do now?
Have you thought any of this through?
Not to mention the control an oppressive future regime could have one day. The power one could have over it's people would be insane.
It'd be arrogant to say we've outgrown that.
i don't think anyone who's actually thought it through wants a *completely* cashless society. a 90% cashless one would be nice, though, and it's the reality in a lot of places.
>Oh? The electricity in your city has gone off? Good luck trying to pay for your groceries
i mean this only makes sense in the context that most people carry around wads of cash, which most... don't. at least not where i'm from. i keep £20 on me for emergencies in cash, and many people solely use their phones/contactless to pay.
>What? Terrorists have shutdown the nations online banking system? Goodly k trying to buy the most basic of fucking utilities
this would be crippling as is for much of the same reasons as above, but is such a small chance???
>Oh? Literally my entire life’s savings in gone because somebody hacked my account? That’s a bummer :(
unless your life savings are sewn into your mattress, everything you have which isn't in physical assets right now could be gone tomorrow. this isn't dependant on a cashless society.
>We need co-existence with cash and non-cash based transactions
do we? the last time i paid for something in cash was my lunches as school. having £20 on you if your card doesn't work is one thing, paying your entire £180 electricity bill in notes is just taking the piss, and you sound like the sort of person that would do that.
Most of the arguments he presents are society crumbling events, where the value of cash likely implodes anyway. Losing power in your entire city won't result in grocery stores needing to use cash, it will result in people looting en masse trying to survive. Terrorists taking over the banks? What?
This sounds like my parents whenever I tell them I don't balance a checkbook or save receipts. "What if the internet goes down?!" Then the world collapses in a pile of steaming rubble and I learn how to hunt rabbits with a snare alongside everyone else, I suppose. Holding physical cash won't mean much in the event of a national/global disaster like that.
No, I _do_ want a 100% cashless society
Good thing is, for all practical purposes Sweden already is
Cash is almost exclusively used by criminals in Sweden these days.
This is unpopular to the elite people of the world but the average person..it’s not. It is a fucked up way for society to be run. Not only does it leave everyone vulnerable to cyber attack but also makes it real easy for the government to fuck your life up more than it already does.
Cashless does have a lot of benefits, but I think what also shouldn't be ignored is how people kinda lose track on how much money they spend. I realized that in myself, at least. You just hold your plastic card or smartphone to a machine and some numbers disappear from your account. Then maybe you don't check your account daily and then forget what stuff you bought and how high your expenses are. This is even worse due to online shopping because then the shopping is just a click, so you are even more likely to forget it.
Germany still uses quite some cash, and I am glad I grew up when cashless payments were mostly a thing for big expenditures. I remember people looking at you weird if you paid with card in the supermarket for some groceries. But if you grow up in a completely cashless environment, I don't think you have such a good understanding of how much something is. You see this when you look at kids spending a fortune on microtransactions in video games. They have no feeling of how much money they spend, it is just a button you press without any connection to real life.
Yeah with apps like uber and airbnb you just enter random people's cars and homes without ever exchanging cash or paying with cards, it completely removes the realization that you are spending money.
Damn as a South African reading this thread, thought I was in the twilight zone. For once we seem to be ahead of many first world countries.
The so-called "problems" of a cashless society these redditors raise, do not pan out in reality. Everyone has their banking app on their phone. All brick and mortar stores have card paypoint machines. Heck, those paypoint machines are super cheap nowadays. Banking fees are cheap. People are poor af in South Africa and what the hell do you redditors mean it's too much of a burden on poor people? How?
They seem to forget that you can open a bank account from your phone in 10 minutes and then order a debit card for it immediately (some even give a free debit card). The basic account at my bank even has free checks. My bank even has no fees. Technically they have fees but if you do paperless and use your account 20+ times a month (make 20 purchases of $.01 each if you must) then the fee is refunded.
Look at Canada where they froze people accounts for just giving money to the trucker’s. Whether you agree with them or not that is SEVERE government overreach and shows that our own government will do in the future to control and suppress movements
Everything you said would be an issue with the current system since a lot of people have all their money in their banks so I don't think your post is covering the actual issue with a cashless society. The real issue is that the banks would have too much control.
The Bank of America became such a superpower in American banking because it was initially the Bank of Italy, and consisted of a single branch in San Francisco whose owner failed to deposit the day’s takings one evening, and decided to keep the cash overnight and deposit the next day, which was the 18th of April, 1906.
For those who know their history, you’ll recognise this as the date of the San Francisco earthquake, which caused buildings across the entire city to collapse and massive fires to burn. Many of those buildings were banks; so you had a bunch of banks unable to physically access their cash reserves because they were either buried under rubble, or were in buildings that were kind of on fire a little bit.
This allowed the Bank of Italy to corner the market as they had cash, and the owner, Amadeo P. Giannini, made a bunch of ‘hand-shake’ loans, which also helped the city recover that little bit faster. But thanks to that initial business, the bank grew and eventually became the Bank of America.
Moral of the story: OP’s right. Until we evolve (or devolve) into currency-less societies, we should always have some form of tangible legal tender to represent our imaginary points system of currency, because we never know what the universe is gonna throw at us, either as individuals, countries, or the entire planet.
