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Predicting a Future Free of Dollar Bills
An anonymous reader writes with this story about how a cashless society might work and how far-off in the future it is. "...We're not there yet, but a cashless society is not as fanciful as it seems. Recent research suggests that many believe we will stop using notes and coins altogether in the not-too-distant future. New payments technologies are rapidly transforming our lives. Today in the U.S., 66 percent of all point-of-sale transactions are done with plastic, while in the U.K. it's just under half. But while a truly cashless society is some time away yet, there is raft of groundbreaking technologies that will make cash a mere supporting act in the near future."
Good luck everybody
...that they know about.....are done with plastic.
Cash needs to be done with because its primary uses these days include buying illegal drugs, pay for illicit services, dodge taxes, and conduct money laundering.
No normal human being in America really needs to keep using cash for legitimate purposes these days.
I can't wait till cash is just abolished, anonymous money transactions are really evil and hurt America.
What denomination ???
Why would you ever want a cashless society? Cash is one option you have. Taking it out removes an option and therefore freedom.
As long as there is a demand for illegal drugs, there will be a need for cash. Lots of cash. Dealers don't take plastic.
Just what we need to bring about a new world order.
As someone who has had a recent issue with a certain major bank(they closed the account and sent cashiers checks to me for the balance. Waiting 2-3 days without money wasn't pleasant)...I will never go cashless. Relying on these financial institutions for every transaction is something I will not trust. I won't get into the whole NSA/FBI/etc. potential tracking of all my purchases.
Barter is occasionally impractical, yet relatively untraceable and virtually untaxable.
But cotton/linen fiber is legal tender for all debts, public and private. But especially for private.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Let's see the future free from pennies, first.
But they could always take bitcoin, paypal dead-drops, or many other forms of e-payment.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
A butcher near me already has http://canningsfreerangebutche...
From the article:
Biometrics will also make fraud virtually impossible â" identification is yours and yours alone, and therefore very hard to copy.
And impossible to change if it is somehow copied. (See: Fingerprints made from gummy bears", for example.)
How is this a good idea again?
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
While cashless might make sense to a middle class with easy access to technology and banks, there is a significant percentage of the population does not have access to such things and they probably will not any time soon. As much as 10% of the US population has no bank access, no SS ID, no IDs of any type, etc.
Last week I swiped my card at a gas station pump before noticing the tamper proof seals had been broken. I have replaced the card, but while waiting for the new card I used cash. You tend to conserve more money when it is cold, hard cash instead of of just swiping a card. Less surface area for compromise as well.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
In Canada we no longer have dollar bills. We have dollar coins. We also got rid of the penny.
Free as in "the Truth shall set you..."
So you are the reason that a lot of stores have a minimum charge amount for credit / debit charges. The transaction fees charged to merchants are ridiculous and so are ATM fees. Until these fees are reduced, you will never see a truly cashless society. And that doesn't include those that have less trust of banks than they do of governments.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
The only reason to transfer to a cash-less society is so instead of the Federal Reserve controlling our money, the credit card/debit card companies do.
It's bullshit that not only can the credit card company charge YOU interest, they also get a small percentage/flat fee if it's very small whenever you use one of their cards.
That's why prepaid cards want you to either direct deposit or make a retarded amount of transactions per month, they make more than the $4.95 they charge per month to keep your card active by simply you using it.
All in all, it's an entirely bullshit situation and I really hope something like bitcoin takes off.
In America, most stores won't take your card unless you plan to spend less than a pittance. Most stores will deny you if your transaction isn't 5-10$
At that point, because of the processing fees from the credit card company they lose almost to all of their profit.
I'm sure it'd be much different if the card user was charged instead of the merchant, but that's not how it works here. Credit card companies in the US are always double-dipping, charging processing fees to the merchants and collecting interest from cardholders.
That 10% are also called illegal aliens by some. As long as such exist there will be no cashless society.
Alternately, this would really be a great way to reduce such immigration.
1. Privacy is more important to me than convenience. I like the idea that I can go into a store and buy something without someone making a recording of it and tying it to me.
2. The issue isn't to make the dollar go away, or even the penny go away. The issue is to fix the inflation.
How am I gonna use my debit card in a strippers ass?
This is going to be disastrous if we remove stripper money.
... Slap
Where should I swipe my card miss?
Swipes
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
"Lots of people think it will happen" means about nothing. People are HORRIBLY bad at predicting future trends. More so en-mass.
What people say they want and what they really want (and demonstrate by doing) are pretty much unrelated. So even if people SAY they want cashless, I doubt they'll actually vote that way when the rubber hits the road.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
Cash is accepted at more locations than Visa and Mastercard and always will. If government issued notes are eliminated, another form of anonymous exchange will arise. As previously mentioned, it may be gold or silver, it might be something else. People will find a way.
I was talking to an economist friend, and he was saying one way to greatly reduce crime would be to eliminate all hard currency over $5 and make the currency that was left just coins.
Yeah, yeah, I know the libertarians would go apeshit, but the world for the likes of Tony Soprano would crumble.... Most criminals would no longer be able to transact business, as they operate in a cash system.
