Are There Dangers in a Cashless Society? (slate.com)

Slate asks why more businesses are refusing cash -- and investigates the downside. An anonymous reader quotes their report: Stores are eliminating cash registers and coin rolls in pursuit of what they say is a safer, more streamlined payment process -- and one that most of their customers want to use anyway. At Dos Toros, co-founder Leo Kremer said that more than half of the shop's customers used cash when its first location opened in Manhattan in 2009. By the beginning of this year, that number had fallen to just 15 percent. At that point, the various hassles of dealing with cash -- employee training, banking fees, armored-truck pickups, and the occasional robbery -- outweighed the cost of credit card fees on those transactions. The shift wound up being more or less revenue-neutral, Kremer said, but saved a lot of time and trouble. Dos Toros' New York locations have been fully cash-free since the winter.... "After talking to the team and absorbing the flow at the register, we felt like almost everyone who used cash had a card. It just hasn't been an issue...."

But it would be hard to find anyone more gung-ho about the abolition of cash than credit card companies. Last summer, for example, Visa announced a $10,000 reward to 50 businesses that would give up cash entirely. "What concerns me about a cashless future is how much it benefits Wall Street," Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, wrote to me in an email. "They can charge swipe fees of two to three percent not because that's what the service actually costs, but because they have monopoly power."
Citing services like Square and Apple Pay, the article notes that 4 in 10 purchases used to involve cash, but between 2011 and 2016 it dropped to just 3 in 10 purchases (according to the San Francisco Fed). Yet the article's author also presents this counter-argument. "In Shanghai, the venture capitalist Eric Li told me a story about trying to get his morning coffee the morning after a storm had knocked out the internet on his block.

"No one could buy coffee, because no one was carrying cash."

Comments

Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[drinkypoo]

Someone gets uppity, freeze their ability to spend money. Want to know what someone is buying, where they are going, what their habits are? If they do it all with credit card, you can! Forget wall street, the prime beneficiaries are fascist governments.

Governments hate cash because they make it easy to do business they don't like without them knowing about it. The government you've got today may not be the government you've got tomorrow, so you shouldn't hand them that information.

Use cash whenever possible.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[AHuxley]

CCTV kept for years has mostly given governments that in most city and mall areas.
Every face and what they buy. The transport they used.
People wonder around with a cell phone on while using "cash".
Known and unknown people do a transaction with cash, both with cell phones on.
Every method of transport in and out of a city is collected on.
Moving around the USA to make legal large amount of cash is not going to be as easy as it once was.
Voice prints fill in the rest.
Spend too much cash beyond an average wage and its reported. Deposit cash and the gov gets a record.

The cash movement ability for normal people is already well closed.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Presence Eternal]

The ability to commit "crimes" is desirable inverse to the proportion of meaningful personal freedom you have. There's places where the crimes being stopped are the genuinely horrible ones. So it depends on the society you live in, but then again, so does everything else. If it's a problem, you've already got much bigger problems. Buy some gold coins. And a shotgun. If you're allowed to.

Similar goes for a situation that would make the whole system collapse. Anything that would wipe out that level of infrastructure; You'd better own some farmland, equipment, non-terminator seeds, and hope it's springtime.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Presence Eternal]

And a shotgun.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Electronic transactions as an option are convenient and useful. As a requirement--a tool of government and corporate control.

Cash should never be done away with, and businesses should be held to the standard that all transactions may be conducted in cash. None of this 'electronic only' bullshit..

People ought to use cash more than they do as well. I've been trying to make a habit of that.

Also, money laundering laws need to be done away with. All of them. Do they prevent crimes? Marginally perhaps, but nothing is worth all the spying and control that they enable.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[dwywit]

And three hard-boiled eggs.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[currently_awake]

You take cash from the bank, transaction (serial numbers) recorded. You pay gas station for gas, they deposit cash in bank, transaction (serial numbers) recorded. Cash is tracked.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[YordanGeorgiev]

Gold coins buyng is illegal in US technically

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[NicknameUnavailable]

Don't forget to go paperless, that way your balance can be modified retroactively with fake trips to Starbucks or whatever else you commonly make. Keeps those fees well hidden and you within the bounds of your class limitations.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Presence Eternal]

Six little eggs on the run
They f*ck each other three goes
Boom dubi doom

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it helps all those unlucky and worthless people who drive on roads back and forth to work, dare to go to libraries, call the fire or police department, visit national and state parks, sleep under the protection provided by military services, and even those unlucky worthless scumbags whose very existence is only perpetuated by the freedoms granted in the Constitution of the United States.

Buncha worthless scumbags...

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Wycliffe]

No it's not. You can easily buy as many gold coins as you want. But using them as a medium of exchange is problematic as they are considered an asset so buying/selling them counts as a taxable transaction just like buying stocks.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[b0s0z0ku]

CCTV takes more work for the fucking pigs to match a name to a location. Credit card required zero work for the filth to do so.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[b0s0z0ku]

Cash may have passed through ten sets of hands between withdrawal and deposit. A bit harder for the filth to track than credit card transactions.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[b0s0z0ku]

Roads, libraries, etc are a good thing.

But the US government deserves to take a haircut because it massively overspends on mass incarceration and military homicide sprees.

Depriving them of their revenue would force them to re-evaluate their priorities on pain of bankruptcy.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I'm confused. You said "Forget wall street, it benefits fascists". Who do you think is going to freeze the accounts? And do you think they'll only do it when the government asks, or also when it benefits them?

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

No. If you want to be untraceable throw away your electronics. Your cell phone is a worse tracking device than paying by card.

Cash is still tracked by the numerous cameras on ATMâ(TM)s, stores and so forth.

Like the only way you nope out of the surveillance society is by donning a disguise and never physically touching anything.

Money is the least of your problems.

If you are overly concerned about purchases being tracked, use prepaid cards and donate the remainder to homeless people to screw the tracking.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[b0s0z0ku]

Ever seen most real-world security camera footage? Crap resolution, crap focus, dirty lense. It takes real WORK to match a name to a face, and serial numbers are hard if not impossible to see. The real world is not "24", it's more like "Keystone Kops."

The phone? You can go to the store without carrying one (leave it at home) and pay cash.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to get Biblical but...

Revelations 13:17... âoeAnd no one could buy or sell anything without that mark, which was either the name of the beast or the number representing his name.â

A cashless economy regulated and controlled by banks and big business and surveilled by government is nothing less than one more bar in the cage...

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Wycliffe]

Interestingly enough, most of those things you mentioned with the exception of the military are paid by local taxes not federal income tax. Most people like where their local taxes go. I would love to see federal income tax reduced by 90% and if there are some things that still need to be done, let the local governments do it. The local governments usually end up doing it anyways with block grants, etc... Block grants and the federal government collecting too much money and giving it back to the states with strings should be illegal.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[nnull]

It's not just cash, checks as well. I'm getting more clients and vendors that prefer to deal with credit cards than with checks or bank transfers.

Why? Because it's convenient for them. They don't even care if they have to pay that 1%-3% fee and I'm talking about bills of over $100,000. To them, it's less accounting work and done deal. It's becoming so prevalent it's no surprise these card companies are booming. I still prefer receiving a check or bank transfer, but I've been asked so many times to be able to do credit card payments or receive credit card payments that I've ended up doing it.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[b0s0z0ku]

Who has $100,000 credit on a card, and who can afford to pay $1000 to $3000 to banksters as a commission? I hope THEY'RE the ones eating the commissions!

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

The part that irks me is that the CC companies showed recently that they can restrict what products you are permitted to purchase with their card. That feels like the way Facebook or YouTube like to censor people, except this is for purchasing perfectly legal products with money that belongs to me.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Cyberax]

Why do you want to track transactions and why are you talking about yourself in 5he third person?

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[b0s0z0ku]

By "filth", I mean government functionaries and banksters, neither of which describe me.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[phantomfive]

I would love to see federal income tax reduced by 90% and if there are some things that still need to be done, let the local governments do it.

Look at this graph of federal government spending, and say what exactly are you going to cut? Even if you cut military spending to bare bones, you wouldn't succeed in closing the annual deficit. If you cut social security, you will be voted out of office. If you cut Medicare, you will be voted out of office. So what exactly are you planning on doing?

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they will just cut spending on libraries, science, roads, education, while the military continues to receive ever increasing budgets.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is: freedom is dead. It died long ago, and it's passing went unreported in the official media.

It seems we've become the Soviet Union. We already have Stalin's Gulag, and Stalin's kangaroo courts to keep the Gulag full. Now if only we could get on with Stalin's heroic building projects...

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[astrofurter]

If Democrats or Republicans are in charge, they're going to double down on mass incarceration and military adventures - and shut down libraries, schools, and fire departments to pay for it.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

"So what exactly are you planning on doing?"
This question is never answered by those who revel in protesting and making a scene over the outrage of the day. People are not looking for solutions they are looking to "win" their argument by doing anything and saying anything. Every side considers themselves 100% right so lying and dishonesty is considered doing the wrong thing for the right reason. Once they feel they have sated their desire to show the world just how righteous and clever they are they move on to the next outrage.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[b0s0z0ku]

Let them. That might be a final path to collapse and a righteous revolution.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Incarcerating rapist nibbers and Muzzi-wogs and bitchslapping prog-slut Trotsky pimps is no waste of money. It's kinda the reason you tax at all , to remove those HOMO Egaster wrecks from the social scene.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[b0s0z0ku]

Incarcerating racist yob trash is definitely worthwhile...

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[nnull]

Many companies do, including mine. It's not unusual.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Denny Hastert agrees.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that you overestimate the quality of CCTV cameras of the sort typically installed in restaurants, shopping areas and other retail establishments. The typical business owner who decides to install cameras buys the cheapest piece of junk made in China cameras that he can find and then mounts them too high on the ceiling and too far away from the doors because he wants to "cover" as much area as possible with as few cameras as possible. The end result is video so grainy and poor that unless other information about a scene is available, from eye witnesses say, it's difficult or impossible to identify anyone based on the video alone. Did I also mention that these cameras really suck in low light conditions? These are the sorts of systems that you see a few hundred dollars at Costco. I suppose it's possible that bigger corporate stores invest in better cameras, but honestly that's not likely because again the video evidence is only there to corroborate other evidence. The chance that an unidentified stranger is going to be unmasked by careful analysis of the video recorded by these crappy cameras is laughable. The resolution is too low, the camera is too far away and the lighting sucks.

One exception to this rule: Casinos. These guys really do have ultra high resolution cameras that see well in low light with full coverage, telephoto zoom, years worth of recording capacity and expert analysis and advice on placement and analysis. Then again, they spent millions of dollars on their security systems whereas most other normal businesses did not because they cannot justify that level of expense.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[AHuxley]

Re 'overestimate the quality of CCTV cameras of the sort typically installed in"
Consider what was done with Domain Awareness System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... in the USA AC.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[BlueStrat]

Incarcerating racist yob trash is definitely worthwhile...

Although I agree that the racist language he used and most of the sentiments he expressed are racist and horrid on general principle and that the fault in choosing that belief structure is on him, there are contributing factors to such attitudes & beliefs in places like the UK where the government has up until quite recently mostly ignored refugee Muslim pedo/rape-gangs and child abductions & trafficking while simultaneously suppressing and censoring news and facts relating to those serious criminal activities including jailing those who try to speak out and all sorts of other illegal and quasi-legal bad shenanigans in furtherance of the suppression of the facts including but not limited to the number and scope of these crimes from being widely disseminated especially among UK subjects.

This sort of behavior from the government is a sure way to foment and enable such attitudes and beliefs among the poor and working class. "Clamping down" on such attitudes and beliefs by the government without the government altering it's own behaviors, policies, and attitudes that are exacerbating the problem and angering those who feel their children are in danger serves only to further anger, alienate, and grow the numbers of angry, unreasonable people because they will see themselves, and others will see them, as unjustly censored and unfairly persecuted regardless of the actual truth good or bad as the facts will be so muddled the average person will have no way to check facts (and most will have little inclination to do so).

Strat

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Bruinwar]

Someone gets uppity, freeze their ability to spend money. Want to know what someone is buying, where they are going, what their habits are? If they do it all with credit card, you can! Forget wall street, the prime beneficiaries are fascist governments.

Governments hate cash because they make it easy to do business they don't like without them knowing about it. The government you've got today may not be the government you've got tomorrow, so you shouldn't hand them that information.

