How Feasible is a Cash-Less Society?

vocaljess asks a question that has been on many a mind over the past decade, if not longer: "I just today realized that it has been over a week since I physically handled cash money. Due to the use of checks, debit cards, online shopping, automatic bill pay, direct deposit, etc, my family operates on a cash-less basis in the vast majority of our business transactions. With more and more establishments accepting credit/debit cards, how many others are heading the same way?" Are the advantages of a cash-less society really all that advantageous? One of the largest proposed advantages of a cash-less society is one of limited-theft, well even though money in a cash-less society wouldn't be tangible, it's no less theft-proof...it just takes a theif of a different calibur to pull it off. Do you feel we are heading toward a cash-less society? Do you think if such a thing were to happen we'd be any better off than we are today?

"Think about this: if the cumulative value of everything in the world were expressed in measures of gold, which theoretically backs the majority of world currencies, does enough gold physically exist to back the paper money value, or has the paper money itself become valuable?

And what about this: how is it that the people who depend upon cash are usually in the middle of the financial spectrum, neither the poorest nor the richest? In most extreme poverty situations, transactions are based on barter. For most middle class people and above, transactions involve checks, credit, and electronic fund transfers. For the working poor, most transactions are done in cash. How does all of this add up to the trend toward a cash-less society, where money is nothing more than numbers in a computer transferred from one account to another, to another? How far off is that future?"

Comments

I am living in a cash-less society!

[pOs*x]

It's called "post-secondary education". They take all your money for tuition, and you live cash-less for many years. It's not as great as you make it out to be!

Not possible, lower class vices need cash

[typical geek]

When the lower class sorts (you know, Joe Sixpack and friends) amuse themselves, cash often plays a part. You can't stick a dollar bill in a stripper's thong with a debit card, you can't buy marijuana with a credit card, pool games take quarters, and most bars only take cash.

Remember, just becuase you live online and buy porn online doesn't mean Joe Sixpack does.

Re:Not possible, lower class vices need cash

[hexx]

When the lower class sorts (you know, Joe Sixpack and friends) amuse themselves, cash often plays a part. You can't stick a dollar bill in a stripper's thong with a debit card, you can't buy marijuana with a credit card, pool games take quarters, and most bars only take cash.

This is faulty (and plain dumb) reasoning.

1. You can't stick a debit card in a strippers thong, but you can stick something like a Disney Dollar... strip bars can sell "Stripper Dollars" - good only at their establishment - for money.

2. You can't buy Marijuana with a credit card? Why not? Maybe it'll be sold as "spicy oregano". Maybe it'll be sold as a "relaxation service" to hide the trail. Cash-less society does not mean one person can't pay another person. People will just learn to hide what was really bought/sold.

3. Pool games taking quarters and bars taking cash is just silly - I've seen pool tables and vending machines that take credit cards, and bars that take cash only are a relic of days gone by - it's easy (albeit sometimes expensive) for a legitimate business to accept credit cards.

And of course, the "lower class" abstraction is just silly. I'm not lowerclass, and I go to strip clubs!!!

Privacy is the issue...

[YuppieScum]

The only time I use my debit/ATM card for actual purchases is when buying on-line.

For all other purposes I withdraw cash - from as many random ATM's as I can manage.

I'll continue to do so until I receive an absolute guarantee from my bank that my purchasing habits are completly private.

And, of course, there are some things that plastic just can't buy...

Postmodernism

[zpengo]

This is something that some postmodernist thinkers saw coming a long time ago. It has to do with the continual separation from reality.

"Reality" in financial terms is a 1:1 trade of value. X number of pigs for Y pounds of grain, for example. Barter.

Barter became unwieldy, so there came to be used "valuable" pieces of metal that represented the value of physical objects.

Then valuable metal became scarce, so we came to use pieces of paper that represented metal stored in a fort somewhere.

After a while, the paper was valuable just for the idea, and there was no longer a need to back it with gold.

Then, because the pieces of paper were unwieldy, we came to create bank accounts where we could write one piece of paper (a check) to represent several of the formerly gold-backed pieces of paper.

Then people got tired of carrying around pieces of paper, so they replaced it with single pieces of plastic that could be used multiple times.

But pieces of plastic had to be used in person, so when people wanted to buy something from Amazon.com, all they needed to use was the number.

Our entire financial lives can be reduced to a meaningless string of numbers. That's a far cry from bringing your pigs or cheese or grains or whatever to the market.

big brother =:-(

[drenehtsral]

The thing i worry about in a cashless society is that once you have the centralized system to deal with clearing the transaction, people are going to extract marketing data. The government is going to look at your purchasing habits and decide that some people have similar purchasing habits too far to one or the other side of the political spectrum, and are too much of a threat to middle class suburban normalcy and should be liquidated.
Also that means that if they _suspect_ you of selling/using drugs, they can freeze your finances completely. It gives _way_ too much control to somebody else, based on politics, purchasing habits, etc... It makes my skin crawl.

P.S.

I don't think many (any?) major economic powers even _pretend_ to back their currency with anything real anymore, let alone gold.