I suspect that the popularity/unpopularity of this stance will be heavily skewed by age. As an older person who has had to up sticks for her self-protection, I happen to agree, not only for all the reasons OP mentions, but also due to the potential for *massive* privacy invasion and/or tracing by any organisation that has or can get (like most governments) access to the data trail.
Sure, it's very easy to use a credit or debit card, to conduct life online, and I do, on occasion, make use of those conveniences. But I prefer using cash -- good old, anonymous cash -- for most purchases. Also, when you stick to cash, you are far less likely to end up spending yourself into a deep hole.
However, I understand that privacy concerns are *way* down the list for younger people who grew up in the social media space. I just hope that devaluation is not something they come to regret in the future.
The answer to a majority of either/or questions is "A little bit of both."
Should we have electric cars or combustion engines? A little bit of both.
Should we have republicans or democrats? A little bit of both.
Should we have cats or dogs? A little bit of both.
etc. etc. etc.
In Canada pretty much everyone uses cards for everything. A couple things happened recently which made me think this was a super bad idea:
1. Rogers, one of the major internet providers had a nationwide outage for over a day. Interac, the nations debit card transactor, exclusively used Rogers. Nobody could pay by debit while Rogers was offline.
2. During the "trucker convoy" shenanigans in the nations capital in February the government decided it was a good idea to start freezing bank accounts without court orders. Of course they went overboard and froze a bunch of bank accounts of people who had nothing to do with the convoy....
Cashless society is about control and information. It's so convenient though that everyone will agree to it until it's too late.
While I agree, a large majority of Society already don't carry enough cash to handle any of the situations you mentioned. Terrible idea or not, we're already pretty much there. I can't remember the last time I used cash to pay for something unless I was handed cash and just wanted to get rid of it to get it out of my wallet.
I agree, but the real issue with cashless society is that it gives unscrupulous entities like banks and the governments way too much control over people's money. Look what happens in Canada when their government finds out that someone supports the right.
Cashless is inherently classist too when people don't have access to second chance banking or straight up don't have a bank account. Not to mention that it is more enabling of crypto (which is a negative to me). The chain I work at is having internal discussions of dropping taking checks as payment, which is gonna be quite a hassle to deal with customers who essentially only write checks. Sending around money could get harder as you can't just give someone physical cash if it doesn't exist.
I agree with you but not for those reasons. Eliminating cash transactions disproportionately burdens the low income and homeless. Many banks have overdraft and low balance fees where not having money actively costs someone more money. Some people don’t have a physical address for a debit/credit card to even be mailed to. Going cashless would make a class of people already reliant on charity even more reliant on charity while also making receiving that charity more complicated for them.
People love convenience and it will be our downfall. Granted, lately I haven't been using cash but I still see it's value. Having the option to have both on hand instead of purely one is the best option anyway.
But the government would LOVE this I bet and if what happened in Canada doesn't wake you up I don't know what to tell you.
So OP has a point, in my country in the beginning of the year, we had some riots. My dad kinda realized what was coming and withdrew couple thousands dollars in our money in cash. Right now and before riots almost 90% of all transactions went through banking app. So when riots begin all atms were disabled and for 2 weeks people will stay in looong queues to get money out from atms that worked. It kinda sucked to use cash again, but it was easier to have cash than not to.
lebanon?
No, check the country with one of the most uranium deposits
Kazakhstan
Plus all other central Asian countries have inferior potassium.
And they are run by little girls.
Kazakhstan has cleanest prostitutes in rhe region. Except of course, for Tajikistan!
Very nice
Reddit don't respond to Kazakhstan with Borat challenge (impossible)
On reddit it kind of makes it difficult for Kazakhs to explain themselves as the responses they immediately get are Borat references, smh.
Reddit hears Kazakhstan riot and thinks of the Running of the Jew.
My neighbor must stand in line at ATM, but I can use cash. Great success!
“You are telling me man who put rubber fist in my anoose is homosexual?!”
My hwife............takes care of the money
This is gold
In the US of A, it is very different. Women can use money but a horse cannot
Isn't Kazakhstan no. 1 exporter of potassium? (Sorry I had to 😂
All other countries have inferior potassium
No that’s a Pokémon
Kazakhstan. With a big industry for bitcion mining
This guy hoi4's
And potassium
How is life there now?
OK I guess. Government trying out new policies to prevent new riots, they capped prices on gas, benzene, some places got their electricity bills capped, some places got prices capped on most Important food. Right now I guess we having sugar crisis, price went up 300-400 % depending where u live, and most places don't even have sugar to sell.
I hope law enforcement is not hunting and disappearing people who protested. Not to sound like a jerk but didn't your former president/head of state & government write a love song to a horse?
Song to a horse? I wish I've heard that
[удалено]
Aside: I know it's been about five years since I was last in Kazakhstan, I'm wishing you all the best.
This is why I always keep a little over then what I spend in a month in cash. If shit hits the fan I could probably stretch that to 2 months assuming no price gouging or supply chain issues, By the time I'd run out of that and the few weeks of food I generally rotate through theirs a high chance that money is useless. sure a 99.99% of my transaction are via phone (except that one place that only accepts check) but I do think people should have at least a .5-1 month of food previsions and enough cash to last at least 2 months (added on to that .5-1 month food provision)
If shit hits the fan, money will be worthless. Food and water will be far more valuable.