Use cash whenever possible.

Bah, governments (at least our's here in the States) are too incompetent to ascribe this much evil to. However, multinational corporations (who own the politicians & write our laws) are the one's currently collecting & using all this data. Their goal is to maximize profits by extracting the most cash out of the populace as possible. They appear to be extremely successful seeing how much the general public is saving for retirement.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Sique]

Fiat currency is nothing else than IOUs. If you ban fiat currency, you ban lending and borrowing.

Currency made out of precious things (may it be gold, cocoa beans or cowrie shells) is just a very expensive and cumbersome method of keeping track of all the IOUs. The value of any money, if printed on paper or made out of generally expensive stuff, lies in the acceptance of your counterpart to take it as payment. Croesus, in the 6th century BC king of ancient Lydia, who often gets hailed as the inventor of coined money, knew this: You can increase the value of your currency if you give a warranty of acceptance by tagging it with your seal, e.g. by minting coins out of the raw metal.

And the story of Musa I. of Mali should serve as a warning example for precious-metal-currencies: When he went on his pilgrimage to Mecca in the early 14th century, he inadvertedly ruined the economies of Cairo, Mecca and Medina due to the big influx of gold into their markets, as he was probably the richest person in history, and the amount of gold he carried with his pilgrimage procession could easily have exceeded US$ 300 billion at today's market value. His spending habits caused galloping inflations in all places he was visiting, and it took decades until the value of gold normalized.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

And even if you forget fascists, you can just wait until the first time you have a power outage preventing you from using your card for a few days or more. And that's not even taking into account cyber threats with governments getting more and more interested in fucking with other countries computer systems.

Putting all your eggs in one basket is very apt for this situation.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Cash is almost but not completely orthogonal to power. The point is that an unlimited government aka the welfare or the entitlement state is the threath to all honest human life. This encompasses the fascists, the socialists, the communists and the progressives to name a few.

But when the state is completely separated from the economy being only concerned in protection of individual rights, most if not all concerns about cashless society just wade away.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[houghi]

So isn't the problem how easy or hard it is to track, but that you have governements that ARE tracking it?
What are we going to do about that?

In Belgium Credit Card Companies are not allowed to track or analyze the sales they see coming in. They can guess, but have no idea if I bought milk or wiskey in the supermarket.

The issue is not the trackability. The problem is that we LET them track us.

Just like with anything, it can be used for good and for evil. If you do not hold people for the evil part, they will assume it is good. Just cash will not stop them in any way or form tracking you. It just is a bit harder. That is all there is to it.

And even making it as hard as possible will not stop anything in the end. All you are doing is saying: what you do is ok.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[rjr162]

It also tends to be harder for folks to budget and actually realize,e what they're spending until it's too late.

With cash, you have that "balance" right there with your looking you in the face every time you go to use it, with plastic it's "just a card and a swipe" with no up front indication of what you have left.
Not only that, once you hand over cash, it's gone. With plastic, you can swipe and that debit may not show up for a few days, and if you forgot about it.. it could be a nasty surprise

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[gweihir]

That, and the ability to analyze what a person is buying easily and without their consent, is the core of it.
It is a deeply fascist idea.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[voss]

What happened in the UK is people were on trial for precisely what you were talking about and some far right yahoo was trying to film video regarding the case at the courthouse and threatened to contaminate the jury pool and force a retrial which would have cost hundreds of thousands of UK pounds and endanger the convictions of the same dangerous people you seem to be concerned about.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

If they keep cutting spending on libraries and education, they will (eventually) be able to justify the spending on prisons due to the increase in crime that accompanies those changes.

The cameras stuff was covered in the documentary, "Enemy of the state" so i won't rehash it here.

Also, in a cashless society, unless lack of cash repels lightning and meteor strikes, yes, danger will still exist.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Supermarkets are well lit, where I live anyway. This includes the smaller urban minisupermarkets. I can identify myself if I find myself looking at a monitor. Tho I doubt it's piped to the CIA/NSA/GCHQ yet and the vast majority is never watched by anyone - the employees are way too busy with everything else.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

My phone is a problem, but I'm only tracked by the GSM signals. So I think there's no definite proof I was in the shop rather than on the curb (but I live in a country where store fronts are most often on the curb, not behind a half mile of parking lot unless it's one of those places specifically)
Paying is hard located timestamped proof, unless it was not me having my card.
Why should I care? There are ATMs everywhere. They hand me cash not prepaid cards. And I can give a 50 eurocent coin to homeless people any time I want. I use the smaller cent coins for actually paying.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't have a revolution when the GOP massively expands the police and military while the Democrats disarm the population and throw everyone in jail for using the wrong gender pronouns.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

To start, I would propose an even ratio of tax hikes and spending cuts to achieve our national goals.

First up, medical costs. Good news, bad news situation. All basic care would have a government option, ala Medicare for all. Need xrays and a cast for a broken leg, influenza shot, appendix removed, vasectomy*, baby taken out (at four months if you don't want it or nine if you do), all covered. The bad news is your boner pills and million dollar a year forever cancer treatment isnt going to be covered. Sucks to be you. Sorry Dems, we can't save everyone. Hope they bought into an optional, but as yet to be nationally available platinum care plan at a young age. Teaching hospitals will probably have some options for them, but losing the genetic lottery/smoking is a bad ride either way. Maybe once everything else is under control we can revisit super rare non communicable diseases.

*reversing the vasectomy is a private market process. Save up.

Dropping a big chunk of the Medicare part D Bush giveaway will cover all basic care for everyone. No tax hike needed. Buy your own boner pills. They will be cheaper once the government isn't obligated to not negotiate for them (a position forced by the Repubs, fwiw) anyway.

Social security. Another easy fix. Raise the age by one month per year for the next thirty six years for the early retirement crowd, and by two months per year for the full benefit crowd. That solves 90% of the SS "crisis". Remove the SS tax cap for millionaires (what is it, $150k or so now? I don't pay wage based income taxes anymore, it's all cap gains bc, as Trump says "I'm smart"). Boom. Done.

At the same time, phase in basic income while displacing food stamps, energy assistance and all other programs. Offer partial matching funds for states or high cost of living areas that might want to have teachers or fire fighters able to live within an hour of the rich folk if desired. Emphasis on the partial match. Not everyone gets to live in NYC, the beach, or other high demand areas. In thirty six years, that is enough to provide half a small two bedroom apartment in a small to midsized city, along with internet, basic cable tv and nutritional, if not delicious food. Get married or find a roommate for the other half of rent. Offer to clean the dishes if they cook, or vice versa.

Meanwhile, divert 0.5% per year for twenty years from the military budget to energy security. Incentive private firms to employ people (ex coal miners, etc) to do solar thermal roof installs, PV, etc in the places where it makes sense, and large scale PV and wind where that makes sense.

In twenty years we won't give a frack about what the Mideast does with its oil. We'd mostly use oil for making plastic and fertilizer at that point (sorry Tesla shorts!), and domestic productions is already high enough- we are a net exporter of energy. That gives Europe time to build up their militaries to fend off/compete for the migrants that will doubtless exist from the south and fend off the belligerent neighbors.

Since we won't need to care about that area any more, we can cut our presence there and let Europe manage it. We can focus in the shit shows to lie south. Chiefly the narco states our policies and drug misuse have created. Decriminalize and tax most of that. No one will buy pot/ meth off the scary biker gang guy if the Walmart counter has it for $10/$20/$40 a hit at a consistent, safe dosage. Keep at least 33% of the gross as tax for double blind, clinically proven, drug rehab programs - not that twelve step bullshit. Impose severe penalties for operating a vehicle or otherwise endangering others due to being impaired. Like alcohol times ten penalties.

For base load power, add a few dozen nuke plants based off submarine/carrier setups - scaled up. Submerge the whole thing in abandoned quarries and other water tight areas so flooding isn't a fear, but a natural design factor. In forty years it'll be time to start planning to replace/upgrade the first ones so we have a consistent, predicta

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have a mark. In the US it is "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private". There's a bunch of other associated marks too.

But keep up the "seems wise if you don't think about it" claptrap from your magic sky fairy book though. Deep stuff.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[b0s0z0ku]

Often the police and military are the ones that get fed up and join a revolution. See also: Romania, 1989.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Much simpler to just get a hundred grand, hire a random possibly armed security guard or three for the day, hope he/they doesn't rob you instead of accepting the $10-$25/hr temp pay, go to a bank, withdraw the money you previously arranged to be held in cash, drive to the client/vendor, do the count off (twice, to double check), complete the exchange, assuming they aren't getting robbed, didn't have to change the schedule, etc etc, then go back to work/the shop.

Much simpler and cheaper than paying by credit card. To be fair, at 3% and a hundred grand per transaction, armories cars are viable if a regular thing. But the hundred grand credit card debt is usually for dozens of transactions, not one. So you would need to have a dozen or so armed guard transports of cash at $8,000 a pop, which means the armed escort would need to be under $400 a run even before you factor in the value of your own/employee's time and coordination costs.
1% is a steal to avoid cash. 3% is potentially reasonable.

And I say this as someone who uses cash for everything that isn't Amazon of a monthly recurring wire.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Banks don't record the serial numbers of cash you withdraw. Feel free to provide a citation if you have evidence otherwise.

Businesses sure as hell don't record them.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[b0s0z0ku]

Or you could exchange a certified bank's check in the bank itself. Or (if you lived in a civilized country), you could wire money within 15 minutes for free or almost free. SWIFT wires in non-US countries put the US system to shame.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that well. I get cash from the bank periodically. The tellers do not track 20s. they will borrow from the teller next to them and not scan or otherwise associate the bills with my transaction. 100s may be scanned but may not. They reach into a drawer and count them out. I sometimes see tellers pull 100s from a machine for my transaction so those are likely associated.

Break a hundred at a store register and the change is not scanned. Much change comes from other customer purchases so the cash is not tracked at this point.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound pretty smart. Heck, I'd bet people even tell you you're pretty smart. But you're not smart about this.

Your "solutions" appear to be based on a very naive view of human nature. I suspect that's because you have a deficit of empathy and little understanding of the role emotions play in guiding people's actions. For instance, your

million dollar a year forever cancer treatment isnt going to be covered. Sucks to be you

approach goes out the window for most people when it's their daughter who has leukemia.

Similarly, your assertion that implementing a UBI will "solve" racism ignores the fact that many people want to see themselves as better than other people (see, for instance, yourself, if you were capable of introspection), and seize on race/color as the most obvious means of separating themselves from others and asserting superiority. That's unlikely to change regardless of a reduction in income disparity.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to see federal income tax reduced by 90% and if there are some things that still need to be done, let the local governments do it.

Look at this graph of federal government spending, and say what exactly are you going to cut? Even if you cut military spending to bare bones, you wouldn't succeed in closing the annual deficit. If you cut social security, you will be voted out of office. If you cut Medicare, you will be voted out of office. So what exactly are you planning on doing?

He’s going to cut “undesirables”. “Small goverment” and “local control” are just euphemisms for genocide.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

What's important here, is will selling my eternal soul to Satan get me through the checkout line faster?

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Wycliffe]

I would love to see federal income tax reduced by 90% and if there are some things that still need to be done, let the local governments do it.

Look at this graph of federal government spending, and say what exactly are you going to cut? Even if you cut military spending to bare bones, you wouldn't succeed in closing the annual deficit. If you cut social security, you will be voted out of office. If you cut Medicare, you will be voted out of office. So what exactly are you planning on doing?

Neither medicare nor social security are paid with income tax. They are both paid with their own separate payroll tax. Medicaid is already mostly administered by the state and the federal government shouldn't be collecting any money and giving it back to the states. Other than military spending, which could be significantly cut, most of the other stuff that the federal government does could easily be done by the individual states. We currently spend 4 times as much on our military as the next closest country (China). That would be a good place to start. If we cut our military budget in half we would still be spending more money than any other country.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[ChatHuant]

governments (at least our's here in the States) are too incompetent to ascribe this much evil to.

This is not intended to detract from your point re: corporations, which is very very good, but lots of folks from all over the world can tell you that government incompetence and government evil aren't at all mutually exclusive. The USA hasn't yet had a really evil government (though one can argue there are concerted efforts in this direction). If it happens, its incompetence won't be enough mitigation.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[BlueStrat]

What happened in the UK is people were on trial for precisely what you were talking about and some far right yahoo was trying to film video regarding the case at the courthouse and threatened to contaminate the jury pool and force a retrial which would have cost hundreds of thousands of UK pounds and endanger the convictions of the same dangerous people you seem to be concerned about.