Seriously, those things are dirtier than my hands after not washing.
fee on every transaction. Really, the greed of banksters is enough to make a mobster blush. However, going cashless would make the church rumple sale impossible. Once that aspect of the matter is made clear to politicians that will be the end of this dicussion.
the fiat, which can crash at any moment
The currency or the car?
(In before "yes".)
Cashless only works if the poor can get bank accounts without having to pay hefty fees if they can even qualify at all.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
...we need to get rid of the stinking penny.
Credit card companies in the US are always double-dipping, charging processing fees to the merchants and collecting interest from cardholders.
Often, yes. Always, no. I've had three credit cards. None of them charge any interest because I pay in full each month with an ACH transfer from my checking account.
So how will a child not old enough to have a bank account in his own name buy a candy bar at the convenience store?
I always pay in cash and don't own a card. As do some of my friends. Perhaps its not a great idea to take your friends as the average of a bigger demographic since your friends are likely to be like you.
Some of us just don't like having everything tracked, even if its fully legal.
By removing physical currency you also remove the only anonymous way of paying for goods not to mention the ONLY way to have COMPLETE control over your own money.
What are you going to do when a Bank freezes all your assets? Use your "plastic card"?
screw you. I know and do business with tens of people who only accept cash, only
pay cash, can't take or process a check. They live hand to mouth, and they do
alot of the labor that keeps everything running. The majority of the ones I know
are white, and were born in the united states. not that that should matter
How convenient for you to depend on an underclass, legal or not, and piss on them
for not having as comfortable a life as yourself.
In America, most stores won't take your card unless you plan to spend less than a pittance. Most stores will deny you if your transaction isn't 5-10$
Not sure what backwards part of America that post came from, but I can tell you for certain that it's absolutely false in every part of America that I'm aware of. I use my debit card everywhere, for everything, including buying a single item at a dollar store if that's all I want to buy. No one has ever once even blinked. $1 at the Dollar Store, $3 at the fast-food joint, whatever, everyone's happy to take my business. I stopped using cash for anything at all over a decade ago, and the only people who don't want my card are the government -- they would rather I write a check for my driver's license renewal or whatever (which is funny, no one else will accept a check anymore around here).
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I haven't carried cash in like 10 years. I just never use it.
This is living in Australia, and then in New Zealand for the past 5 years.
In New Zealand road side fruit sellers accept cards. Literally EVERYONE accepts cards, because everyone uses cards.
Cash is pretty much dead here.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Are we assuming all transactions humans do are with merchants?
Naive as hell !
Crappy list of examples, I'm sure there are hundreds of examples: 1) What about if I want to buy your [insert bike or computer or whatever]? 2) Baby sitter? 3) Kid's allowance? 4) Pay some kid kid to mow yard. 5) Underground transactions (illegal stuff)
The importance of cash will continue to decline with transactions with merchants, but it will never remotely approach "cashless".
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
How many decades has it been since people started predicting the inevitable future of videophone as a replacement for the telephone? People typically have easy access to videophones in the industrialized world, but for the most part videophones are mostly restricted to people wanting to see relatives from overseas and corporate meetings.
It turns out that people don't want the hassle of having to clean up before answering the phone. And in this case, I don't think that people really want the hassle of having to deal with a bank whenever they want to buy something and to be unable to buy something if they don't pay exorbitant fees or cant' get credit.
Mmm.. I prefer having a cash option. Like a car that can do 120, I may not need it, but I like to know it's there.
I can already buy pretty much anything 'cashless'.
Print no bill smaller than a 5.
86 the penny. Keep Nickels, dimes, quarters and half dollars.
Mint 1 and 2 dollar coins.
People don't like dollar coins? Stop printing the bills and they'll like them just fine.
How'd I do Aussies?
The underground economy has many faces.
drugs
Theft
worse crime
far less insidious, unreported labor
All these will have serous problems in a cashless world. There are ways around these with some problems. But, it will drive small players out of the market.
Not a pretty picture for some.
Practical question: how do you plan to tip strippers? I don't think they appreciate coins in the hooch...
C|N>K
few vending / pinball / video machines took them and making them take CC's is dumb as the fees will eat much of $1-$2 per buy they take in.
This is the country where those in charge are so terrified of any change they had TV commercials promoting $1 coins - and then gave up on them. They are also afraid of big changes to US notes (why not make them from plastic like Australia does?) in order to fight counterfeiting. In this, as in all other technology, the USA will be well behind the rest of the world.
Banks love you using plastic. They tax every transaction. Paying with plastic costs you at least 2.5% and as much as 5% extra because the merchants must build that into the price to pay the banks for the credit card transactions. This is a hidden inflation. A hidden tax.
Banks also like it because they can collect data on your behavior and that is a salable product which makes them more money.
One of my clients made me get it to get paid, their accounting department was paying net 90 days and required all kinds of crazy insurance to get me paid through them. So paying with the department credit card was just easier. So when I setup the credit card account, they told me it would cost me 4.0%. Every month new and mysterious (to my account rep.) charges would show up: a fraction of a percent here, fixed fees there. He could never give me an explanation of what they all were, and they weren't consistent from what I could tell. I told them that those charges were ok with me as I was passing that along to my client, but it was hard to do that when I didn't know what I would expect (I was running around $10K a month through it for some other part time contractors and equipment). When the project was over, I couldn't cancel that account fast enough.