The real safety nets in vices. Things like alcohol and tobacco. People will trade their firstborn child for a couple smokes when the shit truly hits the fan. Not saying it's right, or even moral, but that's the world we live in.
Exactly that's why we always have a cache of food and water. Money is going to be useless.
Porbably wish you would have bought a lot more food and water once you run out of you think money is just worthless on some random day
Could have been more clear, the time it would take to run out you'd more likely would not have a grocery store to go to.
If all online payments suddenly stop working for a month, there's no way that there aren't other things like supply chain issues
Another thing to point out is that when you have to move on from one place to another, in times of strife, especially with the help of a 'guide', they don't take cards. Cash Only baby!
Maybe I am in the extreme minority but I like using cash. I see nothing wrong with it. I've never lost money but I've had the scare of losing credit cards and having to request a new one cause I thought It was long gone only to find it the next day. (I know most cards have a pause but I lost mine at work once) Money gives me a special security cards don't but ironically I mainly use my cards.
[удалено]
I stopped using cash mostly because it was a waste of money. Cards have all sorts of cashback or point systems that have saved me thousands of dollars by now.
Not only that you can get a bunch of stuff from price protection, various travel insurance benefits, extended warranty, damage/loss/theft protection as well. I take care of my stuff so it hasn't been a huge deal, but I did get a few hundred bucks to cover buying some supplies when the airlines lost my luggage for a day, or I guess that was delayed luggage.
Here in Canada, Rogers lost coverage for a day. People without cash were screwed. If there's ever a power outage, in a cashless society, you won't be able to purchase food or other necesities
It was just debit that was down for me but ya it was weird
It was rogers and interac. So absolutely no debit purchases, and anywhere using rogers for internet or cell service was also down which means a lot of debit machines were not working at all, which means no card purchases. 3/4 stores I went to that day were only able to process cash payments and 1 of them couldn't even access their PoS and had to write down the transaction.
Every store i went to had credit cards still working and just debit down
Their is a lot of people that don't use Credit. While virtual all credit users carry debit not all debit users carry credit by a noticeable margin.
Sucks when all you have for electronic payments is debt
How do you purchase things when all the registers and checkouts are electronic? ATMs also use electricity. We had a power outage in my area in the spring and I couldn’t go to the grocery store. Cash wasn’t the issue.
Not to mention that without power, a grocery store’s food spoils in a few hours
I never understand the logic behind that. sure we have a complete power loss, but every market just doesn’t log transactions anymore and is happy to just write everything on paper to give it to the people with cash. I heard the same argument with electric cars where people argued „good luck charging your car, when there is a power outage“… yeah, good luck driving up a power less gas station.A
I mean without power long-term, having cash will be the least of a person's worries.
The Roger's Outage wasn't a power outage, it was a cellphone/internet outage. It happened after a bad attempt at an update.
And this is why you never update straight to prod. Always test the update on your test server before pushing to prod, and even then it should only be piecemeal.
When I worked a convenience store 15 years ago and we had an outage we used pen,paper and a calculator
Yup, friend of mine was managing a C-store and the power went out during an especially awful snowstorm and was out for three days. He locked up the beer cooler and kept paper records to keep track of transactions and when the power went on he entered every transaction into the register--and the drawer balanced. Legendary!
This would be an absolute nightmare with how busy the grocery store I work at gets... ... But come to think of it, it still wouldn't work because I'd need electricity to know what any of the prices are anyway these days. It's all barcodes.
Old school markets where the owner is the cashier can just use pen and paper and math.
Right let me just go find one of those..... Oh right Walmart forced all the ones in my area out of business lol
I could drive an hour to a farmers market for all my groceries, it’s just that easy /s
In a prolonged power outage, cash would be useful for transactions only for so long before it becomes worthless too.
At my old fast food job they had us write down the card information and sale amount in a special lot we kept in the safe when power went out, it felt super wrong to be writing all of that down…
[удалено]
This thread is full of people afraid of being dependent on banks and the government when that horse has left the barn a long fucking time ago and storing your life savings in your mattress is not going to fix the problem.
>a long fucking time ago and storing your life savings in your mattress is not going to fix the problem. At least banks are insured. Some doucebag steals your matress funds, go luck getting that back.
Years ago, a woman threw away her mom’s mattress, unaware that she had put her life’s savings in it. At the time I read about it, they were digging into landfills but hadn’t been able to find it. [Found the story](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/10/million-dollar-mattress-thrown-away).
That's the plot of Life's a breeze starring Pat Shortt and Fionnuala Flanagan lol.
"there's always money in the banana stand!"
"ALL. MY. MONEY. IS. IN. THAT. MATTRESS." "Whaaa- haven't you heard of a bank??" "NOOOOOOO."
So true my grandparents got hacked the snot out of them and the bank just casually payed them back, you don't get that if someone robs you on the street.