Thank you for defending the UK government's official position on Tommy Robinson as the poor UK government is so misunderstood, abused, and in a position of helplessness against the might of their unarmed subjects. I mean, tossing political prisoners to the wolves like placing Robinson into a prison with a majority violent Muslim population intentionally in order to have him killed is the sort of thing every freedom-loving, transparent government does to it's citizens. Right? /s

However, I'm talking about the entire horrid mess the UK government has created, not Robinson in particular. Robinson is only one person and if there's one Tommy Robinson, it's certain there are many, many more that don't get the press attention that's frankly probably the only thing that's saved Robinson from death at the hands of the UK government, a government that is also trying so desperately to censor and suppress news of their actions.

Strat

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Synonymous Homonym]

Bah. In Italy you are legally required to keep your receipt for any purchase. To discourage tax evasion. And as a business you are required to accept cashless payments above a certain amount.

If you are paranoid you can always print out your bank statements. Printers put invisible serial marks on the print-outs, so if something is changed retroacticely you'll have admissable evidence on paper what and when.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Go piss up a rope you kike

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

>most people
>daughter who has leukemia

Yeah, no, healthcare voters aren't voting on someone else's circumstances.

And you played that card against cancer, no less. If you act any more disingenuous you'll suffocate. We both know where the million-a-year age brackets are.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what "card" you think I "played against cancer", and I'm not being disingenuous (I might be ignorant or stupid, but disingenuous implies intent and I'm not intentionally being obtuse).

Reading back over your answer, I think you took my statement to mean I thought that "most people have a daughter with leukemia", and you refuted that with "no they don't, and people don't vote on other people's circumstances". That was not meant to be a literal statement -- my bad for not remembering that people with spectrum disorders have difficulty reading between the lines (NO! DO NOT READ THE SPACES BETWEEN THE LINES! IT'S ANOTHER EUPHEMISM!).

People don't vote solely on their present circumstances, they vote on what they think their circumstances might be in the future.

I don't vote to end social security, even though I don't need it now. Even though I don't have major medical problems at this exact second, I recognize that refusing other people medical care might backfire on me or people I care about, should I or they have major medical problems in the future.

I suspect you don't understand this or believe it it be true, but *most* people care about other people to some extent, even if only because they want to be treated kindly in the event circumstances don't go their way.

You don't because your brain is wired differently. That doesn't mean you're not smart or entitled to hold opinions in this area, but it means you should probably seek out the assistance of people who can understand the emotional side of human nature when informing your decisions. Just the same as people ignorant of your area of expertise seek out your assistance when they have to deal with those things you know about that they don't.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Gggp here. If you really care about saving kids lives, don't spend a million dollars to save one with leukemia. Spend that money on a hundred thousand bike helmets and distribute them instead. Or ten million condoms for that matter.

We can afford to provide basic care to everyone easily starting right now. We can not continue to afford to pay the 8000%/yr inflation rate on certain drugs. It isn't about a lack of empathy. It is about understanding statistics.

As for the gp's card. I assume its a "for the children" thing but yeah, pretty vague.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, if you lose your network connection for any reason, you cannot buy anything. Given the bandwith capabilities of the US, it will not be ready for decades.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[MarkH]

Also you don't have to be completely cashless for risk of this happening ( government monitoring and shutdown of accounts ). If cash payments become anomaly they will be tracked or become reason for suspicion.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[mjwx]

I'm confused. You said "Forget wall street, it benefits fascists". Who do you think is going to freeze the accounts? And do you think they'll only do it when the government asks, or also when it benefits them?

Banks are primarily in it to make money, they don't care if your business is legal, grey, black, white, mauve or involves selling the ground hopes and dreams of orphaned children as long as they get a piece of the action. As long as they're getting a cut of your spending, they don't care what you did to get the money. If it were up to the banks, they'd happily hold the money from drug dealers or any other type of crook... In fact many of them do. Banks only restrict accounts when governments force them to and moan about it constantly (even when said restrictions are in place to prevent a self inflicted crisis).

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you've swallowed the far right 'alt facts' about this case whole.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

OH no! The credit card companies restrict what you can spend *their money* on? So you have to use *your money* via a Debit Card instead? The horror!

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you've swallowed the far right 'alt facts' about this case whole.

"Alt facts" == "Any facts Leftist elites don't want disseminated publicly not because they are untrue but because they hinder the uncontested acceptance of their ideological and political agendas"

"The ends justify the means" - Leftist truism.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Timothy2.0]

100%. Cash has a certain anonymity to it, and I think we need to embrace anonymity more, not less, in society.

Of course, you'll have the "if you have nothing to hide..." folks not understanding the fact that *everyone* has something to hide, and that doesn't make them a criminal. If I want to buy a truckload of dildos, I may not want my neighbours, or government prudes, to know. that should be my right. As such, I'd prefer to pay cash.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[rmdingler]

Perhaps cash will simply morph into what it has always been, what Bitcoin strives to be... the currency of choice in peer to peer transactions where closed circuit cameras and tracker cell phones are intentionally left behind.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[AHuxley]

US gov can track some of the crypto currency in use.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Oh, they'll take a drug dealer's money, sure. But they're going to freeze your account for reason X just long enough for you to default on your mortgage. Or structure your payments/deposits to maximize fees. Or 100 other ways they fuck over random people to make more cash.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Well making gov't workers be minimum wage and making them pay for their fancy bulletproof cars and bodyguards out of pocket would be a good start. They don't deserve to be paid any more than that, and should have a giant guillotine sitting right outside congress to remind them of their place. A random execution of whoever supported an unconstitutional law every now and then and lashings for the remainder, along with regular beatdowns for all the others would serve well. A good politician is one who is in constant fear for his life.

Re: Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

Give food to homeless people, not money.

Re:Forget wall street, it benefits fascists

[Anonymous Coward]

"If I have nothing to hide then you have nothing to look for."

betteridges rule

[bugs2squash]

No - everyone can sleep safely, all crime will be a thing of the past

Re:betteridges rule

[Jeremi]

No - everyone can sleep safely, all crime will be a thing of the past

More like, the crime will follow the money. Now instead of getting mugged in an alleyway, you'll have your identity stolen and your bank account drained.

I think that's an improvement?

Re:betteridges rule

[b0s0z0ku]

"Crime" is what the government of the day chooses to name as a crime. I'm not talking about murder or theft -- I'm talking about crimes like choosing what substances to put into one's body, choosing to keep one's baby or not, choosing whom to have a relationship with (not too long ago, inter-racial relationships were illegal in the US).

Re: betteridges rule

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen. Nailed it.

Re:betteridges rule

[Cyberax]

Ahh.. You are a filthy junkie. That explains it.

Re:betteridges rule

[b0s0z0ku]

Better a filthy junkie than a Puritanical do-gooder asshole.

Re: betteridges rule

[Anonymous Coward]

"All crime is political"

-- Mao

Re:betteridges rule

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, what?

Filthy junkies may be one of the greatest cancers upon modern advanced society. They purchase substances at high cost with no nutritional value that often damage major organs, sometimes very quickly. They often lose the ability to hold down steady employment (if they ever had it in the first place). Some of them turn to thievery (occasionally violent) to provide additional income to feed their habit. The IV drug-using junkies spread diseases throughout the population that are harder to transmit in the absence of IV drug-abuse (stuff like Hep C).

And that's before you even take into account that many of those profiting off junkies are themselves violent criminals. Making their chosen drug legal, does not stop them from being junkies. The end results will be the same whether the junk is meted out from a dispensary or provided by a street dealer. You're foolish if you think that "choosing what substances you put into your own body" begins and ends at the tip of your nose. Becoming an addict makes you a problem, period.

Puritanical do-gooders are by-and-large-part boring, employed, everyday citizens whose worst crime is generally voting for someone you do not particularly like in some election or other. Many of them have at least college degrees and gainful employment. You can count a great many policemen, firemen, EMTs, doctors, and other useful members of society. Engineers and mechanics, too.

Should one group or the other disappear into thin air, society would certainly suffer more without the aforementioned do-gooders. Junkies vanishing might leave is in a bit of a lurch in a few places, but not many. Most junkies take themselves out of the picture anyway.

Re:betteridges rule

[b0s0z0ku]

I'll debate the usefulness of (US) cops.

As far as firemen, EMTs, engineers, and doctors, many aren't all that Puritanical. Look at artists -- art makes live living, and they're generally even less Puritanical...

Re: betteridges rule

[Anonymous Coward]

So you want the government to ban soda and red meat with the threat of violence?

Or is nutritional value and health risk just a red herring? Because sugar related illness kills more people in the US than guns, cars and narcotics combined.

Re:betteridges rule

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it'll just take longer to be robbed. Instead of give me your money and they run away it'll be get your phone out and transfer the money to this bitcoin address that you'll fumble entering, wait ten minutes or more for the transaction to process, then be back on your merry way to work.

Power

[thePsychologist]

Human society has never before been linked together so well. We need to guard against unintended consequences, like the unimaginable power that some will have to control dissent by electronically preventing dissenters from buying food at the grocery store.

Re:Power

[plopez]

"Human society has never before been linked together so well."

This brings up a thought I ave about tightly linking economies. For example, a few years ago the concern was if Spain, Italy, or Greece defaulted on their debts, basically economically collapsing, then the cascading consequences would bring down the entire global economy. We were in the absurd position where economies as small as the afore mentioned could cause a global distaster.

The analogy I like to use is mob-culture in agriculture. If fields are smaller and have a host of different crops then a blight affecting one crop, wheat as an example, does not get out of control and is firewalls off from other fields. On the other hand, if there is no diversity the said blight could wipe out huge swaths of wheat crops.

So maybe we should have loosely coupled economies with firewalls. Of course, economists would argue that this is not "efficient".

Re:Power

[angel'o'sphere]

if Spain, Italy, or Greece defaulted on their debts, basically economically collapsing, then the cascading consequences would bring down the entire global economy.
That is nonsense.

We were in the absurd position where economies as small as the afore mentioned could cause a global distaster.
That is nonsense ...

Re:Power

[nnet]

Don't be shy. WHY do you claim its nonsense?

Re: Power

[Kjella]

Germany could have cashed out Greeceâ(TM)s entire debt just like that. If the EU started the printing press theyâ(TM)d effectively make rich countries and wealthy people pay with only marginal inflation. They just didnâ(TM)t want to do that because itâ(TM)d be a terrible precedent for the future, spend money on credit like crazy and your rich uncle will bail you out. If the dominos had really started falling we would have seen a real intervention. But not until the PIGS were begging on their knees, not whining about austerity measures.

Re:Power

[Anonymous Coward]

The words and phrases to learn more about your genuinely serious concern are "economic globalization" and what you already know, tightly and loosely coupled systems theory.

More globalization equates to greater efficiency and fragility. The only way to prevent another global economic meltdown is for people to think more nationalistic, ensuring individuated economies aren't dramatically effected by others, in a time where nationalism is seen the same way as Lucifer was in the middle ages.

Re:Power

[angel'o'sphere]

Because the debt e.g. of whole Greece is less than the debt of a medium sized city in Germany or any other part of Europe ...
The point is: they could not pay. Hence there was a big fuzz made about it. And of course the problems Greece has are unique greek problems which they have to fix them selves. Our money wont fix it, it makes it only worse. Before the EURO a coffee in Parsi was like 80cents (because Paris would riot if the price would be significant above that) a coffee in Germany was about 150cents. In Athens, Greece, it was 40cents. For some reason Greece decided to "join" or "embrace" the EURO by simply setting every price of every thing to the most highest they could find in the EU, but forgot to adjust wages, pensions etc. Obviously that does not work. Who who was used to make vacations in a cheap country is going to Greece and paying more for coffee, meals, rent, taxi than he pays at home?

If it was for me or most other Germans or West Europe: they had got nothing. The point is: they are a society of tricksters. They cheat each other. Look at the forrest fires now. Everything burning are illegal constructions in areas where there was a reason to forbid it. But if the building stands 10 years it is "suddenly legal". You pay the bribes (to skip the 10 years) and all is fine. Big cash out for everyone. But some people where not smart enough to build like their neighbours did.
So they started forest fires, with hundreds of deaths.
Now there is no reason anymore to declare the areas as forbidden construction zones. I bet it is less than a year until the law is changed, and now they rebuild everything officially and the murderers become rich ...

