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Why We Should Fear A Cashless World (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Dominic Frisby writes with a very interesting, albeit heavily opinionated, article from The Guardian discussing why we should all fear a cashless world. He argues "it will hand yet more power to the financial sector in that banks and related fintech companies will oversee all transactions." Every payment you will make will be traceable. While inequality is already a problem, it may be exacerbated even further in a cashless society. Frisby writes, "Cash, on the other hand, empowers its users. It enables them to buy and sell, and store their wealth, without being dependent on anyone else. They can stay outside the financial system, if so desired."
Slashdot's "Digital" category was actually created for stories related to the Digital Equipment Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Equipment_Corporation hence the icon.
Maybe the category needs to be retired, or given the number of stories that have erroneously had it applied to them, maybe the icon need to be changed.
What cash is, is something that can not be refused because it is your cash ie, how may I serve you today, oh you want to buy that loaf of bread, some milk and some baloney, sure and thank you for your money
Cash most certainly can be refused by a merchant. Legal tender just means that cash must be accepted for payment of debts. If a store lets me put a purchase on a tab and lets me leave with a product then they are required to accept cash later on if I want to settle that debt. But they are under no obligation to let me leave the store with the product in the first place because I offer cash. A store could have a policy that they only accept goats or squirrel skins or whatever. There's effectively a contract that is made during a payment and if I don't have whatever the store requests in exchange as a payment I have no right to demand that I get the product. Cash or not.
This is why most preppers collect "junk" or Constitutional silver. It's a lot easier to handle day-to-day small transactions because it's recognizable and hard to inflate. Gold is for storing long-term wealth, not buying milk and bread.
Note that I agree with Bill Still wrt monetary reform. But in a post collapse scenario, silver will be king along with alcohol, cigs medical supplies and knowledge and anything of actual use. Search shtfplan.com for Bosnia. That's how it'll prolly turn out, assuming no large-scale nuke warfare.
In a total collapse, people *might* accept silver but I'm not sure constitutional silver is going to do you any good. The average person can't tell the difference between a silver quarter and the silver plated coins we have today and even if they can, what makes you think anyone will trust it more than the money that just collapsed? Sure, you can make arguments all day long but I'm not sure it's a sure thing as it's still just symbolic and has no real use in the day to day. On the other hand, gasoline, food, ammunition, and medicine are useful in any scenario. My first gut reaction is to figure out how to create antibiotic ointment in my basement as this would be a very valuable skill. This, however, only works in a stationary scenario where people trust or can see that your antibiotics actually work and you're not selling snake oil. Hundreds of pounds of food is also problematic if you're on the move. For price/weight ammunition would probably be one of the most valuable but is a very fixed supply and very hard to manufacture without a bunch of heavy equipment. Skills and physical labor are about the only highly portable currency that are a sure thing. The best thing is to stay in one place where you can gain trust from your neighbors and stockpile food and don't have to worry about portability. If I was going to be a prepper, I would try to find a way to have a 3 year rotating stock of canned goods, gasoline, and ammunition and forget about gold/silver. After that, I would try to acquire the skills for creating gun powder, reloading shells, and creating basic antibiotics and other commonly needed medicines in my basement. Oh, and gardening skills.