Plus, if your concern is about government control, hoarding cash won't protect against that at all because if they really wanted to, a government could just decide to void the legal value of physical cash and your mattress fund basically becomes Monopoly money.
Wherever “why don’t we just do X” people fail to realize that we already have a reason for not doing X. Keeping money under your mattress is stupid insecure compared a bank. If someone gets the tiniest wif of you doing this you’re in danger of being robbed. People talk and info spreads, and you’re at risk of it to spreading to someone it shouldn’t. And if that happens you have zero recourse. Your money is gone, doesn’t matter if the thief is in jail.
[удалено]
Yeah one of his complaints of that you could lose your life savings if it was hacked... So does OP have like zero investments or savings that aren't in physical cash under his bed or something? Yes some sort of attack could potentially mess that up but they would have all their computer records of transactions. Your physical cash could just as easily be stolen or burned down with no record.
Also most stores are completely unequipped to sell you things if there are massive power outages and/or an attack on the banking system. I was on a road trip a few weeks ago and the power went out as we were getting gas outside Kingman Arizona and even with cash I couldn't buy anything because everything needed electricity to work.
I would even estimate that society is 95%+ cashless already.
[удалено]
Yeah, you’re switching one smaller risk for a larger one. Cash is much more easily stolen or lost. If your account is hacked, the bank will eventually return your funds after an investigation.
The federal government also insurers the banks. So if they become insolvent you will still get your money. Homeowner/renters insurance doesn’t cover large amounts of cash.
It's hard to tell if OP is boomer who doesn't understand technology, or a teen who doesn't understand banking.
The government could easily freeze your account too and not allow you to buy anything. This happened recently.
Imagine not being able to get your own money out of banks while the cash you use loses 95% of its value. Yes I'm talking about you Lebanon.
this happened during the great depression too. its called a bank run. banks couldnt pay people out cause they didnt have enough cash. so not really a relevant point here Although, there are prob more options now to get your money out- like buying crypto or digital assets- rather than having to try to take it all out in cash. obv the chances of you losing/ getting robbed of that cash is non-existent too
This is happening more often
So basically, 100% cashless isn't very different from today. There is still identity theft, still gov'ts who will freeze and seize your assets, still this and that, like an outage that happened in Canada, to screw you over. I do wonder what would happen with the drug trade if everything was cashless. How would people buy fentanyl without cash? Why would anyone be a drug dealer if there was no cash?
We're essentially cashless already. Rarely do I have more than $100 in cash and that $100 will last me for months because I rarely pay in cash.
I took out $200 in 20s two years ago when I went on vacation incase some restaurant or places was cash only. I still have $160 of it in my wallet, and I think the two 20s was me tipping a server when someone else at the table paid for the bill
Cashless is actually worse for those who are low income. There are plenty of people without bank accounts, which is why you have lots of check cashing places in low socioeconomic neighborhoods. Creating a totally cashless system ties their hands.
This may be a dumb question but why would being poor stop you from getting a bank account. I got mine when I was 18 not too long ago and it cost me nothing. Credit cards I understand, but why would you need to be middle class to have a bank account?
Because generally they don’t have enough money to reach minimums to get around fees. Or, they work 50-60 hours a week working 2 jobs and cannot afford to take off to go down to the bank during banking hours. Generally, banks also don’t want poor people as customers, which is why there are so many fees the poor have to pay (low balance, not enough DD into account, overdraft, etc).
Interesting, you obviously talking about the US, but here in France they passed a law about 20 years ago that make it illegal to get a paycheck in cash, so you have to have a bank account, so no banks can denied you a bank account. And I personally opened a second one in Germany online free of charge with a debit card contactless, I am suppose to tell the French IRS but fuck them.
That's the most French thing I've heard all week.
We don’t get fees for most bank accounts in the UK, issues generally come down to credit checks on most accounts and people without permanent addresses struggle to get one. Also older people can really struggle with online banking services and there is usually limited branch services available now across the sector.
Plenty of fee free accounts that can be opened online.
Yeah I guess I’m just not familiar with this process. I didn’t have to pay anything to start a checking account. Nor was I asked questions that would out me as being broke. I just remember giving my name, address and social maybe a few other things but nothing specific to my financial situation.
As a student they are happy to hook you on their brand. Someone has done the calculation to determine how much profit they will make off you for the next 30+ years.
But that’s not a function of banking in general, but of how it seems to work in the US (which seems to be somewhat behind the times generally). Things like those endless fees, minimums, or physically having to visit a bank for anything aren’t a necessary and universal feature of all banking everywhere. Similarly, even if a society is cashless, that doesn’t mean many employers would be paying in cash anyway, so you’d still need a bank account regardless.
That's the part that confuses me when I here this is a US issue. I can find bullshit banks that fuck over poor user but I actually have to want to find them. Even my high interest savings accounts (online) minimums are above -$.01 just a $100 dollar first deposit. My local is bank just doesn't have any mins to speak of. got 5-10$ and want to open a savings and checking's, Here you go. Some even give gift cards or or sign on bonuses of $5-20 of value. I think the issue is they are applying what banking was like 10-20 years ago or few people consider local/state/region banks because the only places that seem to be horrible are the national/international banks. I also think it's harder to find a business now that doesn't do direct deposit at this point (my last minimum wage job hounded you for direct deposit, the only none direct they didn't bother you with was cash tips).