Re:Power

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly what the 2nd amendment is for!

Danger? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no danger. You may not get your morning coffee due to a temporary power outage. You will be able to purchase food within the time necessary before you starve. Unless society has totally collapsed.

It only becomes dangerous when cash, precious metal, or trade produces no food for you. Then you better learn quickly how to hunt for food, or forage.

And that requires knowledge of things most of you know nothing about - so best of luck to you.

Re:Danger? No.

[WindowsStar]

@Anonymous (Danger? No.) This is what scares the hell out of me. The extreme ignorance of some people. Please take the time to research how money works and that using credit or debit cards only at the very least gives government and the banks all the power over the money. When this happens, banks now can charge a 10% transaction fee and there is nothing you can do about it. Receiving any money is now subject to government taxes. This is something YOU DO NOT WANT!.

Re:Danger? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have stacks of silver coins somewhere in storage. I'm good.

Re:Danger? No.

[plopez]

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyl...

Re:Danger? No.

[crimson tsunami]

So change to a different bank or a credit union.

Re: Danger? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Case in point. Unless you never put your money in a bank or credit union, it will run out.

Re: Danger? No.

[astrofurter]

Yeah. Just move to a different planet where they have different rules. Easy - problem solved!

Re:Danger? No.

[johannesg]

My bank currently gives me a whopping 0.03% (not 3%, not 0.3%, but 0.03%) interest on my savings account. I could move to a different bank, of course... Oh wait, the maximum I can get in this country is 0.05%. That will net me a few euros each year, hardly worth switching bank over.

Now tell me this: what is stopping them from just applying the negative interest rate they so clearly want?

Re: Danger? No.

[crimson tsunami]

You could, but I think my way is still easier.

Re:Danger? No.

[crimson tsunami]

You tell me. According to you they clearly want it but haven't done it. So whatever is already stopping them seems to be working.

Re:Danger? No.

[Sicily1918]

They already do with their "minimum balance" fees.

Re:Danger? No.

[johannesg]

You tell me. According to you they clearly want it but haven't done it. So whatever is already stopping them seems to be working.

Alright, let me spell it out for mr. Simpleton then. It's because we still have the option of taking our cash out completely. In a cashless society that's no longer an option, so the bank can apply an interest rate of -10% if it wants to.

Re:Danger? No.

[Kjella]

Please take the time to research how money works and that using credit or debit cards only at the very least gives government and the banks all the power over the money. When this happens, banks now can charge a 10% transaction fee and there is nothing you can do about it.

I live in Norway where VAT is like 25% and while it's been bumped up a few percent it's been 20%+ since it was all cash. So if "they" wanted an extra 10% they could do it right now. And if you were really losing money on having it in the bank like -10% interest rate it'd be just like 1930s hyperinflation in Germany - spend it when you get it before it becomes worthless. The greatest problem in the US is that you have super-mighty credit card companies that have made people think it's "free" to skim 2-3% off every transaction or even that they magically make money through baked-in services and kickbacks.

Here in Norway we have a no-frills national debit card system called BankAxept, the cost is $18/month + $0.03 per transaction. Actually it's $0.015/transaction if you're a huge company doing 50+ million transactions/year. That's roughly the price you should be paying if the US went a little socialist and made "digital money". In fact, they could probably fund the whole thing by redirecting the budget for printing/minting/disposing cash because it's not completely free once you want a physical representation.

We're already cashless-ish here in Norway, it's 97% card transactions, 3% cash withdrawals. And most of the regular costs items like rent, utilities, subscriptions etc. go via direct deposit so the white economy is 99%+ cashless. We also have services that provide free person-to-person transactions, many people literally don't use cash at all. The blocker here is that the law says you must take cash, if they could just stop accepting cash I think many would and if Internet is down BankAxept has a backup system with signature and ID. And if you don't got electricity most would simply close, unless it's a real emergency in which case I think grocery stores would take IOUs.

The downside is more that absolutely everything would be tracked. Want to buy some kind of product or service that isn't legal? There'll be a record of that. Don't want your wife to know you have a mistress or was at the bar? Well better not let her see the bank statement then because it's all there. Don't forget that sex toy store and the gay bar. A bunch of people from CSRs to DBAs at the bank will know. And people like to poke into other people's business, we just had a police officer fired here because he was doing non-work related searches with his Tinder date. And that's before the Gestapo gets involved...

There's a reason there is a saying "follow the money", whatever else is going on that's not on the record somebody, somewhere is looking to make money. So if you got a complete record of all the money, well that's a ridiculous amount of power. I mean you could try using proxies like a bottle of scotch but that really only works if it's more or less passed around, it's not like the one person with a pallet of scotch can easily convert that to legitimate money. Well maybe by selling to a bar, but then the bar would have to explain how they managed to sell far more scotch than they officially bought. Because you know, no cash.

Re:Danger? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you live in a country where the banks are in bed with the government you are screwed anyways. Especially since "ReGooolationZ am bad for U" (TM, pat.pend. (C) 2018 United Morons of Americat)

In civilized countries we have regulations that make it impossible for banks to charge you a 10% transaction fee. If they would try, they would lose their license to operate the bank and the government would shut them down. But hey, I am living in a socialist/communist hell according to most of you so what would I know?

And don't get me started on the "gubernmnt" taxes that pay for my health care, education and gives me and my socialist/communist fellow citizens a decent living standard. They are sooooooooo bad.

Why people are advocating a black economy is beyond me.

Re:Danger? No.

[houghi]

So now it is the stores that could ask for a 10% transaction fee, if they so desire.Oh? That is illegal? So make it illegal for cashless as well.
There are places in the world where it IS illegal for them to do so.

Before you reply with CC, understand the difference between a credit and debit card.

Re: Danger? No.

[flatulus]

Three times over a 20 year period I chose to do my banking with a regional bank, only to have them bought by Wells Fargo. I finally broke the cycle by going to a credit union. I think (but am not sure) that there are laws preventing commercial banks from acquiring credit unions. So far it's worked, but laws get changed all the time...

Re:Danger? No.

[flatulus]

They used to. Decades ago you had to pay a monthly fee to have an account, unless you had very large constant deposits in them. I would offer that fees are a type of negative interest. I think we can credit competition for wiping this out (but not really sure).

Re:Danger? No.

[WindowsStar]

Thank you for sharing.

Always

[Anonymous Coward]

There will always be something to trade if cash goes away. Might as well keep cash so it can be taxed.

Re:Always

[Anonymous Coward]

There will always be something to trade if cash goes away.

During German occupation in World War II, folks around here used cigarettes as currency.

Re:Always

[plopez]

Plenty of people also sold themselves for sex. Will do *anything* for food for me and my family....

Re:Always

[Z00L00K]

Around here you can't even use cash when there's a power outage since it will not be possible to get the price of the products anymore.

Re: Always

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the man said, he ain't gay but $20 is $20.

Off the chain blockchain is the only solution

[Anonymous Coward]

My foundation has been working on this issue for the past year. Trying to remove double spend at the hardware level and provide for a cash chip like experience for virtual currencies. We think it is highly possible, but we could use more resources.

https://hackaday.io/project/85479-off-the-chain-wallet/details I have been overwhelmed working on student projects around our other goals, but the hardware and escrow contracts are doable. Just making it cheap and building a network of compatible ATM/kiosks will be take time.

Re:Off the chain blockchain is the only solution

[Z00L00K]

That has already been tried and it failed.

Re:Off the chain blockchain is the only solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Because?

Oh that's right, because, to date, there isn't a single decentralized blockchain with the necessary txn throughput to handle serious transactions. Plus there's no oracles to reliably get the vendor the fiat it'll want instead of a pile of ETH or BTC or DAI or whatever it is that is loaded onto the card.

ETH + sharding + OMG + maybe REQ + oracles and it could work.

Danger?

[AHuxley]

Good parts:
Your banking, tax and transactions as a business owner are automatic.
The payment is made for a service, product and the money is ready to use in an account.
Every citizen has to have a bank account. Show ID to get a bank account.

The plus side for that is all illegal migrants have to get another layer of new photo ID and interact with banks and who pays them for work.
Thats a trail that can be used to discover who is not allowed to work in a nation, who is in a nation illegally.

Re:Danger?

[omnichad]

You would need even more financial regulation to enable that. As it stands, it's not just non-citizens who can't open a bank account. There are a large number of poor people who are ineligible for a bank account due to poor credit (which is a side effect of being poor).

Re: Danger?

[nihaopaul]

I can imagine a future where your insurance premiums are tied to your digital finger print. Your risk profile for credit is tied to your activities.

Your social credit (china) because you like to drink alcohol drops so low you cannot buy a flight, stay in a hotel or shop at certain places. Your position in the world is monitored to be able to collect you at any time.

Your price for goods depends on what friends you have (correlation of purchases across locations and times), your targeted advertising profile gets that much more sophisticated that you end up with a lot more crap. And then as market share increases the prices start to rise on transactions.

you can no longer buy anything as a tourist as governments clamp down, your children no longer can freely shop without a digit means.

Re:Danger?

[AHuxley]

That would be a fun change to government banking regulations.
Making a baking service to pay a wage into and that every citizen has a right to use.
Some type of universal "savings" account with a "electronic" card that could accept funds and pay out funds.
It would not be a loan account.
Think of something like an Electronic benefit transfer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... from any US bank, connected to photo ID and US citizenship.
No US citizen would be "ineligible" as the bank would have to register and provide that type of account when asked to do so. The US gov could cover any costs for the very poor citizens.
After the person is working they could get normal banking services. A citizen who is not working would stay on the bank/gov supported account for as long as needed.

A wage when working or gov support would just get moved to a persons bank and to their bank card depending on a citizens needs at any time.

Re: Danger?

[AHuxley]

Yes the USA could go full China with a system like that.
Want a US passport if tax was not paid? No passport will be approved until the tax issue is removed.
Domestic security to get on a bus, train to move around the USA internally. No "holiday" on that profile.
No paying for any domestic flights, hotels, rental cars.
Paying for a long list of products and services not approved by a state and federal government gets blocked and every attempt reported.
No gambling, no alcohol, no magazines, no books, no holidays, limited internet. A person has an improved "profile" when they are working, doing gov approved study.

Re:Danger?

[Anonymous Coward]

As it stands, it's not just non-citizens who can't open a bank account.

Ummm, completely false (at least in the USA). You don't need to be a US citizen, green card holder, or have a visa to work in the USA to open a bank account.

I own a vacation property in Florida, and spend some of the winter months there with my wife (I'm a Canadian).

To make things more convenient, I have a bank account and a credit card from a US bank. The US bank knows that I'm not a US citizen - they accepted my Canadian passport & driver's license as ID without any complaint.

Re:Danger?

[AHuxley]

An illegal migrant would not have the "passport" with the legal ability to stay in the USA AC.
Thats the "illegal" part in illegal migrant AC.

Re: Danger?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can confirm this; Most Canadian banks since the 80s have been able to open US bank accounts for Canadian citizens and many Canadians have US bank accounts that they open themselves as well.

Re:Danger?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The plus side for that is all illegal migrants have to get another layer of new photo ID and interact with banks and who pays them for work.

Illegal immigrants can already (legally) get bank accounts and taxpayer id numbers. In fact, not only will the IRS give them numbers to pay taxes/get a job, but they are forbidden from law to tell any other agency of the government

Re: Danger?

[Anonymous Coward]

Non citizens can open bank accounts, donâ(TM)t be silly. I have one.

The greatest obstacle to opening an account is a fixed address.

Re:Danger?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your racist dream is not going to come true because when the official economy goes cashless, the real economy will have to go unofficial. New currencies will be invented (no, bitcoin and the like are not it, because apart from being a scam they're traceable). Markets for legal goods will go underground. They will have to because the people you call illegal will still be there and they need to live and make a living.

Re:Danger?

[b0s0z0ku]

Saddling everyone with more mass surveillance is not a worthwhile price to pay for tight border security. East Germany had tight border security and great surveillance in the 80s. Fortunately, they had themselves a nice little revolution.

Re:Danger?

[Cyberax]

This is nonsense. Banks will gladly open a checking account for anybody with a pulse and an SSN. Opening an account without an SSN is trickier, but it’s still possible if you can get an ITIN.

Re: Danger?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude thatâ(TM)s already the case in the present.