So I perfectly understand why some stores have a minimum charge or won't take credit at all, it's a big hassle and cost.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
Not exactly. When someone with good credit pays off his "cash back" card at the end of the month, the bank passes on a portion of the merchant fees. That's the "cash back."
Of course, if you use your card as an unsecured loan for longer than the billing cycle then you pay interest. And if you're late paying you pay late fees. You're a fool to do that in anything but a dire emergency, and your parents, friends and colleagues have warned you about it all your life, but you're free to live your life any way you want to.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
The electrical grid is anything but reliable.
It's simply unacceptable to say, that if the power goes out, then we're screwed and can no longer trade.
We need the ability to trade regardless of operating on or off the grid, and plastic or cashless methods can't do that.
lot's of small hotdog / food places want cash only.
"The economics of the future are somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century. "
"The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity."
Privacy concerns and the black market will keep the cash alive.
It's worth considering what liberty you give up for a little temporary safety: https://mises.org/document/3353/The-Gold-Standard-Perspectives-in-the-Austrian-School
I don't pay ATM fees - which makes all the easier to me to use cash as my primary payment method.
I can get cash from any ATM too, the limitation is that at banks other than my own the minimum withdrawal is 20 euros while I can withdraw 10 euros on my bank (and have the account balance printed).
I'm not sure where you shop, but in NYC, here is how it works.
All corporate/franchise/not-family stores accept credit/debit cards with no minimum charge. Most family-run stores, if they accept a credit card at all, enforce a minimum balance between 10 and 20 dollars. That's because the credit/debit card business model is not profitable to small businesses, only mega corporations that can afford to eat a credit/debit card surcharge.
Here is an interesting mechanic I noticed in poor neighborhoods in NYC that paint this picture clearly. At the Bodega, you can get a good meal for between 2.50 and 5 dollars if you are strapped for cash and can not afford more. At the McDonalds, you can get a meal roughly the same size as the Bodega meal for between 4 and 7 dollars (we are not talking about "Dollar Menu" here, we are talking about quantity by weight). So in some of the worst places in the city where every penny counts, why does the McDonalds get more foot traffic and raucous customers than the bodega? Because the McDonalds will take your credit card for anything but the bodega will not. It's almost like a perpetual motion machine for putting debt on the poor. They can't use cash because they don't have it but they can spend more "money" because McDonalds and Visa are in on the racket together.
Plastic money is so great for society, right? Who needs that stupid cash stuffs? Don't buy gold, buy paypal credits. If you disagree, you are old-fashioned and or crazy, and you wouldn't want that!
You can get the hardware and an account to accept credit card payments using your iPhone, for instance.
But then you have to pay hundreds of USD for an iPhone (or maybe one hundred for a compatible Android phone) and hundreds of USD per year to upgrade from voice-only cellular service to smartphone service. Or what am I missing?
Transaction fees.
Vs. cash, no transaction fees.
If you're eking out a living with a tiny to small business, which would you prefer?
Yeah it was stupid to get rid of the penny. only increases inflation.
"is the fiat, which can crash at any moment"
Did they ever find that white Fiat Uno that hit the Ritz hotel Mercedes in that Paris tunnel on 31 Aug 97
Is this daily, weekly, or just bi-monthly?
A cashless society is doomed to serfs and kings.
Whenever the kings want more, they raise the prices by adding fees.
Serfs will have no say in the matter.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Where Trolls are omnipotent, moi capitan!
(at least until they get expelled for being that way and then "only" threatening young girls to come into the continuum)
technology lets poor people receive payments from one another. I imagine pre-paid type debit cards with nfc chips. Funds can be transferred non-anonymously between people via African style cell phone transactions and moved between the cell phone and the debit card via nfc chips in both. If people can load up cards identically (or asymmetrically if a payment is involved) and swap 'em, after a few swaps the cards should seem anonymous enough for those not sufficiently motivated to barter.
A lot of prostitutes already take plastic, so even in a "cashless" society it will still be easy to buy drugs, hookers, hit-men, and everything else. Worst case scenario, buy prepaid cards from whichever company pops up selling anonymous ones, and you can bet your sweet as somebody will because there will be a huge demand for them, if they don't already exist.
From Alien: Resurrection:
GEN. PEREZ: Elgyn, these were very, very hard to come by. *slides a stack of cash to Elgyn*
ELGYN: So was our cargo. You're, uh...not about to plead poverty on me, are you, General?
GEN. PEREZ: No. Just saying very few people deal in cash nowadays.
ELGYN: Just the ones don't like to keep business records. Yourself, for example.
[End Of Line]
Some private company would invent something to replace it.
There are just too many microtransactions on too many levels to totally replace cash.
> the ONLY way to have COMPLETE control over your own money.