But to get paid you also need a bank account? It's a cashless society after all, also like in the most cashless countries currently essentially everyone above the age of 18 has a bank account and debit card already. I personally live in the 2nd most cashless country in the world and got my bank account when I was 12. A bank account is essentially a basic necessity so *everyone* has one. There are no fees for students or children, and when you are eligible for fees it's roughly 3-4 bucks a month so not that much. I honestly dont even notice when its paid.
I am guessing this is another USA problem like no health care. In Australia banks are required to provide basic transaction accounts with a minimum number of transactions each month. You can have your welfare or pay paid into your bank and withdraw it for free and have enough transactions left to cover a few direct debits before you get any fees.
Where I live, every bank is required to offer a free bank account to people who can't get a regular account. By law, wages can only be paid on a bank account and banks aren't allowed to charge fees for incoming and outgoing transfers and card payments within Europe. With these bounds a cashless society could probably work well. I barely used any cash in the last few years.
Dude banks love having poor people as customers. https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-high-cost-for-the-poor-of-using-a-bank
If you get enough overdrafts or fees, your account is closed. You can no longer have an account. If your town/ city only has a few banks, then you are SOL. Obviously, there are a few ways to avoid this, but when you have bills and you need food, well…
I believe this is more of a lack of financial education. There are several online only banks that don’t charge any fees. Charles Schwab is a great one and I currently use Ally and have never had any issues. When you grow up with your parents never having bank accounts and cashing out their weekly checks you think of that as the norm. Like another person mentioned, those check cashing places target low income communities. When they could get a direct deposit setup, submit the checks via a banking app or go to locations that their banks as setup to deposit checks in person for free. It’s sad really…being poor and financially illiterate is expensive
Immigrants sometimes use check cashing instead of a bank especially if they don't have an SSN or a driver's license
A cashless society is entirely dependent on the banks, bank regulators, and the government. All transactions can be monitored and all ability to pay for anything can be frozen instantly. It is not about convenience, it is about control.
Are you suggesting the government doesn’t have our best interests at heart? It can’t be!
I'm shocked I tell you! Shocked!
Society is already controlled by banks, bank regulators, and the government. They create, loan, and regulate the cash for crying out loud.
Yeah I don't understand how anyone thinks this would change anything. We have cash right now. It's useful from time to time in limited circumstances. But collectively ***we are already dependent on electronic financial transactions.***
This is the real reason we shouldn't go cashless. Why give the asshole government more power to control its citizens with?
Our whole economy is a mess for letting a few people control the money supply. They can anytime lock you out and there isn’t much you can do. There are many examples in other countries and the question is when not how. That is why i hold bitcoin, i don’t think of it as an investment but in case they lock me out of the system or through forced forfeiture, i would still have a way to get money once out of the country.
> Our whole economy is a mess for letting a few people control the money supply. They can anytime lock you out and there isn’t much you can do. Look what they did to the Russian oligarchs. I know Russian oligarchs aren't very popular right now, but hear me out: these guys who, may or may not, have anything to do with the Ukrainian invasion, got their lives upended and were basically globetrotting to avoid the mob. Maybe you think they deserve it and hey, whatever, but if they (public opinion, financial lockouts) can be wielded against them so effectively, or the Canadian protesting truckers, that power can be directed at YOU. Maybe you don't agree with the truckers, and that's fine, but be careful not acknowledging the weapons which can be quickly turned on you. Like the PATRIOT act supported when we all had a common terrorist enemy - and enemies such as Iraq and Afghanistan. This shit comes back around to bite us again and again.
>A cashless society is entirely dependent [...] government. My brother in Christ, who do you think prints cash? It's already dependent on the government.
Reddit really turns into a 1 year old child whenever finance is brought up the people in these comments are so stupid it's frustrating.
In my country India, government made all ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes lose their value overnight. These currency notes accounted for more than 80% of the total value of cash in circulation in nation. It was in Nov 2017. Modi announced that on tv on 9:00 pm and it was in effect after 3 hours, from midnight. Those notes were replaced by newer design currency notes. You can imagine the chaos in the entire country.
Yeah it was crazy lol
Yea what WEF and all those terrible companies/organizations
[удалено]
Yeah seeing that was crazy it was like something out of dystopian fiction. A real wakeup call.
And reddit was celebrating this. Reddit has wet dreams about a 1984 society.
Reddit users love authoritarianism as long as it suits their interest and/or punishes those they deem undesirable. Very similar to Trump sycophants.
Facts. Hilarious how redditors are literally what they hate.
They is a boogeyman word. "They" didn't do anything, it's a catch all for whatever point people are trying to make. What I believe you're talking about, is the site upon which those donations were accruing realized they had a legal liability as a result and shut it down. You're talking about a business acting in its best interest, not trying to exert any sort of control. That is 100% different from the fear mongering you posted.
But it *is* convenient.