Re: Danger?

[Anonymous Coward]

This exists already in a number of European countries - providing bank accounts for people with bad credit. Having a bank account is considered an indispensable service, as you need one to be able to work and receive wages. Different countries have different ways of handling this situation - a special government bank that provides basic banking services or a law that obliged banks to provide you with a basic bank account (these are accounts without credit).

Having a bank account is essential nowadays, in many countries you canâ(TM)t receive a wage without one. You canâ(TM)t rent a property without a bank account either (the guarantee is kept in a savings account).

Re:Danger?

[AHuxley]

The USA has freedom of speech and freedom after speech with lots of nice consumer goods. East Germany could not offer its people any freedoms and the needed consumer goods and food never got to its people.

So going cashless wouldn't induce any real changes in the USA for US citizens and people in the USA legally for work and study.
Mass surveillance would ensure tax is collected on all transactions.

Re:Danger?

[AHuxley]

AC re "'the real economy will have to go unofficia".
The problem with that for an illegal migrant AC is the cost of having to pay extra for a new bank account, new photo ID that works.
The cost of staying illegal soon becomes more than their illegal wage can cover.

Re:Danger?

[Anonymous Coward]

An illegal migrant would not have the "passport" with the legal ability to stay in the USA AC.

What do you mean by "passport" in quotes? Do you mean an actual passport?

An illegal immigrant is someone who snuck in to the USA, or someone who entered the USA legally on a temporary basis (tourist, temporary work visa, etc.) and didn't leave when they should have.

Certainly many illegal immigrants don't have passports from their home countries, but lots of them do.

Of course, I suspect many illegal immigrants would not want to create a paper trail by having a bank account, since that makes them easier to find. But being entitled to permanently reside in the USA isn't a requirement to open a bank account.

Re:Danger?

[AHuxley]

AC thats why a new cashless banking system would help catch up with so many illegal migrants.
Illegal migrants would have to create another type of ID to get a new bank account.
Get entered into the tax system and be approved by for a new account by a bank.
Given thats its a new account the US gov could make that reporting much more stringent federally.
Make the cashless bank understand every new US account they open has to be legal and fully compliant.
Just "living" in the USA would have to be supported by more levels of new documents to show citizenship, approval to work, study in the USA.
More ways to get discovered as an illegal migrant.

Re: Danger?

[Anonymous Coward]

In France the fall-back bank is the post office. They historically dealt with money transfers in the era of horse and telegraph, still do but are a full fledged bank as well and a couple other things.
If you're at the lowest of the bottom of the ladder you still can cash the month's welfare or retirement out, or be given a card that only serves to draw some small weekly amount from an ATM.

Re: Danger?

[Anonymous Coward]

You canâ(TM)t rent a property without a bank account either (the guarantee is kept in a savings account).

That's sort of nice. In France you pay the guarantee to the land lord and he will hand it back if he's satisfied when you're leaving.

Re:Danger?

[b0s0z0ku]

Freedom of speech is debatable. In the US, you're free to speak but unlikely to be listened to unless you're wealthy and/or powerful. In France, mass protests can actually topple governments. Consumer goods shouldn't be seen as a measure of freedom: see also, Singapore.

Re:Danger?

[omnichad]

Once maybe. If you screw up by being poor and having a few overdrafts, reporting agencies like ChexSystems can get you more or less blacklisted. Most banks refer to this agency or another when opening a checking account. You can be denied a simple checking account.

Re: Danger?

[b0s0z0ku]

Same as in the US -- landlord holds the guarantee aka "security deposit."

Re: Danger?

[hawk]

>I\ can imagine a future where your insurance
>premiums are tied to your digital finger print. Your risk
>profile for credit is tied to your activities.

credit score is already a major factor for car insurance.

Texas was going to ban it a couple of years, but in a rare fit of reason (for a legislature) they had a study done first.

The data shows that credit score is far more accurate than driving record in predicting claims.

You can come up with a number of explanations (high credit score people are more careful, or have less distractions, or . . .), but keep in mind that it's claims pad, not accidents, that interest the insurance company. My pet theory is that those with the higher scores are also less likely to submit small claims due to anticipated rate increases, and instead have the cars fixed themselves--but again, that's just an educated guess.

hawk

Re: Danger?

[astrofurter]

How will our progeny look at the ruins of our security/surveillance state? The ubiquitous cameras and sensors - the comically profuse street signs telling us what we're not allowed to do - the centralized & censored communications platforms - Big Brother always watching, always listening - and the vast grim archipelago of the American Gulag.

Will they look at them the same way we look at the Berlin Wall? As ruins of a dark era, when fear trampled freedom underfoot. Will they wonder if we were mad, evil, or just foolish? Will they see a link between our collapsing economic order, the resultant crisis of state & parastate legitimacy, and our unhinged headlong rush to turn the whole country into one giant prison?

Will our grandchildren look at abandoned rotting surveillance cameras, shake their heads, and breathe a sigh of relief - thankful they were born into a period of freedom and prosperity? Will they say to themselves, "never again"?

Re: Danger?

[AHuxley]

Re "How will our progeny look at the ruins of our security/surveillance state?"

Depends on the results.
Police get to clean up the streets. Stop crime. Find criminals, discover illegal aliens.
No more drug use in the streets. No more waste in the streets. No more parked RV and tents.

The Berlin Wall failed as East Germany did not allow its people to speak and could not offer its people anything they wanted.
The US is still flooded with consumer products, freedom of speech, freedom to shop.

The only negative in the USA is the drug use, crime, waste in the streets on the way to enjoy shopping.
In well managed cities that new security/surveillance could really help gentrify an entire city. Slowly change a city back to a really great living standard.

Re: Danger?

[b0s0z0ku]

What do you propose that the cops do with the homeless? We could offer addicts and homeless treatment and/or shelter NOW, but we're too focused on incarceration and punishment. The problem isn't cash -- it's a retarded Puritan worldview.

Re: Danger?

[AHuxley]

Once cites fail and become filled with drug use, waste, tents and parked RV a city is not going to have the needed tax rate to do much.
Tax payers have the ability to move to much better cities.
At least try to keep a city safe?

Re:Danger?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Banks are required to check your past banking behavior, and most check your credit score as well.
If you bounced two checks EVER, there is a record and many banks will NOT open you a checking account.

What you probably meant to say is that anyone with cash can go to any bank and open a savings account.

Dinosaurs

[Anonymous Coward]

We all could get eaten by Dinosaurs in a cashless society.

In a cashless society all legal tender is controll

[Anonymous Coward]

So there's nothing preventing the government from taxing your savings by declaring a negative interest rate or from bailing out banks using your money (a 'bail-in').

(In a society with cash, there's always the option/risk of people pulling out their savings to cash to prevent negative interest and bail-ins. This won't exist anymore. Your money is their money).

And this has happened

[Okian Warrior]

Someone gets uppity, freeze their ability to spend money. Want to know what someone is buying, where they are going, what their habits are? If they do it all with credit card, you can! Forget wall street, the prime beneficiaries are fascist governments.

Governments hate cash because they make it easy to do business they don't like without them knowing about it. The government you've got today may not be the government you've got tomorrow, so you shouldn't hand them that information.

Use cash whenever possible.

And this has actually happened.

Soon after Wikileaks released the gulf war information, including the "collateral murder" video, the credit companies froze their accounts, effectively cutting them off from donations and keeping $11 million in donations already in account.

Say what you will about Wikileaks, its activities are legal and it serves a valuable purpose in keeping certain governments in line.

At the time people kept saying "this isn't censorship, credit card companies are private companies and can choose who they do business with".

Re:And this has happened

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes... as apposed to people mailing them cash...

Re:And this has happened

[Anonymous Coward]

Governments hate cash because they make it easy to do business they don't like without them knowing about it.

More to the point, gov't depends on distrust for income. If I fix your sink and you cook me dinner, there's no monetary exchange at all. It's either something between friends or it's bartering. Bartering is technically taxable, but typically not traceable. If we're not friends then I charge to fix your sink and you charge to serve me a meal. Then we both pay perhaps 30% income/SS tax. If we both use plastic then we're also paying a middleman to actually make the payment to each other. A simple relationship has become very expensive for both of us. A relationship has become a business transaction. In that sense, gov't benefits from lack of social cohesion and generalized, personal alienation. In a true community there's very litle "economic" activity.

So there's privacy from gov't to think about. There's also privacy from corporatocracy. And if those are not enough reason to use cash, there's the simple fact that banks have created a lucrative middleman business out of thin air. We're all still essentially using cash. We're just paying a 3% fee to a 3rd party to make the payments for us.

Re: And this has happened

[Wycliffe]

We're just paying a 3% fee to a 3rd party to make the payments for us.

There is an easy fix for this. Require the end user to pay the 3% fee. A few places do it but I believe it's against the rules of most major credit card companies. If more places gave a discount for cash, a lot more people would pay with cash. As it stands now, with credit card rewards, there is effectively a 1% or so discount for using a credit card.

Re:And this has happened

[Jane Q. Public]

This.

While non-cash purchases might be easier in many circumstances, that doesn't reduce the importance of cash.

The downside should be obvious to all: if we were to create a "cashless society", on that very day you could kiss your freedom goodbye.

Period. The end. It might take time to be realized, but it would already be gone.

Re: And this has happened

[tlhIngan]

We're just paying a 3% fee to a 3rd party to make the payments for us.

There is an easy fix for this. Require the end user to pay the 3% fee. A few places do it but I believe it's against the rules of most major credit card companies. If more places gave a discount for cash, a lot more people would pay with cash. As it stands now, with credit card rewards, there is effectively a 1% or so discount for using a credit card.

First of all, cash isn't free to handle. If you're a small business, it might be close to free, but only because you don't have much of it. When you're handling a few thousands of dollars of cash daily, things get MUCH more interesting.

And it's easy to tell who's the "free" department - you can tell if a business simply turns off the register at the end of the day, or if they actually count the takes. If they don't count the takes, then in general they don't make enough cash (because it's not worth counting).

But once you do start raking in cash, you start to have to count it, which means you need to train employees how to handle cash. You need to tell them how to set up the register, how to ensure their takes are accurate, and how to sign off the register. This again is easy to see - when they run out of coins you note they always take a 410 roll of coins, but at the same time, they give the donator a $10 bill to equalize the transaction.(because every dollar has to be accounted for). And yes, when the register and cashbox do not agree, it's a very serious offense, minus some small percentage error (because people do realize short-changes and mistakes happen, but it shouldn't be more than a couple of bucks or so).

But you also have the problem - you have a few thousand dollars in cash now, and you have to deposit it at the bank. So someone has to go to the bank, wait in line, and make the deposit (which has to be counted, verified, etc). So that's someone's hour out of their day going to the bank, parking, lining up, etc., and hopefully not getting mugged or robbed along the way (another cost of handling cash). Or if you're lucky, you've got night depository permission so you can use those outside deposit boxes. But again, prime spot for being mugged (and it's after hours, too).

Hey, if you make enough money, perhaps you can call an armored car to take your cash for you to the bank, but that too is another cost for handling cash.

Oh, and let's not forget the whole robbery aspect - always a problem with cash-only businesses.

And finally, there's the problem of counterfeit bills. You might not think it, but large bills might be common - if you buy $50 worth of stuff, you would expect to get paid with $20 bills, $50 bills, and $100 bills. But $100 bills could be counterfeit, yet another cost (because counterfeit bills are non-redeemable, and it could've been changed with legitimate bills). Sure you can try to avoid taking in $50 or $100 bills, but if someone comes to you with $75 worth of purchase, they may not have $75 in smaller bills.

Now, the laws changed here recently (Canada) where retailers can charge the extra 3%, but it turns out most don't. Not because they can't, but because they realize that most of their transactions are credit and debit (which incur a fixed fee at least), and they fear losing that business. (And yes, businesses that were formerly cash-only have gone into accepting debt and later on, credit cards did see an uptick in business - both in number of customers through, and increases in size of transactions).

And to be honest, the ones that do charge, I tended to shop there less - about the ones that did were computer stores and they always did "cash discounted" pricing. It was always annoying to have to plan a visit to the bank to do a cash withdrawal in order to shop there, and they eventually lost me out to online shopping where the credit prices were included AND I had to pay shipping. (Not having to find parking in some obscure neighbourhood was a bonus, too).

