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The Future of Money
Snuggums writes "Apparently some major forces at play in the tech money world. People like Vint Cerf, Tim O'Reilly, Andre Durand, and Cory Doctorow are teaming up with Tom Frey and the futurist think tank, DaVinci Institute, to dive into the forces at play with a Future of Money Summit later this year. They've even tapped a Nobel Prize winner and Visa founder, Dee Hock. They're hoping to answer questions like; what kind of money you'll be putting into vending machines 25 years from now; when will cash disappear; when will our current banking system become obsolete; and who gets to own money in the future?"
"Apparently some major forces at play in the tech money world."
Apparently some english majors at play in the Slashdot world.
...walk around saying, "Dude, I am so money"?
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
$995 per person before April 15, 2003
$1,195 after April 15, 2003 up to the day of the event.
That's not the future of my money.
Dont you know that cash is unpatriotic? Please refrain from using it anymore. Make everything electronic so we have an excellent paper trail to ensure domestic security and civility. What you don't like it? You must be one of them...
at my apt. complex they installed new washer and dryers w/cash card readers. I find it slightly inconvienient b/c I have to goto the main building to fill the card w/cash (but it does take credit card and debit). Other than that, it is slightly easier b/c I don't have to store $15 in quarters for laundry day.
I stopped using cash about 3 years ago. I keep two checking accounts and one savings account. I have a seperate check card for the second checking account and I transfer money to it for purchases (even at the grocery store just incase someone hits and extra zero and empties my account).
Once Wendy's and drug dealers take CC's I am set.
Ill be happy. Or would you be comfortable paying by credit card for a copy of 2600? How long before ashcroft starts checking up on those "obvious" criminals.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Have any of you gone shopping for things when you have no paper money on you? It's so much easier to write a check, swipe a credit card, even a debit card. If paper money is eliminated, sure it's less to deal with, but I think people will start spending their cash and draining their savings. Just look at credit cards. Before credit cards, credit problems didn't exist. You could only spend the money you actually had. Now, if they eliminate paper money in exchange for cards storing credits, people will just draing their cards so fast without thinking. They'll put more on them, then drain them again. It's great for the economy, but do you think we're really ready for this kind of responsibility? The amount of credit card debt says no.
Where does this Slashdot obsession with a cashless/e-gold/alternative currency come from?
Money has been around for 3200 years. Trade "I'll give you 2 sheep for one cow" has been around for thousands more.
I remember hearing these "cashless society" arguments in 1980. I look in my wallet 23 years later, and I still have a wad of cash in there, along with a credit card and ATM card. Sure, much of my purchasing is electronic, but it's far from cashless.
Now people are again saying "We'll be a cashless society in 25 years", and I still don't believe them. I've heard it before.
It reminds me of the "computers will solve all your paperwork problems. We will be a paperless society in 25 years." Cash is not going away anytime soon just because some money-geeks think they found an alternative.
As Ivanova from Babylon 5 said:
"Every time somebody says we're coming into a paperless society, I get 10 more forms to fill out."
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
More to the point who gets to decide when to increase or decrease the money supply. Your use of the word valuables in this context appears to refer to the notion that money needs to be backed by something like gold. It doesn't.
Yes, people have, over and over again. The banks' answer was always that they use the interest on your money to cover the cost of the transaction. Thankfully, my bank (ABN Amro) has changed their ways. Instead of delaying transactions, my money is transferred instantly from one account to the other, but the rent date on the account where the money was withdrawn from is back-dated two days. The bank get their rent, and I don't have to wait for my money to arrive in my second account. Suits me just fine.
As for the future of money... I don't see cash disappearing in the next 25 years. Cash is still very convenient for a numbe of purposes and I carry some with me at all times. Cash is useful for person-to-person transactions on the spot, and as a safeguard against overdrawn accounts, broken electronic wallets and the debit card / ATM / CC verification server being down. If any of these happen to you while you're checking out in the supermarket, you'll be glad to be carrying soe cash.
I think we will see a form of Internet (micro) payments such as Paypal coming into being in the next 25 years. It'll be less clunky and more fail-safe than Paypal as it will be run by proper banks and institutions. Most likely it will be seen as a regular banking transaction system, and be subject to the susual government regulations, scrutiny and taxes where applicable.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
what kind of money you'll be putting into vending machines 25 years from now
I already rely on cash only as much as absolutely necessary. With a debit card, I can pay for any credit card transaction directly out of my checking account, and more and more places are accepting credit cards every day. Hell, in bigger cities, you can even use a credit card in places like a Jack in the Box drive thru. In 25 years it'll be even more pervasive.
Some places now are even supporting debit cards directly and require me to enter my PIN... all the better, that extra layer of security is a little comforting. If my card is ever stolen though, I'm limited in liability to $50, thanks to credit card laws that apply even though it technically isn't a credit card, and I keep a little nest egg tucked away in an unrelated account to tide me over while the bank tracks down and fixes any unauthorized use of my main account.
Sure, it's not exactly a model of privacy since every purchase I make is logged on my account, but I consider the security of my money more important as a real issue than the nebulous fear that someone, somewhere is going to exploit the fact that I like buying cheeseburgers for lunch.
NO CARRIER
A rule where I worked was we'd all go out to eat lunch as a group but you had to have cash for your part because there is nothing worse than a table of 6 people all paying with debit cards. See your server in an hour.
A manager would rip you a new one if you constantly paid with a CC/debit card.