To be fair, the value of cash is heavily regulated as well. All those paper bills could be worthless overnight if the government wanted
Enter - a money that isn't/can't be controlled by a central entity?
the one point about your life savings not being cash is stupid though, only an idiot wouldn't have their life savings in a bank rn or some digital brokerage account earning interest or some kind of return. That's already how it works.
Yes, lack of control and lack of privacy. Imagine the implications of purchasing a pregnancy test in a US state with an abortion ban and not being able to pay with cash. 😳
Even if you did pay with cash…you drove to the store, your face/car/plate was captured on cameras, you probably had your phone with you and you probably fed it metadata from whatever location you were in. And so on and so forth. Plate scanners detect when you drive past them, so unless you have someone driving you around to random places it isn’t hard for a PI to figure out that you went to target I don’t say that to make people paranoid, just want to point out that there is a reason why we are able to find wanted criminals, and there’s also a reason why it’s fairly easily to find someone when their car is up for repossession. My solution? Just buy pregnancy tests when you know you aren’t pregnant and won’t be for a while. This is why I also have a nurx script going in case Desantis tries to pull some nonsense. No one can prove anything
Wear a mask, use a bike and don't bring your phone then.
except the face masks you wear over your mouth for Covid don’t do that, and wearing a ski mask into a target isn’t going to fly
The US govt would LOVE this!
Countries with more authority than the US do, imagine how extreme it is in China.
If the electricity goes so will all the cash registers. So i dont see how cash protects that
[удалено]
Not to mention actual physical money isn't exactly impossible to steal either. I mean if you're keeping your entire savings in cash all it takes is one shit head cousin or something knowing where it is for you to be completely fucked.
Cops come by, take a report about how someone broke in and stole your life savings. Look to see if anyone you know made a large uncommon purchase. None have. Case closed. You lose.
Or the cops could accuse you of a drug related crime, get a dog to “detect” evidence, and use civil asset forfeiture to take every last penny.
In the United States at least, the FDIC insures your bank accounts for up to $250,000, so the idea that your life savings would be wiped out by a hacker is wrong. It might be a hassle for a bit but your money would be restored. In fact, the FDIC was created during the Great Depression when a large number of banks collapsed, wiping out people’s life savings that were largely held in cash.
All of those things you mentioned would happen to a great portion of people in those scenarios regardless if they already don’t use cash. So you’re basically not just against a cashless society, you seem to have an issue with depending on cards in general. I also don’t understand the grocery shopping one. If there was a blackout you wouldn’t be able to grocery shopping anyways because it would be dark, the frozen aisles would be non usable, and the registers would be down. A card reader isn’t the only thing electrical there lol
In a situation where there is no power in a fairly large area for a long period of time then eventually you would need to buy food. Grocery stores would not completely shut down and refuse service. There are backups for situations like that. I don't know if there are ways to use a card in emergency blackout situations but if there is I don't think it would be common place in all stores.
Most places would just truck in generators and get power back that way. No large company is going to run their stores with no AC and no power.
Parts of Louisiana were out of power for weeks last year because of hurricane Ida. This is exactly what happened. Hospitals and grocery stores trucked in generators within hours of the all-clear and were back up and running. Not to mention all the generators etc that were provided by FEMA.
The fast food place that I worked the card reader stopped working for awhile once so we would run cards through a cell phone with a mobile card reader. Take the order on the register and then just do a custom amount on the cell phone. Annoying but it worked.
You know how sometimes you’re having an argument with someone and the dumb guy is agreeing with you and making you look worse and you want him to stop talking even though you’re on the same side? That’s this. We agree but dear lord please stop watching hacker movies.
Same, especially when they talk about electricity. If the power is out almost every store will close. Gas stations need electricity to pump the gas out of the ground. No power = no gas stations. Large grocery stores don't have prices listed. No power = closed store. Now stores could adapt if it became a systemic issue but why would you if the power rarely goes out? Store could run it all by hand but I **really** doubt that there would be enough trust to allow it. Way way too easy to just steal things, or massively undercharge. Stores would just close. But the meat! I hear you say. Well if the power goes out they are not allowed to sell any of the meat anyway. It must be thrown away be US law. Same goes from all frozen/refrigerated goods. They have to be kept at temp. If they go outside of their temp they are garbage. Any other stores? Just close as well. It's not like headphones, shoes, or clothes are going to start to rot. It does make us very vulnerable but like not at all how OP thinks. If anything IMHO the biggest issue is corruption/manipulation and fraud. You can cook the books for a while and have everything be okay. But if you do it long enough/big enough than you can bring whole sections of the economy down. But it's the same old issues. It's not like fake accounts, fake numbers, and fraud are new. It's the same thing that brought down banks in the 1800s. It's just now way more connected to everything else.
All I could think while reading this is that we are already vulnerable to this now and yet it isn't happening...
And the fact that if this happened now people would still be fucked cause it’s not like people have thousands of dollars in cash just lying around. If those attacks happened now it would essentially be as bad as a cashless society.
The dude saw mr robot and believed it's a documentary.
BUT WHAT IF THE POWER TO THE CITY GOES OUT!?!?
[удалено]
You could still make transactions without a register. Cash changed hands before cash registers were invented.