Re:And this has happened

[houghi]

Censorship can and is done by non-government entities. If you tell your kids they can not watch TV for whatever reason, that is censorship. Do not kid yourself that it is only so if a government does it it.

Re:And this has happened

[reboot246]

Thank you, Jane Q. Public! Finally somebody gets it.

Governments love the idea of a cashless economy because of the control it gives them and the financial industry loves a cashless economy because they make money on every transaction. Go ahead and get your wish of going cashless, but don't say you weren't warned. Big government + big banks = no freedom.

Re: And this has happened

[Anonymous Coward]

Which Collateral Murder video are you referring to? The complete footage they eventually released or the Assange Edit version?

Re: And this has happened

[Synonymous Homonym]

I don't see the difference. Whether the medium of exchange is a piece of paper or a number in a database, it's effectively a currency issued and controlled by a central authority that isn't you. The latter is just cheaper and safer to handle.

If you have no freedom with the currency being moved as electrons, the same is true with it being moved on paper.

Re: And this has happened

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in an Eastern European state.
The credit card fee is payed by the merchant, the prices on the shelf are the end prices (no addition for credit card fee, taxes are included in the price).

We do love cash, and a lot of places prefer cash and do offer a cash discount. Still, the use of credit card is on the rise, due to the convenience (NFC is indeed great).

Oh yeah, and 4G mobile covers over 95% of the country, so small mobile battery powered POS are all the rage. Even with street food sellers. So it usually works even in blackout...

Re:And this has happened

[Anonymous Coward]

If we're not friends then I charge to fix your sink and you charge to serve me a meal. Then we both pay perhaps 30% income/SS tax.

If you are in the U.S. and not in Europe, then 30% is very likely too high. Not many people earn enough to pay that much. Don't you see the "gap" in incomes these days?

Re: And this has happened

[Anonymous Coward]

A few computer stores I worked with did "cash discounts" for debit; I guess debit cost less than credit cards did for larger transactions.

Re: And this has happened

[sims 2]

I still feel the whole argument that users, businesses should be required to directly pay out 3% is bullshit. Aside from that being at least 10x higher than it should be if you are assuming you now get 98%+ of all transactions.

The biggest arguments against it are that as of right now the gov't itself (through taxes or whatever) entirely funds the replacement of money and coins as they are damaged.

The funds used for that today would easily cover more than than the cost of a computer network capable of managing and tracking all the transactions said country probably even a rather large assortment of supporting staff too.

The gov't wants this to happen as it is extremely in their benefit for the amount of control it gives them so they should be the ones paying for it instead of allowing third parties to be middle men to leach money out of the economy.

Cash may not even be a realistic alternative

[Flexagon]

I remember needing a coin cell battery for something some years ago, so I made my usual pilgrimage to Fry's. As it happened, they were in a small area that was suffering a power outage. And yet they were still open. Employees with flashlights led us in individually to pick up what we wanted. At the checkout counters, no power meant that the cash registers didn't work either, and they had no process for creating cash receipts. Instead, they only accepted credit cards, and only the old fashioned way (even for the time): swiping our cards through the little manual impression machines to make multi-layered paper carbon copies of receipts (with the full credit card number recorded). It was probably the smallest credit card purchase I've ever made.

And the point: with an even longer history of computerized cash registers now, that may even immediately track inventory to a back-end server, what significantly sized store is even capable of handling the paper receipts for cash in a power outage? What stores even have the old manual card impression machines? I think it may be a poor assumption that cash is a useful alternative to credit cards / electronic payment in a power failure, in many cases.

Re:Cash may not even be a realistic alternative

[HatofPig]

At The Beer Store in Ontario we have price lists for all the product. Taxes are included in the shelf-price. When the power goes out it slows us down, but we can still just use a calculator and tabulate everything manually. No debit or credit, just cash. There are no receipts, obviously, but for the most part customers just want their beer.

If there was tax involved and the products were varied as opposed to mostly of the same sort and fairly consistent in price then it might be harder to do.

Re:Cash may not even be a realistic alternative

[apoc.famine]

Yep. It comes down to a cost-benefit analysis by the business. Does the power go out often enough to make it worth having a backup system, training staff, and practicing it a few times a year? If so, is doing business during the outage worth the cost of the backup system?

I've been in stores which chose different paths, like you and the GP here. I understand why they chose they way they did.

Re:Cash may not even be a realistic alternative

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Fun fact, those old manual impression machines are being phased out. They don't even raise the numbers on (some) credit cards anymore.

Re:Cash may not even be a realistic alternative

[b0s0z0ku]

Couldn't a cell phone or tablet camera and a signing app do the same thing for a "flat" card?

Re:Cash may not even be a realistic alternative

[bugs2squash]

I don't see why you couldn't write out a receipt. My local plumbing store hand-writes one out for me even when the power is on.

Re:Cash may not even be a realistic alternative

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Probably not. As part of the chip card push, liability arrangements changed. I doubt many box stores will accept chipless cards or manual impressions for that very reason. At least for big items.

Re:Cash may not even be a realistic alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

For small purchases, the only real function of receipts is so that the shopper can prove to a mall cop that he bought the items in his bag. The store copy of the receipt serves even less purpose.
Many shops are already trying to phase out receipts for small purchases and often even for bigger items, preferring to just sticker the packaging on sale. Most of the pushback is actually from customers who are rightly worried about not being able to prove their purchase. I myself have almost gotten arrested for supposedly shoplifting and I sure was glad at the time that I could prove I had actually bought and paid for every single item in my bag.
I'm sure that in case of a power outage a shop could just opt not to print receipts, especially in your scenario where every customer was individually escorted and shoplifting was a non-issue.

Re:Cash may not even be a realistic alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no receipts, obviously, [...]

And where I live this would be illegal for any sizeable business and they would get blown out of the waters by the tax service for selling products/services without offering receipts or keeping books.

Further on, few stores mark their products any more, they mark the shelves and scan the bar codes on the products. So without power to their registries they are screwed. But even IF they could calculate the price by hand, any grocery store belonging to a big chain has their cash handling in a closed system. The reasons are that they don't need as highly trained staff, the risk of robbery is significantly lowered and the machine always gives the correct amount of change. But again, the machine that counts your coins and bills needs electricity.

So because of this, it is no big problem going cashless over where I live, you still need electricity to "process" cash purchases. Only small vendors might get away with it, but they mostly accept phone payments to don't have much cash on them.

Re:Cash may not even be a realistic alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

So if the business doesn't support society, they should be blocked from using common infrastructure and services then?

Re: Cash may not even be a realistic alternative

[Kjella]

Yep, pretty sure youâ(TM)re required by law if the customer insists. Did get that once in London, I needed reciept for travel expense reimbursement. But 99% wouldnâ(TM)t care for a sandwich...

Re:Cash may not even be a realistic alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

What if there are handheld scanners with battery? That would work, if the price/product database is in them, doesn't if they just hold the dummy codes. But even just displaying the codes big on the green LCD would help if there's a paper dump to work with.

Re:Cash may not even be a realistic alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

With apologies to Mitch Hedberg:

"I bought a beer and they gave me a receipt for the beer; I don't need a receipt for the beer. I'll just give you the money, and you give me the beer, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I just can't imagine a scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a beer: "Don't even act like I didn't get that beer! I got the documentation right here...oh, wait it's at home...in the file...under 'B'."

Re:Cash may not even be a realistic alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

And the point: with an even longer history of computerized cash registers now, that may even immediately track inventory to a back-end server, what significantly sized store is even capable of handling the paper receipts for cash in a power outage? What stores even have the old manual card impression machines? I think it may be a poor assumption that cash is a useful alternative to credit cards / electronic payment in a power failure, in many cases.

This is easy to solve technically: you have your modem and router on a UPS that can last 8+ hours. You have low-power, high-battery laptops run the point of sale (POS) software.

Or, get a cellular-capable iPad, configure it to VPN into your back-end network to talk to the inventory and sales system:

* https://squareup.com//stand

There shouldn't be any state on the "cash" registers, so what you use for one is mostly irrelevant.

Re:Cash may not even be a realistic alternative

[JesseMcDonald]

What stores even have the old manual card impression machines?

Would they even work if they had them? While my current card has raised digits, IIRC the last one did not. Prepaid cards are frequently unembossed as well. At the very least it wouldn't work for everyone.

On the other hand, if you have enough local power to keep a smartphone recharged, and intermittent Internet connectivity, you can process credit cards offline using the magnetic stripes. There is a higher risk of fraud, of course, but no more than there would be with the impression machine. I know at least Square allows cards to be scanned offline with their app and uploaded for processing at a later time at no extra charge, though the merchant must accept the risk that delayed transactions may fail. Even without their custom magstripe dongle you can still enter the card numbers manually. It might be worth keeping an account like that active just in case of emergencies.

Power outage

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on electricity and computers.

Cash is more technically advanced.

Re:Power outage

[bn-7bc]

Well maybe bot from 2019-01-01 (at keast here in Norway, no buisness us allowed to make a dale if the pos is down (I think the wording in the regulation is v all sales are to be enterd in an sproved pos at the time of sale) so cash will not help ypu ehen tje pos is down, and with the tecent popularety of cloud backed pos there might be several reasons That xan not be mitigsted localy. I know this is manly a us site, so if this does not aply to the us, this might be condidered ot, if so thst was not my intention. Personaly I find using cash to be inconvinient as lose chsnge tend to accumulate and dealing eith it is rather slow, a cc/debit catd transacrion takes aprox the same time evry time (assuming tha card and treminal works which is mostly) and no change to deal with. Will I miss cash nope. And as for beeing tracked, us there any chsnce that anyone will realy care what i purchase as long as it is legal and I pay my taxes vat etc? I doubt it

ALWAYS keep cash...

[Anonymous Coward]

My life was ruined by the tax department, during a dispute with them. They froze my bank account, so cheques started bouncing, bills went unpaid, etc. Had to use cash to buy food, etc. So government incompetence, corruption, abuse, etc., will always mean cash for me.

Not to mention, when in China last year, a luxury high end shopping area couldn't use/accept any of the cards I was carrying. Cash worked, cards didn't.

Many smaller vendors, areas, towns, countries are cash based societies/communities.

And then, in a restaurant when the power failed...

Et cetera, etc.

Cash is king.

Re:ALWAYS keep cash...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nowhere takes diners...

Re:ALWAYS keep cash...

[bn-7bc]

You stil use cheques, oh yea the US never mind, here in norway, and i supect in the test of western Europe, as farcas I know, they are noot in wide use any more,due to high prosessing fees, bank to vabk transfers are easy quick an relativlu low cost even cross border, normaly a transfer is creditid the recievers account the nex buisness day (som places it is ibnstant if the payer and the payee have accounts at the same bank. Cross porder (at least for SEPA transfers) 1-3 buisness days. Out of curiosety how long does it takr for a cheques to clear an be deposited?

Cash gives you freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Freedom to be (relatively) anonymous and not reliant on any 3rd party to make good on your transaction. And freedom from giving a cut on every payment to the same thieving, criminal bankers who have already stolen our tax money in bailout after bailout. If you liked what they did for your investments in 2008, wait until you see their plans for a "cashless" future.

Re:Cash gives you freedom

[b0s0z0ku]

Countries like Iceland did right by throwing the banksters in prison after 2008.

Re: Cash gives you freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

What does it change? We are still leaving in a ballooned economy, even worse than in the 2000 - 2008 period. The economic crash at time was started by low interest rates kept for a period of few years (2001 - 2006). What did they do to âoesolveâ the crisis ? Bring interest rates as low as possible, thatâ(TM)s right, more of the same. Interest rates are at record lows since 2008, the printing press is dumping huge amounts of money into the economy to keep it from collapsing, but thatâ(TM)s just delaying the inevitable. Interest rates will have to be raised, at one point they will have to keep up with inflation. I fear the next crash will be much, much worse than the 2008 crisis.

So yeah, they put some people in prison in Iceland ... meanwhile the world economy is in a hugely inflated bubble. Not much was changed in terms of economic governance since 2008.

Of course

[PopeRatzo]

Are There Dangers in a Cashless Society?

Yes. Spiders. You could still get bitten on the arm by a brown recluse and end up dying.

Oh, and meteors. Most people don't realize it, but there are meteors constantly hitting the Earth. Eventually, they're gonna get around to you and then you're gonna be a grease stain on the sidewalk. Unless you live in the suburbs, where you'll be a grease stain on the driveway.