And what country do you live in that makes this statement true? The issuing authority can decide your currency is worth whatever they decide it's worth, up to and including completely devaluing it if they want. You never have and never will have complete control over your own money.
There are many financial transaction both legal and illegal that benefit perhaps even require no paper or computer record.
I can't take anything seriously after that.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
Ex. power blackouts like NY had last year, or ~15 years ago when New England and Ontario had a power outage for a couple days. Most things will shutdown anyways in those scenarios but still are businesses really not going to want to be able to sell things because their card reader isn't working? Or how about your wallet gets stolen, credit card gets hacked etc? With cash you might/likely have some around the house. How many people have a spare copy of their bank card and credit card and will it work once you report the other one as missing? What you are just going to not buy anything for 3-5 days while you wait for another one?
I lived in Laos for a while and was surprised that they have no coins there, only paper money. How do you flip a coin? You have to keep a foreign coin just for flipping. Then I came back (to Thailand) and thought it was weird that we have two kinds of currency - paper and metal. Why? Don't know.
As for all purchases being electronic, have you ever heard of Edward Snowden? Come on, be real! Currency is the last vestage of privacy! Buy a book for cash and no computer in the world knows that you own it. How will you use your credit card to give a beggar a dollar? Tip the lady at the massage parlor and your wife hits you with your bank book. "Officer, forget the speeding ticket; just take a hundred from my Visa card." A world without cash? Not in my world.
How smart is it to essentially Privatize Currency? Electronic money isn't handled by the people for the people, for public good. It's private global corporations using proprietary *everything*, with what's essentially a local exchange rate rate to you/me/us that's always to their own benefit. Electronic money is just trading power for convenience.
There's no reason the replacement would have a fee on every transaction. Opposing change because you are too stupid to solve problems doesn't make the change bad.
Learn to love Alaska
"Oh... without cash I couldn't buy the neighbor's bike." WTF??
Digital currency, you stupid insensitive CLOD!
In Finland you're going to be able to use bitcoin wallet/tx devices that work off radio networks. No internet access required.
Post after post after post after post of non-digital currency awareness bewbs! /. has really gone downhill
I think that it's hard to pay with card in the US in some places like Taxi and small shops - something that's so common in Sweden that it gets annoying when you can't.
The few shops that don't take cards these days have to put up huge signs to avoid annoyed customers that assumes cards are good there.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
many believe we will stop using notes and coins altogether in the not-too-distant future.
I remember hearing exactly the same thing back in the 80's.
Cash will be around for a long time yet, because in some ways it's still preferable. Different tools for different things.
In $GOD we trust. All others must pay cash.
(your choice as to how to define $GOD)
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
The main technology breakthrough that will enable cashless societies.
Short of the government forcing people not to use cash. (Democrats would love this because it means people can't hide people making money) It ain't going to happen.
Giving some poor guy some money. (plastic dose him no good)
Giving someone money for birthday. (cost money to buy a cash card)
Tipping at a restaurant. (I ALWAYS tip in cash so the waitress gets more of the tip, cash don't get taxed)
Garage sales. Kids lemonade stands .
What is all this complaining about Banks and fees? It is so easy to avoid those fees that you only have yourself to blame.
tracked? no one cares about your beer, pizza, gamer video card, lap dance and dime bag purchases
I move the goalposts when failure modes become apparent to me. I apologize for not anticipating all such failure modes in advance. But the next one is that cash works without electric power, without a cellular subscription, and where coverage is unavailable.
Hey, just wanted to reply to say I appreciate your post.
Specifically, I appreciate you posting on a topic that is literally anything besides the hosts file/DNS subject.
Keep it up. Regardless of whether I agree with any specific post, it is a relief from the monotone you have acquired a reputation for. Hell, I don't even care if you want to deliberately troll, so long as you vary your topics.
You could say that Satan is plotting to establish a liberal, homosexual totalitarian world regime via global warming skepticism astroturfing, and I wouldn't collapse your post "just because it's apk" like I would if it's on that other subject.
I never carry any cash on me and even pay 10 [euro] cent (roughly equaling a dime) purchases with plastic. And I'm certainly not the only one amongst my friends. Cash is clumsy, dirty and so last century. That's Finland for you.
You pay 10 euro cent transactions with plastic? Do you like stealing money from merchants because that is what you are doing when you consider merchant fees prick? I hope you are not a finn because you don't seem to have any sisu. Are you a recent immigrant to Finland?
Honestly, you should be taken out back and beaten if you actually use plastic to pay for small purchases prick.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
CEO of sage writes a one-sided pro-industry article about a dream standing to benefit his companies bottom line.... who cares?
Would prefer a piece from @Dunkin_CEO detailing how 90% of the world is projected to be addicted to gooey confections by 2020.
All those running around proclaiming demise of cash would constitute some kind of death knell to illicit industries must have been hooked up with some great shit.
I love cash. You can have it when you pry it from my col... wait... not quite. But for me to stop using cash, you have to make electronic cash work first. That means three things that are absolute requirements and I will not ever negotiate:
As long as even one of these conditions is not met, I will have to carry cash around me anyways, and if I have cash with me, I will use it wherever I can.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The last number I saw published here in Norway said that cash only accounted for about 5% of the daily transaction volume, debit cards are used in 80% of purchases. Published statistics also say that cash is more expensive to handle than electronic transactions.