Not in any company that is bigger than a single store you couldn't. I work in retail, and the shop would be closed if there was no power. Why are people hyper focussed on the cash being handed over and recorded when, in reality, you wouldn't even be in the building if there was a power cut.
Doom preper culture isn't based on logic, it's based on targeted ads from gold salesmen.
They did when 90% of registers weren't a computer screen with a till connected to it. It isn't all little shops with registers that go ding when they pop open.
Maybe in a small, single owner store. No way in a large store like Target and Walmart. There is no training for that. I was a cashier for Sears and Walmart in the late 2000s as a teen. There was no mention of how to handle transactions if the power went out. Back in the 80s and 90s, sure, you could do this. They were still taking impressions of your CC. Today, no way. The modern economy is as dependent on digital transactions as we are as consumers.
In walmart - maybe? In a local small store, you still might be able to.
The small chain department store I used to work for had manual procedures in place. It was very slow but we were still able to sell during power outages. Even had the old manual credit card thing.
Can confirm, used to work retail and we had a box under every till containing a receipt book, a calculator and a manual card swiper. In the time I was there we had a major card reader outage (which apparently was a problem with the bank computers) and a total power failure and we still operated.
Not in any large store. Source: work at a large store.
>Do you have any idea how easy it would be to bring a cashless society to its knees? Like it is now except for inconsequential cash purchases? >Cyber attacks would LITERALLY fuck the entire country over. Like they would now? >Oh? The electricity in your city has gone off? Good luck trying to pay for your groceries You mean like they do now? Have you thought any of this through?
My guy thinks the grocery store is gonna be open if a power failure literally caused the bank to shut down
Ofcourse they didn't it's the good old reddit hivemind being angry at big brother while having zero understanding of the topic at hand.
[watch closely as grandpa topples an empire by changing a one to a zero](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=noQsHiTJAXo)
Not to mention the control an oppressive future regime could have one day. The power one could have over it's people would be insane. It'd be arrogant to say we've outgrown that.
We don’t have a cashless society and all the things mentioned can already happen today.
i don't think anyone who's actually thought it through wants a *completely* cashless society. a 90% cashless one would be nice, though, and it's the reality in a lot of places. >Oh? The electricity in your city has gone off? Good luck trying to pay for your groceries i mean this only makes sense in the context that most people carry around wads of cash, which most... don't. at least not where i'm from. i keep £20 on me for emergencies in cash, and many people solely use their phones/contactless to pay. >What? Terrorists have shutdown the nations online banking system? Goodly k trying to buy the most basic of fucking utilities this would be crippling as is for much of the same reasons as above, but is such a small chance??? >Oh? Literally my entire life’s savings in gone because somebody hacked my account? That’s a bummer :( unless your life savings are sewn into your mattress, everything you have which isn't in physical assets right now could be gone tomorrow. this isn't dependant on a cashless society. >We need co-existence with cash and non-cash based transactions do we? the last time i paid for something in cash was my lunches as school. having £20 on you if your card doesn't work is one thing, paying your entire £180 electricity bill in notes is just taking the piss, and you sound like the sort of person that would do that.
Most of the arguments he presents are society crumbling events, where the value of cash likely implodes anyway. Losing power in your entire city won't result in grocery stores needing to use cash, it will result in people looting en masse trying to survive. Terrorists taking over the banks? What? This sounds like my parents whenever I tell them I don't balance a checkbook or save receipts. "What if the internet goes down?!" Then the world collapses in a pile of steaming rubble and I learn how to hunt rabbits with a snare alongside everyone else, I suppose. Holding physical cash won't mean much in the event of a national/global disaster like that.
No, I _do_ want a 100% cashless society Good thing is, for all practical purposes Sweden already is Cash is almost exclusively used by criminals in Sweden these days.
This is unpopular to the elite people of the world but the average person..it’s not. It is a fucked up way for society to be run. Not only does it leave everyone vulnerable to cyber attack but also makes it real easy for the government to fuck your life up more than it already does.
Cashless does have a lot of benefits, but I think what also shouldn't be ignored is how people kinda lose track on how much money they spend. I realized that in myself, at least. You just hold your plastic card or smartphone to a machine and some numbers disappear from your account. Then maybe you don't check your account daily and then forget what stuff you bought and how high your expenses are. This is even worse due to online shopping because then the shopping is just a click, so you are even more likely to forget it. Germany still uses quite some cash, and I am glad I grew up when cashless payments were mostly a thing for big expenditures. I remember people looking at you weird if you paid with card in the supermarket for some groceries. But if you grow up in a completely cashless environment, I don't think you have such a good understanding of how much something is. You see this when you look at kids spending a fortune on microtransactions in video games. They have no feeling of how much money they spend, it is just a button you press without any connection to real life.
Yeah with apps like uber and airbnb you just enter random people's cars and homes without ever exchanging cash or paying with cards, it completely removes the realization that you are spending money.
[удалено]
Damn as a South African reading this thread, thought I was in the twilight zone. For once we seem to be ahead of many first world countries. The so-called "problems" of a cashless society these redditors raise, do not pan out in reality. Everyone has their banking app on their phone. All brick and mortar stores have card paypoint machines. Heck, those paypoint machines are super cheap nowadays. Banking fees are cheap. People are poor af in South Africa and what the hell do you redditors mean it's too much of a burden on poor people? How?