E-money is the ultimate form of Fiat if you ask me. All fiat has a history of corruption and collapse (the american dollar and other world currencies are heading that way as well). Fiat money is the money of the statist, since it allows those in charge of the press to create as much money as they need, while dilluting what the rest of us hold.
The question isn't "what form will money be in", the question should be "what assets will back our money". I don't care if its in the form of rice crispies, as long as it is backed by an asset (gold, food, land, space rocks) and has real value.
People under 18 can have checking accounts. That's how you learn how to manage money, by having a finite amount to manage, not by having some open-ended letter of credit.
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Credit cards cost even more than debits - you just pay a different way. The fee for using a credit card is 3% MINIMUM, and only a large retailer can get that rate. For small businesses it's more like 10%! That goes directly into the prices you pay.
The only reason more people aren't aware of this is that government has been in the pocket of the credit card companies for a long time - that's why it's illegal for the retailer to actually put the amount you're paying to Visa or Mastercard on the bill, where it belongs. Some have gotten around that by offering a "cash discount", but it's a legal grey area.
Credit card companies are the worst of finance industry, and that's really saying something.
There's overhead to maintaining a cash system too, of course, borne by the government that prints the cash (and polices counterfeiting, etc). But I really wonder how much extra we'll be paying in assorted "service charges" with every new electronic-cash scheme that comes along. If it's coming from banks and other financial empires, you can assume you're being bilked, because the only reason they ever have to offer a new service is to find a new way to skim your money.
People complain about paying taxes all the time; what I object to is bank charges. And the "take your business elsewhere" is ridiculous - they're all the same (even credit unions are only marginally better these days).
It's worth reading Dee Hock's writings. He sounds like a collectivist nutcase at first. But this is the guy who designed how Visa, the organization, works. He got all the big banks to sign on. And he was a mid-level guy at a small bank when he did it.
Few people outside the banking industry understand what Visa really is, let alone how it's organized and governed. Internet people should. It's a good model for shared infrastructure, like Internet backbones.
Visa is a major corporation organized as a cooperative. Its members, and owners, are banks. Visa sets standards and runs the backbone network that transfers credit card transactions between banks. Visa doesn't issue credit cards or do financial transactions itself.
The details of how that works politically are complex. Yet it does work, and a lot better than, say, ICANN. I'm not going into how it's done; read Dee Hock's book.
Here's a reference which says the rumor is true.
And I tend to believe Snopes.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I just like a paperless bathroom, it only works for the Japanese.
Banaaaana!
You are incorrect in associating paper with wealth. There is no connection. That dollar bill in your wallet is no more or less money than a digit in a Wells Fargo computer. Both represent a unit of confidence in the issuing body - the US government. That is all they represent. You cannot redeem that dollar bill for a fraction of preciou metal. You cannot redeem the bill for a piece of a brick of a government building. You are not assured of receiving a set unit of a foreign currency for it either. It is a fiat currency. It has no inherent value. The paper bill is simply a physical container for a fractional unit of confidence in the US government, nothing more or less.
What you are referring to is the growth in the money supply through the Fed down to the fractional reserve banks. M3 money has grown by leaps and bounds in the Greenspan era. This and only this is the source of the stock market bubble.
Or, alternatively, when phone/telecommunications systems go down. Anyone who was in Manhattan on September 11th and the days immediately following will probably recall that many stores had either ceased accepting cards at all, or had set up special lines because only a few of their readers were working. This was due to the incredible call volumes that were jamming up the city's relatively limited numbers of long-distance circuits.
Fortunately, most of the ATMs were up and running (though a few had run out of cash, because so many people were using them where previously they'd just relied on their check/credit cards.)
I love my check card, but I'm pretty sure it won't be there for me on that occasion when I most desperately need it.
These conferences are primarily interesting because of the people that attend them, yet by pricing their conferences like that they are virtually guaranteeing that the only people who turn up are Sun and Microsoft's [insert conference buzzword here] evangelists, and a bunch of journalists.
Without the possibility of inequality through different amounts of effort, there is no motivation to do anything.
Sure there is.
It's called "self-actualization", and sits at the top of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Would some people start partying all day? Damn straight. Others would sit down and do some serious thinking and writing, others would work on creating fantastic pieces of art, architecture, or what have you, and yes virginia, some people would choose to cook.
What, after all, is the motivation to post on Slashdot? It's certainly not advancing your career or your knowledge. Hell, you're lucky if *reading* Slashdot advances your knowledge, but we do it anyway.
Now I'll admit that even while some people might still be happy to take care of the sick and maintain power-plants, the numbers would probably be far fewer, but that's where the nanotech and robotics come into play.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
I agree with the ideas espoused above, but wanted to correct some factual errors.
The fee for using a credit card is 3% MINIMUM, and only a large retailer can get that rate. For small businesses it's more like 10%!
Running a small business in Central California, I had an account with Cardservice Intl and paid 1.59%, with an annual volume somewhere around $80,000-100,000. 10% is simply rediculous, and it's a good idea a credit card merchant account isn't that expensive!
that's why it's illegal for the retailer to actually put the amount you're paying to Visa or Mastercard on the bill.
It's not illegal - it's just against the contract that you sign to get your merchant account. The contract actually says that you won't charge extra for credit card transactions.
You won't go to jail, but you might lose your merchant account!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Perhaps you can volunteer at this and get in for free?
I have volunteered at conferences including Unsenix, Interop, WWW Consortium, and others and have allways received complementary admission.
It may be too late for this one, but if you become aware of stuff in the future (> 6 Months), you might have a better chance of getting in.
Especially if you off to do a key role, such as head up registration, logistics, whatever.
Mark
Cleara