I can't remember using cash a single time during the last few months.
Unless one posits a governmental alternative to private banks, the U.S. Constitution raises some barriers to a "cashless society." In the Supreme Court's recent Obamacare ruling (PDF), the court held that neither the Commerce Clause nor the Necessary and Proper Clause provide Congress with power to require that a person participate in commerce, i.e., by requiring that they buy health insurance. The relevant legislation was upheld under the Congressional power to levy taxes, in the form of a penalty for those who do not buy health insurance.
Requiring that people enter into a business arrangement with a private bank to handle their funds would seem to run into the same barrier, leaving the question whether Congress has power to require people to pay all debts via a private bank under its power to coin money and set the value thereof, in legal effect requiring people to loan money to private banks in the form of deposits.
The factual basis for such a test case already exists because of a statute requiring that all payments of Social Security and Dept. of Veteran Affairs benefits (and wages of federal employees) be made by electronic funds transfer, which as currently implemented can only be made to private banks other than the Federal Reserve Banks.
By way of disclosing my bias, I have boycotted banks since the collapse of the economy in 2008 because of massive bankster fraud that caused that collapse. I have refused to accept payment of VA and Social Security benefits by that method. I do not intend to loan my money to banks and am willing to litigate that issue if necessary.
Paul E. "Marbux" Merrell, J.D.
Why? You just accumulate the transactions at the arcade and make one single transaction. There are other places in the US that does the same (Los Angeles metro comes to mind).
There are still some things to solve for the cashless society.
1. Electronic transactions are still far too expensive. Every shop I go into to get (say) my lunch have a minimum amount you have to spend before you can use your debit card (or you have to pay a surcharge). My lunch always falls below this value so I must use cash. Things like vending machines too. Until it's cheap enough to use something like a debit card to buy an item costing 60p, then you'll still need cash.
2. Security. Debit/credit cards are too insecure, and the burden of making them secure is on the merchant in the form of PCI-DSS. It means if you're a small business taking debit/credit might not be an option. The burger van in the car park for instance, it's still impractical for him to take electronic transactions due to the equipment requirements and PCI-DSS.
3. Very hard to settle private debts. For instance if I hire a builder for a small job, he now has to give me all his bank details if I'm to do an electronic transfer. It's about 100 times easier to give him cash.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
So you are the reason that a lot of stores have a minimum charge amount for credit / debit charges. The transaction fees charged to merchants are ridiculous and so are ATM fees. Until these fees are reduced, you will never see a truly cashless society. And that doesn't include those that have less trust of banks than they do of governments.
Why blame the man working within the system for charges applied by someone completely different? Either the merchant should be happy to absorb the transaction cost, the merchant should specify the minimum cost, or the bank shouldn't charge the fees. But it most definitely is NOT the fault of the person simply buying something.
Now let's flip the thing around. For the few cents per transaction that end up going to the banks for small purchases how much could be potentially saved by not tallying up the register, not storing float offsite or managing a safe, not having to train staff to manage cash securely, not having to bank your earnings at the end of the day (that's a good expensive one there), and above all when the cash register disagrees with the paperwork not spending an hour trying to figure out where the money went.
There is a cost of doing business in cash. You just don't see it and point to credit fees instead. I for one pay an accountant to do my taxes because he's faster and cheaper than the time I'd spend doing it, so why not pay a bank to manage the money (if we went cashless).
I'm alright with a cashless future, so long as it's done right. One thing it can't be is the current propriety charge card system implemented by and for rent-seeking middlemen. It is the government's job to develop modern, usable currency (electronic or otherwise), and they have been lax in this responsibility.
I bet department stores and gas stations do much more than that portion of their business by plastic. I bet sweetshops and toyshops deal with a lot of cash, because a large chunk of their customer base doesn't have plastic. Also greeting card shops, newspaper kiosks, and other institutions that deal with a lot of small transactions, because cash is more convenient for small purchases.
I grew up with the sci-fi stories promoting the idea of e-notes in e-wallets. I think Shadow-run has something similar. I'm surprised that no-one is discussing this idea. Money could move from wallet to wallet without an intermediary: It wasn't in escrow at the bank where it could be tracked, taxed or seized. The obvious danger is the same as real cash: Robbery and counterfeit notes. While governments can use more precise technology to prevent couterfeiting of physical notes, unlimited processing power means digital counterfeiting is a matter of time. The best solution I can think of is the military practice: Issuing new script every year and deleting the old notes. This means such e-notes cannot be stored long-term, like physical notes can: Valid e-notes must be traded for silver and collectibles, or banked with a financial institution before they expire.
Oh, you Americans. It's funny how most of the posts I see here are specific to the USA Credit Card infrastructure.
In Europe, we've had Chip + PIN for more than a decade. This makes CC fraud almost impossible, because chips cannot be copied without physical access to a carad and breaking it. Finished should be the days where you can just skim the magnetic strip. Unfortunately, because not all countries use this system, we still have to have 70's technology magnetic strips at the back of our cards which can be copied.
