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In a Cashless World, You'd Better Pray the Power Never Goes Out (mises.org)
schwit1 quotes the Mises Institue: When Hurricane Maria knocked out power in Puerto Rico, residents there realized they were going to need physical cash — and a lot of it. Bloomberg reported that the Fed was forced to fly a planeload of cash to the Island to help avert disaster. "William Dudley, the New York Fed president, put the word out within minutes, and ultimately a jet loaded with an undisclosed amount of cash landed on the stricken island. [Business executives in Puerto Rico] described corporate clients' urgent requests for hundreds of thousands in cash to meet payrolls, and the challenge of finding enough armored cars to satisfy endless demand at ATMs... As early as the day after the storm, the Fed began working to get money onto the island."
For a time, unless one had a hoard of cash stored up in ones home, it was impossible to get cash at all. 85 percent of Puerto Rico is still without power... Bloomberg continues: "When some generator-powered ATMs finally opened, lines stretched hours long, with people camping out in beach chairs and holding umbrellas against the sun." In an earlier article from September 25, Bloomberg noted how, without cash, necessities were simply unavailable:
For a time, unless one had a hoard of cash stored up in ones home, it was impossible to get cash at all. 85 percent of Puerto Rico is still without power... Bloomberg continues: "When some generator-powered ATMs finally opened, lines stretched hours long, with people camping out in beach chairs and holding umbrellas against the sun." In an earlier article from September 25, Bloomberg noted how, without cash, necessities were simply unavailable:
"Cash only," said Abraham Lebron, the store manager standing guard at Supermax, a supermarket in San Juan's Plaza de las Armas. He was in a well-policed area, but admitted feeling like a sitting duck with so many bills on hand. "The system is down, so we can't process the cards. It's tough, but one finds a way to make it work."
The second you lose power, you're fucked. This is why cash is king, always has been, always will be.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The fact is that the more tightly integrated our society become the more brittle it gets. Specialization is more efficient but it also means "no man is an island."
Skipping intermediary exchange mechanisms like cash and doing direct transfers between accounts is faster but it also means you can't conduct exchanges when the machines that handle the accounting are not available. With cash, and even paper checks, you pay me now and I have some reasonable assurance that the money will be available for my use some time in the future.
Here is the thing though. If we have another 3-7 day blackout like the 2003 one, cash and checks will let everyone muddle thru. Where as all electronic payments being the only means would basically cause the economy to grind to a halt. If the mainland US experienced devastation like Puerto Rico just did and it was national not regional. I don't know super volcano, DPRK EMP delivery, some kind of freak mega storm, than nobody smart is going to be interested in cash!
Face it we would NOT come back from those events as a nation. No matter how big government gets there is no way a coordinated response could be manged on that scale, which means people would have to take matters entirely into their own hands. At that point its barter system at best and that is assuming local leadership/law enforcement can keep some kind of order. I actually think there is a possibility that would occur in a lot places. I suspect most sensible folks would realize that our survival is best served by at least regional cooperation. On the other hand I can see things going pretty mad max too.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Since when you get to a situation where you don't have any choice anymore but cash then coins are the best alternative. It's tough to get change from the shop keepers if the power goes out.
But also realize that shops can't even do anything when the power goes out because everything has barcodes, a carton of milk and a loaf of bread will be impossible to buy.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Same situation applies to internet connectivity. I live in a smallish (6000) town, and about once a year, some knucklehead will dig without calling and cut the main fiber line, knocking at least half the county offline. At which point, all businesses become cash only, resulting in an embarrassing number of angry people blaming retailers for 'not having a backup' (to a main trunk line?). Hilariously, a few atm's in town won't even work in this situation, because the apparently phone home to confirm transactions. About a business day later, its fixed, but it sure is an uncomfortable reminder how dependent we've become on electronic money.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
The second you lose power, you're fucked unless you already have cash on hand and until superinflation happens it which case it's only worth something as toilet paper. That's why gold doubloon is king, always has been, always will be.
#DeleteFacebook
Has nobody seen Home Alone 2? Using electricity to process a CC purchase is relatively new. This is a solved problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The problem is not with credit cards, but incompetent cashiers and owners who cannot handle changing situations.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
>"In a Cashless World, You'd Better Pray the Power Never Goes Out"
Or malware. Or a network problem. Or ID theft puts a freeze on your accounts. Or someone maliciously attacks your records. Or your device/card/whatever dies for some reason. Or you need to transact with someone who just doesn't have the necessary technology.
In a cashless world, you also give up every last bit of privacy left, because you can neither sell nor buy without the mark of the b..... I mean, without the tools and permission of the government and big business. Everything you buy and sell will be recorded and available for review immediately and any time in the future- revealing not only what you buy, but from whom, when, and where you have been. It also makes it easier for someone to tamper with those records to assist in framing you.
Don't be quick to give allow cash to disappear, you might regret it and there will be no going back.
One wonders who the real criminals are sometimes, eh? I've read it gets worse, as not only will they steal someone's cash, some of these police organizations will march same to a bank machine and have their victim clean out his/her accounts. So if you ever visit the US, don't take all your bank cards.
Visa/Mastercard get 2.5% of the ENTIRE ECONOMY in a cashless world. People who don't use cash don't think about this and apparently don't care.
I don't respond to AC's.
Back before ATM's and the Internet, banks would run out of cash in times of unexpected demand. And in a disaster situation, people sure as hell aren't making bank deposits. The situation would have been a little better back then than it is now with 'electronic money', but probably not a lot. There still would have been a shortage of the means to exchange 'abstractions of value'.
Arguably, we COULD have it better today, with sufficient backup and redundancy - generators and batteries, radio data links, etc. - but haven't invested enough to make it happen. Then again, given a few massive EMP's, all bets are off.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Post-Irma, at least half of the GAS STATIONS in South Florida were closed for at least a few days. Why? No (working) backup power. By law, they're required to have generators, but apparently the state doesn't require them to test, maintain, and certify them as operational. So gas stations grudgingly installed generators after Hurricane Wilma, then didn't do jack shit to maintain them for the next 12 years. Irma came & went, and lots of those generators didn't work.
For Dade & Broward counties, Irma side-swiped us as a weak category 1 hurricane. Our power grid & stores were dysfunctional to some degree for a week. If we'd gotten directly hit by a *major* (cat-3 or above) hurricane, we'd be in AT LEAST as fucked as San Juan is now.
The REAL danger in future storms is going to be people who remember what happened to gas stations after Irma, and to make sure it doesn't happen to them again, go into the next storm with 20 5-gallon cans of gas in their garage. Guaranteed, we'll have at least one news story of a *horrific* fire caused by someone storing EGREGIOUSLY unsafe quantities of gas in an even MORE unsafe location.
As a matter of public safety, local governments need to MAKE SURE that gas will be abundantly and readily available at most 8 hours after the last hurricane-force winds, convince the public that gas WILL be readily available, and actually pull it off. Otherwise, people will do *really* unsafe things because it seems like a lesser evil compared to being unable to buy stuff they need.
why not stop tying basic survival to whether you've got cash on hand? Why don't we stop fighting among ourselves (while the rich and powerful take 50-60% of everything) and actually help people out when disaster strikes instead of blaming them? I know, I know, the answer is literally in the last sentence I wrote, but a man can dream can't he?
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