Also, food-borne disease is always a danger. I'm pretty sure there are lots more, but I started drinking a few hours ago, and I think I'm going to go binge watch Lost in Space.

With no cash

[Anonymous Coward]

How am I 'sposed to tip the hoez?

Re:With no cash

[Anonymous Coward]

Special anatomically designed card readers.

Re:With no cash

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you ever see Nelly's "Tip Drill" video?

Not legal in the United States

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe anyone can refuse legal tender for goods and services in the U.S. At least until the Constitution is Amended.

Re:Not legal in the United States

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly true. Legal tender (cash) cannot be refused for "debts." However, when one goes to McDonald's, for example, there is no debt incurred until they actually hand you your food. Thus, they could indeed refuse cash if they so desired--you pay first at places like that. When one goes to Walmart, the groceries you're purchasing aren't yours until after you've paid. They could refuse cash easily and if it was all you had, they could just restock the items and send you on your way.

Now, if you've just eaten a meal at a sit-down restaurant and your bill comes, no they could not refuse cash as a payment. A debt has been incurred. However, I suspect if a restaurant were to decide to not accept cash, a credit/debit card would be required up front before the food was delivered.

Having said that, not accepting cash is a major dick move and I will not patronize any business that buys into this nonsense.

Re:Not legal in the United States

[b0s0z0ku]

Wouldn't hurt to leave bad reviews even if their food is great and maybe report a few roaches to the health department. Cashless == deserves to be driven the hell out of business by means fair or foul.

Re:Not legal in the United States

[b0s0z0ku]

That might be a good idea for a protest against cashlessness.

If it's a store like WalMart, fill your cart, then walk out after they fail to accept cash. If it's a fast-food joint, order as much as possible with "extra" hot sauce, have them start MAKING the orders. Whoops, don't have a card, walk out, leaving them to have done work and with custom orders they can't easily sell.

Spread the word -- if everyone does it, they might have to mend their bankster-lovin' ways.

Re: Not legal in the United States

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, most people donâ(TM)t care. Worse - a lot of people would actively support a cashless society, due to the reduced burden from dealing with cash. Just see how much people would volunteer to use services such as Facebook, services that have a disastrous effect on the privacy of peopleâ(TM)s lives.

I donâ(TM)t expect much resistance to a cashless society. Some people will protest, but the majority will embrace the change, no questions asked.

The best option is to support alternative payment technologies. Cash will not remain for much longer, whatever you like it, or not.

Re: Not legal in the United States

[Anonymous Coward]

You have all the rights you can afford to sue for in federal court.

Re: Not legal in the United States

[b0s0z0ku]

Time to start organizing the (often heavily armed) "mark of the Beast" hyper-religious crowd, then, of which there's a lot in the US.

Cash keeps me on a budget

[Snotnose]

Every friday I get some cash, and I can spend it as I please over the next week. When I'm out of cash I'm out of fun for the week.

Contrast that to a credit card. My CC has a limit of about 50% my annual salary. God hope I don't keep spending that until the card is rejected.

Re:Cash keeps me on a budget

[bn-7bc]

Well if you are afraid of over using credit cards, use debit cards einstrwad, so ypu don’t have that risk. Personaly I use credit card only forvairline tickets due to the exstra travle indcurance included, but hey that us just me, I dont eant any dept unless I can avoid it. Ie my mortage us the only debt I carry and in 15 years that will be gone as well thus as long as I pay my bills and taxes no one can tell me (as long as the product or service i want is legal) what to do with my money or my time.

Cash needed for anonymous sex shop purchases

[Anonymous Coward]

The government shouldn't know about my preferred dildo size.

and when the system goes down? or they don't take

[Joe_Dragon]

and when the system goes down? or they don't take your card for some odd thing?

Re: In a cashless society all legal tender is cont

[Wycliffe]

You could still have a run on the banks in a cashless society. It would look more like a run on the stores where people would buy large amounts of food, jewelry, or whatever else they thought would be useful or easy to sell/barter/trade.

Re: In a cashless society all legal tender is cont

[b0s0z0ku]

Which is actually worse, since it will affect availability of real-world goods faster.

Are there dangers???

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of moron wrote the headline?

To even question IF there are dangers displays the author have an IQ close to shoe size!

Of bloody course there are dangers, beyond most peoples wildest imagination!

The correct headline (question) would have been "What are the dangers...".

Power/Internet outages ... need cash

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of people forget what it is like during a widespread natural disaster. When a big earthquake or hurricane or massive flooding happens, there isn't power, no telephones, no internet, sometimes for months. No credit/debit transactions. You need cash.

I keep at least 3 weeks of cash for fuel, food, and likely extra payments on hand. It isn't really THAT much and I don't carry it around with me. I usually have $50 or less on me, unless we are going for dinner at a nice place or groceries. To ensure I don't loose my cash-sense, I use it for anything that I don't need warranty service on, which basically is for food, groceries, and services (dentist, oil changes, stuff like that). There's no reason for that spending to be tracked or for the CC companies to get 2.5-4.5% of every transaction when the people actually doing the work should get it.

Cashless is 3% voluntary tax on everything you purchase. It is good work if you can get it, but certainly each transaction really only costs $0.50 to handle. Why should buying a slurpy be less than buying a TV? They are just moving numbers around. Is moving $500 different from $2? Not to the ledger software.

And if you are using a debit card for transactions, you are stupid. They take your money immediately and you have to beg for it back through a 3rd party. The bank uses the float to earn interest for 24 hrs, which is different than with credit cards where you get the float with 4-6 week delayed payment. With CCards, they don't have your money. With cash, you deal directly with the company, no disinterested 3rd party.

Obviously, you should pay off the cards completely every billing period. Paying interest on unsecured debt is stupid.

And if you want to have real fun, pay cash for an airline ticket. Enjoy that trip. You will learn things that you never knew before.

Re:Power/Internet outages ... need cash

[b0s0z0ku]

I've tried that experiment -- paid cash for an airline ticket the day before. Supposedly, this would subject me to extra screening, but no such thing actually happened. Went through the normal line, no additional questions.

Re:Power/Internet outages ... need cash

[Z00L00K]

It would have if you had purchased a first class ticket to some obscure location known for drug trade cash.

Breaking! Owning silver and gold made illegal!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's it gonna take to MAKE us be a cashless society?

Is this a trick question or something?

[Qbertino]

The answers is "yes, definitely".

Re:Is this a trick question or something?

[houghi]

Next: Are there dangers in a cash only society?

The answer will still be the same: "yes, definitely".

I'm actually not that worried about it

[rsilvergun]

see here. If the gov't has it out for you there's plenty of ways for them to come down on you like a ton of bricks.

This is what's made me a Democratic Socialist. People don't oppress other people for the hell of it. They do it because they're monopolizing all the money to the point where folks lack economic security and when you do crap like that you've got to do all sorts of nasty things to get away with it. The surest fire way to make that a moot point is to guarantee everybody food, shelter, healthcare, education and transportation (the latter needed to access to former). Tyrants lose power when they can't threaten you with starvation, the elements or dying of disease.

Re:I'm actually not that worried about it

[b0s0z0ku]

As long as we don't have democratic socialism, may as well use cash and make it harder for them.

Re: I'm actually not that worried about it

[astrofurter]

Realistic implementations of democratic socialism will make it *easier* to starve dissents.

All a corporate oligarch needs to do is complain to his ivy league dorm buddy at their next golf game, and WHAM - a kangaroo kourt declares the dissident a criminal. No more UBI, no more benefits, no more food, no more shelter.

Kneel and lick the boots of the oligarchy - or die in the street like a dog.

Re: I'm actually not that worried about it

[b0s0z0ku]

As opposed to licking the boots of the insurance companies or begging for money on GoFundMe (G-d help you if you're not seen as religious or pious) today.

Re:I'm actually not that worried about it

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything a tyrant can do so can a democratic socialist government.

People do oppress others for the hell of it. Read history for exciting details.

The next sentence doesn't make much sense. Money is not finite. The currency of oppression isn't currency, it's power. Then justifying socialist programs like food and shelter to prevent tyrants from having control? The people that decide who gets benefits, or what benefits, or measure of benefits, become the tyrants. If they don't do it, the people disbursing the benefits are the tyrants. If neither, the people who provide the benefits are the tyrants. That's what happens when someone has power over your food, shelter, healthcare, education and transportation (and what's with the ignorance of online classes? Any decent school has them). Tyrants are born and gain power in such systems. Systems of dependence on others are the only systems where tyranny can exist.

Jeez,off your rocker. A string of non sequiturs.

Re: I'm actually not that worried about it

[Anonymous Coward]

What we have now, would seem better. I'll take GoFundMe over a gulag.

Re: I'm actually not that worried about it

[Anonymous Coward]

What did dogs ever do to you??

Re: I'm actually not that worried about it

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to lack the understanding of what the U in UBI means. It means U, as in Universal, as in not take away able. Any citizen should not only be able to get it, they should get it automatically. If your idea is to give the government the power to arbitrarily take away what s to be a universal right of citizenship you are already fucked beyond belief.

Re: I'm actually not that worried about it

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, what do you think governments do again? There are "inalienable" rights listed in the US Constitution that are routinely curtailed or even removed from individuals who commit crimes. That is one of the government's basic functions. We have enough laws on the books that you can be denied your *actual freedom* somewhat arbitrarily; what on earth makes you think a UBI check issued to you by a government agency would somehow be exempt?

Re: I'm actually not that worried about it

[Synonymous Homonym]

You are describing the status quo.

How would democratic socialism make anything about it easier?

Re:I'm actually not that worried about it

[Amanitin]

I know I am late to the party, but I have seen this argument many times and it is wrong. In order to hit anybody in the face with a wrench, you need to find their present location, physically send out physical thugs with a physical wrench and do the face hitting. That is a lot of effort and it doesn't scale well. Plus, when all hell breaks loose, there is the option of resistance via second amendment or flight. When everybody's everything is a mere number in a database somewhere, things like 'freeze assets of everyone present at location X at time Y' (political rally or whatever) can be done in an automated fashion with basically zero effort required and zero order scaling. And there is no straightforward way of resistance or evasion. that is a significant difference. Another aspect of 'cashless' that I never see mentioned is the institution of negative interest imposed on deposits. When there is no cash the government can basically force you to spend your money.

I am self employed

[Archfeld]

I do computer systems work, network install and trouble shooting, security system install, maintenance and trouble shooting, plus I walk dogs and am a gun smith. I work for cash or barter and make it known up front. I have a respectable checking account and a debit card for emergencies and the few things you can't avoid, like car rental. Otherwise I keep cash in a safe along with my secure papers and such. I report a modest income and pay taxes on it. I don't own a smart phone, I have an anonymous cell phone with cash purchased minutes and an email account on several public services for doing business. Almost all of my business is via word of mouth and I am doing quite well. I will not frequent a business that doesn't accept cash, except in an emergency. It helps that I have friends I can count on to help me out in some cases. It is possible to survive with out using the cashless options, but getting harder to do so.

So

[apn_k]

Without the existence cash how would one deal with something like garage/yard sales?

Re:So

[b0s0z0ku]

Something like Square or Venmo, probably.

A double edged sword

[nehumanuscrede]

There are both positives and negatives to doing away with cash, but I think the latter outweighs the former and will cause more problems than it solves.
I like to think of it this way: Imagine all the negative and stupid sh*t that happens with PayPal and then imagine that PayPal is the ONLY choice you have. :|
F*ck that.

Some potential Positive Aspects:

1) Illegal immigration takes a big hit as a bank account ( and all the identification paperwork that goes with it ) is now mandatory.
2) Bribes / off the books payments are now much more difficult if an electronic paper trail is always established.
3) No such thing as tax avoidance if everything spent / earned is audited and / or deducted down to the penny on the fly.
4) No more fighting with the soda machine that absolutely REFUSES to take your damn dollar bill. lol

Negatives:

5) #1 will cause an increase of Identity Theft
6) Banks can freeze your accounts at will for any reason leaving you unable to do anything ( even eat ) until resolved. ( Needs to be regulated )
7) Credit Cards / Debit Cards are still too easy to compromise. Will get much worse if all transactions go electronic. ( #8 becomes a HUGE problem )
8) Power or Network outages wreak havoc on systems that rely on it.
9) Transaction fees will simply be pushed onto consumers because you know they're not going to eat those costs. ( Needs to be regulated )
10) Surveillance State wet dream to be able to track ( and either authorize / deny ) ALL purchases made.
11) Banks are free to charge whatever they want for monthly account fees. A problem if a Bank Account becomes mandatory. ( Needs to be regulated )
12) Alternative options ( Bitcoin, $FutureCoin, etc ) will spring up everywhere as folks try to avoid Big Brothers bullsh*t

#6 would probably require you keep funds in multiple accounts spread across multiple banks ( or even countries ) if you don't want to run into issues.