Concerning transactions and bank accounts... well, there is obviously a fee for processing payments. It's a pretty reliable service that's provided by the banks, so why shouldn't they charge a fee? Besides, as it was said before, there IS a cost to accepting cash: you have to pay people or machines to count it, withdraw it, protect if from theft...
To me, cash is easier to spend without thinking than with a CC. When I withdraw money from the bank, it's as if it's already been spent. With my e-banking app, I can monitor my bank account in real-time and it's much easier for me to manage my money.
I've read some people complaining that the money doesn't arrive until the end of the month for merchants. That's not true at all in Europe anymore. If I pay at a store with a debit card, the money immediately goes out of my account to the merchants. If not, it's only a matter of days, not weeks.
Basically, the American Credit Card system is utterly broken and stuck in the early 90's.
Wow, you really are a loony.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Hosts apply to a lot more than shoring up DNS redirect security issues. They add more:
Speed (blocking adbanners, & also hardcoding your favorite sites, which provides faster resolutions than calling out to remote DNS (which also shores up that redirect Kaminsky flaw noted above also - double bonus)).
Security (Shoring up the DNS redirect issue, & also stopping botnets, malware in general, maliciously coded adbanners, spammers & phishers, trackers, etc.)
Reliability (vs. downed OR redirect poisoned DNS servers)
Anonymity (vs. DNSBLs or DNS request logs)
* Especially "courtesy of yours truly" via -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...
APK
P.S.=> On the UPC symbol though - is the "best you've got" a downmod? Yes - "When the DOWNMOD truncheon is used in lieu of conversation..." this site has a problem! apk
Since technology innovate every year, this is not surprise at all.
Merchant fees for an bank card transaction are almost always lower than the cost of handling the cash, regardless of the amount.
most people pay cash most of the time. You barely see anyone using (credit/debit) cards.
Clumsy, dirty, last century and anonymous. Even in Finland (or heck, especially in Finland) there are situations where the last property comes incredibly handy.
And they came to the conclusion that paper bills were cheaper than coins.
Coins cost more to make. Canada had to mint 1.6 $1 coins for every paper bill they replaced because people hang onto them and hoarding coins is somehow a benefit to the government.
Personally I think the explanation/justification is somewhat tortured. I haven't listened to the podcast in a while but I think it comes down to some fairly esoteric economics, including seigniorage, the difference between the cost of producing the coins and the value of the coin.
I think they also factored in the cost of the conversion activity of business to accommodate $1 coins -- cash registers, vending machines, etc.
Best form of digital payment, with almost zero transaction fees, and no risk centralized control of regulation.
New Economic Perspectives
I am pretty sure that in Canada > 75% of transactions are made with plastic, easily. It may be more in the 85% range.
Perhaps no one cares about YOU, but the world isn't about YOU. Being able to track has consequences beyond YOU.
With LITERAL proof http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
When Arthur came up here (Atlantic Canada), it took out the power for a few days.. heck some were without power for a week. While without power, all the big box stores were closed. However, small mom & pop shops stayed open, using a hand ledger and accepting cash. I was actually in one store buying supplies that was operating by candlelight.
tracked? no one cares about your beer, pizza, gamer video card, lap dance and dime bag purchases
What about that AR-15 bought from a friend? Or what about those electrical/electronic parts you ordered that could either become the heart of an IED timer/detonator device or fix the controls on grandma's hobby-ceramics firing-kiln in her garage that she's been after you to fix, after some nutcase phones in a bomb threat?
Or what about bus/train/plane tickets to a city where an anti-government protest is scheduled, coupled with your purchase of spray paint and other sign-making supplies?
If all such data is so uninteresting and worthless, why is it authoritarian governments historically make such a priority out of obtaining as much as possible from everyone they can force to comply?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Phones without a data plan cannot run a Bitcoin wallet, and phones with a data plan are too expensive per month for a child to afford on his allowance.
Today in the U.S., 66 percent of all REPORTED point-of-sale transactions are done with plastic
Sales done in cash have the option of going unrecorded and untaxed, which is why you will never get total buy in on this.
And what about transactions (not necessarily business ones) that are not at Point of Sales? Ever give money as a birthday gift? Does this need to be reported/recorded now so that it can be taxed or you sign a disclaimer that this is a gift so no tax should be applied?
the quickest way to a cashless society is make everybody broke.
no more beef for the 99%. we'll all be eating bugs in the future.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2...
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Or someone who wants to be one
My life's goal is to swim in my own Money Bin like Scrooge McDuck. Don't take that dream away from me.
the government would love not to have paper money....for it's citizens. paper money is our last bastion of anonymous transactions, just think, the federal government can now decided to start charging taxes on small private transactions. only an idiot or an ideological "true believer" in cradle to grave big government (read idiot) would love a paperless money society.
New stripper costume will have a g string with a built in card swipe!