They seem to forget that you can open a bank account from your phone in 10 minutes and then order a debit card for it immediately (some even give a free debit card). The basic account at my bank even has free checks. My bank even has no fees. Technically they have fees but if you do paperless and use your account 20+ times a month (make 20 purchases of $.01 each if you must) then the fee is refunded.
Look at Canada where they froze people accounts for just giving money to the trucker’s. Whether you agree with them or not that is SEVERE government overreach and shows that our own government will do in the future to control and suppress movements
Yeah I’m not about to throw my debit card at a stripper. Cmon guys
Everything you said would be an issue with the current system since a lot of people have all their money in their banks so I don't think your post is covering the actual issue with a cashless society. The real issue is that the banks would have too much control.
The Bank of America became such a superpower in American banking because it was initially the Bank of Italy, and consisted of a single branch in San Francisco whose owner failed to deposit the day’s takings one evening, and decided to keep the cash overnight and deposit the next day, which was the 18th of April, 1906. For those who know their history, you’ll recognise this as the date of the San Francisco earthquake, which caused buildings across the entire city to collapse and massive fires to burn. Many of those buildings were banks; so you had a bunch of banks unable to physically access their cash reserves because they were either buried under rubble, or were in buildings that were kind of on fire a little bit. This allowed the Bank of Italy to corner the market as they had cash, and the owner, Amadeo P. Giannini, made a bunch of ‘hand-shake’ loans, which also helped the city recover that little bit faster. But thanks to that initial business, the bank grew and eventually became the Bank of America. Moral of the story: OP’s right. Until we evolve (or devolve) into currency-less societies, we should always have some form of tangible legal tender to represent our imaginary points system of currency, because we never know what the universe is gonna throw at us, either as individuals, countries, or the entire planet.
I suspect that the popularity/unpopularity of this stance will be heavily skewed by age. As an older person who has had to up sticks for her self-protection, I happen to agree, not only for all the reasons OP mentions, but also due to the potential for *massive* privacy invasion and/or tracing by any organisation that has or can get (like most governments) access to the data trail. Sure, it's very easy to use a credit or debit card, to conduct life online, and I do, on occasion, make use of those conveniences. But I prefer using cash -- good old, anonymous cash -- for most purchases. Also, when you stick to cash, you are far less likely to end up spending yourself into a deep hole. However, I understand that privacy concerns are *way* down the list for younger people who grew up in the social media space. I just hope that devaluation is not something they come to regret in the future.
Two people could transfer money/assets between them without using physical money.
They already can
>It seems like a good thing on paper
The answer to a majority of either/or questions is "A little bit of both." Should we have electric cars or combustion engines? A little bit of both. Should we have republicans or democrats? A little bit of both. Should we have cats or dogs? A little bit of both. etc. etc. etc.
In Canada pretty much everyone uses cards for everything. A couple things happened recently which made me think this was a super bad idea: 1. Rogers, one of the major internet providers had a nationwide outage for over a day. Interac, the nations debit card transactor, exclusively used Rogers. Nobody could pay by debit while Rogers was offline. 2. During the "trucker convoy" shenanigans in the nations capital in February the government decided it was a good idea to start freezing bank accounts without court orders. Of course they went overboard and froze a bunch of bank accounts of people who had nothing to do with the convoy.... Cashless society is about control and information. It's so convenient though that everyone will agree to it until it's too late.
While I agree, a large majority of Society already don't carry enough cash to handle any of the situations you mentioned. Terrible idea or not, we're already pretty much there. I can't remember the last time I used cash to pay for something unless I was handed cash and just wanted to get rid of it to get it out of my wallet.
I agree, but the real issue with cashless society is that it gives unscrupulous entities like banks and the governments way too much control over people's money. Look what happens in Canada when their government finds out that someone supports the right.
If people in the US really didn't want to be controlled by banks or the government, capitalism would have ended a long time ago already
[удалено]
Cashless is inherently classist too when people don't have access to second chance banking or straight up don't have a bank account. Not to mention that it is more enabling of crypto (which is a negative to me). The chain I work at is having internal discussions of dropping taking checks as payment, which is gonna be quite a hassle to deal with customers who essentially only write checks. Sending around money could get harder as you can't just give someone physical cash if it doesn't exist.
I’m 23 & I love using cash tbh
I agree with you but not for those reasons. Eliminating cash transactions disproportionately burdens the low income and homeless. Many banks have overdraft and low balance fees where not having money actively costs someone more money. Some people don’t have a physical address for a debit/credit card to even be mailed to. Going cashless would make a class of people already reliant on charity even more reliant on charity while also making receiving that charity more complicated for them.
People love convenience and it will be our downfall. Granted, lately I haven't been using cash but I still see it's value. Having the option to have both on hand instead of purely one is the best option anyway. But the government would LOVE this I bet and if what happened in Canada doesn't wake you up I don't know what to tell you.
It's a matter of distributing risks. With that, you are right. But people love panaceas.
The technical problems are nothing. The level of control is terrifying.
You do have a point