At the cafeteria at work, they have a $3 minimum for card purchases. Not much of a problem, since most of their crap is well over $3 anyway, but they do have that min.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
See if they can phase out pennies first. If they can't get rid of the smallest coin, they have little chance of phasing out all cash in general.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Editor’s note: Simon Black is CEO at London-based Sage Pay.
For those of you wondering Sage Pay is an electronic payment company. That's like the CEO of McDonalds saying in 10 years all meals will be fast food takeout. Probably just wishful thinking.
have your mom order pizza so the local economy doesn't collapse
It's all about control from the politician and banker's point of view. You can "turn off" cashless money and therefore control people.
An additional benefit from a banker's point of view is that a cashless society gives them the ability to leverage themselves up far beyond the reserve ratio. Basically to infinity. Typically a bank would have been required to hold a reserve of 5% of their loan book as cash. It limits how many loans they can create. Obviously it would be far more profitable if they could get rid of this limit, but it means that they need people to stop using cash, so they put some effort into selling the "cashless society" as a wonderful utopia where bankers rule the world and can create infinite credit on a whim.
so pay in cash for certain things, I was addressing the tin foil wrapped paranoid schizo and his imagined need to use cash for everything. besides, you won't be getting or using that plane ticket without valid ID
The road to dystopia is paved with good intentions.
lose != loose
Depends on the business.
BigCorp, Inc. generally doesn't care, because they make enough off other purchases that the occasional loss due to merchant fees doesn't hurt their bottom line.
Pop's Mom Stand, on the other hand, can't afford a $3 fee on a $2 transaction, so he has a minimum purchase amount.
The local smoke shop where I purchase my tobacco recently switched to a $5 minimum for card transactions, after their bank imposed a $2.75 fee on all credit/debit transactions.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The first things that come to mind about what going cashless could potentially fix would be tax dodging and illegal immigration.
Lots of folks love to get paid in cash so they don't have to report it to the IRS as income. In fact, many illegal immigrants are paid this way so a company can continue using them. The incentive for the illegal worker is no tax reporting to draw attention to the fact they're not supposed to be here anyway.
I rarely use cash anymore because unless you write down every purchase, it's difficult to track what you're spending it on. I just put it on a CC, pay it off in full every month and let them send me a report of where most of it is going.
Once you start tracking your own expenses, it definitely becomes an eye opener for you.
tracked? no one cares about your beer, pizza, gamer video card, lap dance and dime bag purchases
They will the moment I decide to run for office, or become famous in some way, even locally.
If you don't care, then by all means, post a list of everything you've ever bought from the sex shop, along with your age, gender, and most frequented social clubs.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Is it really so difficult to understand that this data and enforcement equals power and unchecked power will lead to corruption and oppression and that that has absolutely nothing to do with whether they care about your particular dime bag?
You may not have a problem with it (hey, perhaps you believe in things being kept in check or figure that benefits outweight the risk..) but that's a different issue.
Did you read that from a tabloid or do you have data to back that up? Are we talking about marginal cost or average, ie. is the comparison to just decreasing the use of cash or to eliminating it totally?
Until people realize what a "shake down" the collusion between VISA/MC and Governments are... yeah we are headed in the cashless direction.
But as information security becomes more of an issue as well as spying and prying... the whole cashless system seems to be in real danger. Visa/MC are one whistle blower away from real trouble. Their practices are criminal.... except they happen with Government consent. So it's OK...
Obviously criminals will resist electronic money. And those who knowingly invest in criminal enterprises will also resist to the bitter end. Electronic money raises the specter of eliminating almost all money based crime. Whether it is running dope or cheating on income taxes electronic money can make it impossible. So next we have the issue of powerful individuals who just happen to invest in criminal enterprises. If a US senator owns a chunk of a bank and that bank happens to make money from a drug cartel will that senator try to cripple electronic money? Are we at the point that we can confront the degree to which criminal organisations own businesses? We might also run into issues such as the government itself having financial transactions with organised crime. For the first time in history we do have the potential to eliminate almost all crime. We are about to discover that to many people freedom means the freedom to be criminals. I'm not so sure we can look into that mirror.
All LEGAL tender will become cashless.
The New World Order is already hard at work making this happen. Personally, I will always take precious metals as currency. Simply because I will always maintain full control over my money.
Woops! Can't even do that b/c we now all work in paperless offices.
Actually, there are two reasons the replacement would have a fee:
1. To recoup the cost of the infrastructure.
2. To increase the profits for the provider.
These are banks, after all.
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.
The people proposing a cashless society need to look harder at all of society, not just their own social class.
There is a big segment of society that does not own credit cards, debit cards, or a check book. They live entirely based on cash and money orders. Many of them are poor. Some are illiterate. Some are zealots of the Dave Ramsey school of money management.
Cash is still supreme for small purchases, vending machines, tips, protecting your identity, and yes protecting your illegal, immoral, or questionable activities. As such, we could only go to a cashless society if it were voted in by a majority of politicians who had never done anything illegal, immoral or questionable...... I predict such will never exist and this will never happen.
Two weekends ago the remnants of hurricane Arthur blew through my home province of New Brunswick. We don't get many hurricanes but this knocked power out (going on 10 days now for the last of the most unfortunate) and internet/cell service for a good two or three days. When the restaurants, grocery stores and gas stations got their power back it was cash only at most places.
My credit union requires $5.00 to open a savings account. No fees thereafter.
Everyone can afford $5.00.
Criminals are not going away, ever... If there is a system they will find a way around it, through it, or profit from it. If the system is so locked down to keep that from happening a new system will be built to support vice.
People want what they want, regardless of the legal or morality of said things. To think it can been eliminated by getting rid of cash is just naive.
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
just got back from vacation and ran into several small shops that only accept cash. other small shops that charge a service fee for using a card.. just paid a state institution of higher learning and got a transaction fee for using a card. So, i don't think we're as ready to move all digital as some urban areas might want to believe.
You are presuming that it's a bank processing the transactions. I am not.
Learn to love Alaska
Have to say this is pretty much false everywhere I shop, but will add I wouldn't shop anywhere where this is true. Any business whose survival depends on saving a few pennies on credit card fees is destined for failure around here because there are very few willing to walk around with cash just to keep them alive.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
"...I assume that you can arrange the delivery of the money. He asked for cash.”
“Cash” – he rolled his eyes – “how risqué! But, yes, I can..."
William Gibson, Count Zero
This will not be occurring outside of the US, Anglo-Empire or Europe (parts of it only). For some people there is "no where else" than this but that is very naive as most of the post-19th century goods these regions require to continue their lifestyle are only made (or the upstream supply chains only exist in) countries outside this sphere. Those countries (Asia mostly) are strongly cash-only economies - 90% of all transactions come from bottom-up economic activities that are 100% cash-and-carry only. You can use credit cards and debit cards but only if you are near to "US/Anglo/Euro" catering hotels. Go a few blocks away from these zones (which are the majority population areas) and you are 100% SOL without cash, and your debit card is only useful in so far as it allows you to get local cash.
If you have cashless society, few keyboard hits if targeted will makes you absolute, you basically become a slave to the system. Good luck everyone with that. For once in human history we should all be against this.
I'm not saying cash is the king, but zeros and ones is just not good for us at all. You are not holding anything in your hand, nothing zero.
From a "Dave Ramsey" perspective (you tend to spend more when using plastic), to just simply too many places tracking my transactions - I've actually started using cash more often.
I have never understood why the US treasury doesn't just stop producing $1 bills and force a coin into circulation.
I'm fairly certain that a major reason for the lack of change is that US Founder and first CEO (or President, I forget the terms these days) George Washington is on the dollar and also on the US Quarter, thus making it very difficult to simply mint a dollar coin as a replacement.
You might laugh, but these kinds of peccadilloes, added to the general incompetence and recalcitrance of today's Congress, result in a whole lot of "doing nothing".
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I prefer to stay anonymous and not be tracked. Not to mention being an enemy of the state presents the horrible reality that they can "turn off your money"
In my 30+ years on this planet, I've never seen a private sale of used goods (e.g. a "garage sale" or "yard sale") that takes plastic. All are cash only. So is Coney Island, a historic hot dog restaurant in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
From the summary:
Recent research suggests that many believe we will stop using notes and coins altogether in the not-too-distant future
I am certain that research is correct. Just as it was correct 40 years ago.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
This UPC issue is so "Thief in the Night (1972 film)".
Pardon the epistemological redundancy, but sometimes clarification in no uncertain terms is necessary.
As for the text in John's Apocaylpse, the gist is that something must be affixed to the flesh to continue transacting. I subscribe to the view that Christianity in its original form was a movement within late Second Temple Judaism. So, as one may wish to "build fences around the Torah" as prescribed by Hillel, the removal of cash from circulation as competition to this system triggers this particular fence.
To quote a sage in this community who penned much of the Apostolic documents, namely Shaul of Tarsus, this is the MYSTERY OF INIQUITY at work.
Nice language, dude! The credit card companies, at least here, charged a fixed percentage regardless of the sum. That's why you logic is all wrong, the cost for the merchant is the same (relatively) for a 10 cent purchase as it is for a 100€ purchase. On the contrary, handling cash is way more expensive.
I once tried to by a car with plastic, but was refused because the transaction fee would have been enormous.
And no, I'm not a immigrant, and yes, I have loads of sisu.
Why does the kernel go through stable and then unstable forks? Can't it always be a stable build, like with Windows?
If all purchases are transacted via cards who must, for every purchase get approval, then the approval authorities can, quite easily, control what you can purchase and you would not have a damn thing to say about it. I hope this never comes to pass.
To accept a fully cash free society you have to acknowledge a totalitarian government as completely free of wrong doing or accept your slavery as law. There may be another way around this, short of barter, but I haven't considered it, yet. Without cash, reconstruction of credit or value in society can't be accomplished. Even Microsoft with their insistence we adapt to their new operating system has met with incredible resistance and it has taken two operating systems for them to come to terms, they realize who keeps them in business. The British discovered they weren't going to be able to keep the 'Colonies' as their cash cow when the people rebelled. If this is really something to be concerned about, I don't think we will be able to bring a viable solution to the table short of non-compliance.