Really the only folks who come out on top are the Businesses, Transaction Brokers ( Visa, Master Card, etc. ) and maybe Banks. Other than convenience, I don't really see any positives for the consumer at all. Convenience at the expense of privacy isn't a very good trade off in my opinion. I really don't want to live in a world where I basically have to ask permission from the Bank / Government to spend the money I make on goods or items they deem " acceptable ". Especially since the definition of " acceptable " will change over time depending on the Banks morals and / or which team ( Red or Blue ) is in power at the time.

You're really in for a world of pain if the bank you do business with decides your profession or purchased merchandise is something they don't agree with. ( Gun Dealers, Porn Industry, take your pick )

Based on all the above, I would have to say going cashless is a terrible idea until a whole lot more thought, protections and regulation are put into play.

Re:A double edged sword

[b0s0z0ku]

1. Illegal immigration is basically a problem made up by xenophobes in the US.
2. Corruption available to the average Joe and Jane is actually a good thing -- in an authoritarian society, it's nice to be able to bribe a cop to fuck off and look the other way. High-level corruption seldom uses ACTUAL cash.
3. Tax avoidance -- unlimited ability to tax by a bad government isn't a positive aspect. One means of bloodless revolution is a mass tax protest.

Re: A double edged sword

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Illegal immigration is basically a problem made up by displaced indigenous workers in the US.

FTFY

Re:A double edged sword

[Anonymous Coward]

Adding to point 11: Many banks can also require minimum deposits. I know a guy who can't meet these minimums and is literally paid in Visa gift cards. Naturally his employer got him the kind that charges a per transaction fee, but it is still cheaper than the fees banks charge for overdrawn accounts and failing to meet minimum deposit threshold.

Re: A double edged sword

[b0s0z0ku]

I didn't see very many Native Americans pulling for Trump, do you?

Re: In a cashless society all legal tender is cont

[Anonymous Coward]

A negative interest rate would mean you can get a loan and receive a compensation for it. Itâ(TM)s not gonna happen - not for end customers. It does occasionally happen for central bank deposits, the primary objective being to incite banks to invest their funds in the economy as opposed to just keeping them in the central bank at a loss. But that negative interest never reaches the consumers - we can only dream about it (I for one would like very much to be compensated for my loans).

Transaction fees and corporate control

[WaffleMonster]

Willing to entertain a specific replacement for cash on the merits so long as it provides similar levels of availability, privacy and freedom as cash does today.

One thing is for sure if there is not going to be cash then governments have to step up and fulfill basic role of providing electronic equivalent of currency same as tax payer funds currently going into managing circulation of physical currency.

Corporations who can set whatever conditions they want, charge ridiculous transaction fees and don't answer to the public/voters must not be allowed to become defacto middle-man controlling all transactions.

We need to adopt instant banking payments similar to SWIFTs solution to have a credible alternative to centralized CC systems. Hand waving think decentralized pay pal without pay pal's transaction fees. It should cost me the same to exchange 10 cents as it does 10 million dollars and I should have the freedom to pick a bank with the most favorable terms. Retailers should feel comfortable passing transaction fees associated with a specific pay method on to the customer rather than absorbing it and allowing it to be externalized. Everyone's feet needs to be held to the fire rather than current system of Visa setting the rules and demanding everyone fall in line or die.

Re:Transaction fees and corporate control

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember Visa and Mastercard have already been convicted for price fixing, but some dumber countries did not act.

The price of doing transactions has plumeted - yet not one red cent has been passed on to either the merchand or the consumer. Ripped off.

Predictably this would cause divorces. The real cost of shoes handbags and makeup would appear (many women use cash and card to hide the true cost)- sex shop purchases, beer purchases, strip club tips = oh boy. Meanwhile your average tradesman will NOT take card because 90% is cash.

The danger always exists

[Anonymous Coward]

We already live with a terrible quality of life and things seems to be getting worse. Maybe a cashless society would be better. But for this happens it's necessary those large muiti-nationals companies be splited and been taking care from the government in the country they operate. Because the problems we have today is basically due lobby and doing anything to satisfy shareholders and their never ending need to have more profits at any cost. Society is crumbling because of those companies and those 'standards' that just help them and nobody else

Cash is much cheaper

[DogDude]

Cash is much cheaper than credit cards. Anybody who tells you that it costs 2.5-3% to handle cash is trying to sell you merchant services.

Although, the fact that cash is cheaper doesn't really make a difference. Average people are willingly paying a 3% Mastercard/Visa tax on everything they buy (with a card). People are so stupid and greedy, it's kinda' sickening.

Re:Cash is much cheaper

[Z00L00K]

You have to count in the costs you as a customer don't see that are applied to the shops where they have to pay to get the money deposited to the bank counted and to get a bunch of small change coins from the bank.

Add to it the risk that the people handling the money transfers run the risk of robbery, equipment to safely handle the cash and the time used to take care of counting and packing the cash. It all adds up and the card transaction fee is then not as bad as it looks in theory.

Re:Cash is much cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because making cash (coins and bills) are free, it doesn't cost anything. Neither do handling of it. Nor retirement of bills too damaged to be safely used. /sarcasm

Bullshit! I have worked for a larger chain of stores where my mother was part of the management. I saw the costs for us buying change from the banks (and often met the armed guards carrying bags of coins to as) as well as the guards coming to get the bills from last day. So if you think it is just a scam from someone selling you merchant services, you obviously have not been working in a business with a huge volume of cash.

Card costs are just more obvious to the end user, cash cost are more opaque and harder to explain (no, last night a lot of people didn't pay with coins so we had to order more change from the bank than the week before).

Re:Cash is much cheaper

[DogDude]

I understand that. None of what you describe comes anywhere near the 2.5%-3% fees of a credit card. It costs our brick-and-mortar retail business about 0.05% to handle cash.

It's a power shift

[Dmitri_Yuriescu]

Who issues the money, hold the power. (You can even find a medieval quote about faces on coins.) Cashless solutions isn't the worst problem, but it is part of a trend moving power from governments to private banks. It is huge and not discussed a lot. Check out Positive Money at http://positivemoney.org/.

Suica

[Anonymous Coward]

I use suica (Japan's train card) everywhere I can, since it reduces my need to visit the atm so often. You can use regular suica cards or your phone, assuming your phone has a Felica chip, and you can charge your balance with cash or credit card. The credit card companies have no idea what I buy or where, because it all registers as "suica charge ". If I look at suica transaction history it just shows "charge" or "retail purchase". You also don't need internet to use suica or to charge it with cash since the value is contained within the card itself.

Re: Suica

[Anonymous Coward]

It's totally impossible to analyze data combined from multiple databases. They're definitely aren't any mature, high quality FOSS and proprietary software tools for just that task.

Re:Suica

[Viol8]

Except the credit card companies know you use the train , almost certainly know where you topped it up so could analyse your travel patterns. Also the train company knows where and when you travel too. If you think this card as as anonymous as cash then you're obviously just another idiot millenial.

The very same danger of any dictatorship.

[Anonymous Coward]

Metal/paper cash are physical objects you only need to have in hand to operate
with. Cash-less solution, even Bitcoin&co., need hw (things you can't really
control yourself, things produced by very few peoples, things very few people
can produce materially), connections (operate by very few ISPs around the
world, under THEIR control, not yours).

IOW with cash we have a "balanced control", the State can control enough to
determine if you are a normal, presumably honest, citizen or there are
something not normal with you. That's generally needed to avoid criminal
activities, so for the general interest. However State can't lock you down,
can't oblige you to have your cash in some private institutions (Banks, for
instance). You have enough freedom to survive a dictatorship, enough power
to brake a dictatorship by keep the economy up by nature.

The very same thing is for any centralized stuff. We choose democracy witch
means government by many to avoid power concentration, in French revolution
we programmatically split representatives power in different subjects with
different interests and the power to lock down each other to avoid the need
of a civil war when some dictatorship try to born. In IT we build decentralized
internet, we prefer clusters to mainframes for the very same reason. I do not
know if total decentralization work, however cash prove to be a good
compromise. Cash-less, from PayPal+Visa/Mastercard/... lock to Wikileaks just
as an example prove to be a dictatorship.

Remembering Puerto Rico

[Anonymous Coward]

Has it been that long since Puerto Rico was wiped out by the storm and no one could buy anything unless they had cash. Remember how they flew in technicians, ATM machines, portal cell towers, generators and the like just to be able to get cash into peoples hands so they could by food and water? Seems like an obvious example of how cashless SUCKS!

Tax evader? Or just avoider?

[Bruce66423]

To operate a society needs to have taxes paid. If people refuse to do so, then eventually civilisation will collapse. Taxes are needed for infrastructure - roads etc. Taxes are needed for the police and prisons. Taxes are needed for care of the insane. Taxes constitute insurance against health care costs: if you have a major medical incident, who's going to pay?

Hobbes argued in his defence of the role of the state that if you insist on rejecting its rules, you should leave, and made being allowed to leave a fundamental right. By contrast you seem to be a parasite, depending on the taxes others pay. Is that fair?

Re:Tax evader? Or just avoider?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's investigate Bruce66423 and report him!

Captcha: peered

Re:Tax evader? Or just avoider?

[Archfeld]

I pay my taxes , and have medical insurance that I pay for myself as well. I spent 17 years working for a large corporation paying into a system that I never collected a dime from, be it unemployment or so-called welfare. I pay sales tax, vehicle registration, property tax, and what I believe to be a fair amount of income tax. You seem to have jumped to an erroneous conclusion that because I prefer to use cash that I don't contribute, which leads me to the conclusion that you are a taint licking douche flute wance...

Not sure if this is just sci-fi, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is one possibility that could have world-wide consequences for anybody going cashless. An EMP flood from a never-before-seen level of solar storm.

These things have historically wiped out satellites only and made it harder for some transactions or systems to work, but theoretically this could happen on a much stronger scale, enough to wipe out any digital device that isn't in a concrete bunker somewhere, on the entire planet.

Not too bad for corps and hopefully not for governments, they'll eventually get enough machines working again to recall the last dollar amounts they had from those bunker backups. Very bad for plebs, as cash will be all that works, banks won't have working ATMs, our smartphones, tablets and PCs will be gone, and every other non-bunkered machine will be junk too. Going cashless makes this scenario even more grim.

If somebody else actually knows better and can definitively call this scenario pseudo-scientific guesswork, feel free, it'd make me sleep better at night.

Why not simply Bitcoin 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoin

- government can not deny you right to transact in it

- government can not inflate it by just adding more 1000000s to his account

- government can not (without some type of physical direct coercion) steal it from you

Also, when used with Bitcoin LightningNetwork

- transactions arrive in 5 seconds

- transaction fee is around 0.01 USD (currently more like 0.001 USD)

- more privacy (not visible to everyone in the world even by bitcoin address)

In addition, tools to increase privacy are being developed

- coinjoin

- new planned bulletproofs

Re:Why not simply Bitcoin 3

[PPH]

government can not deny you right to transact in it

The government can deny you the right to transact practically anything just by declaring the possession of alternatives as money laundering. And without Net Neutrality, what makes you think that ISPs won't choose 'voluntarily' to block exchange sites?

government can not (without some type of physical direct coercion) steal it from you

Script kiddies can clean out a Bitcoin exchange. What makes you think that the expertise behind Stuxnet can't be directed against Bitcoin?

Round and round we go

[crimson tsunami]

https://slashdot.org/comments....

3% by 76% to 1%

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny thing about money... you don't get to buy when you are short (even a little short -- say, 1%).

Don't believe me? When's the last time you got a 1% discount on a house, car, or groceries, because someone was kind? Yes, it happens. But the milk of human kindness is exceedingly *rare*. Don't count on it when you are 1% short for a medical procedure or test.

In the US, a cashless society implies fees. Specifically, a 3% fee by 76% of households paid to the 1%. These amounts add up. Among other things, this '3% of 76%' funds massive profit-taking by banks and financial networks. The leftovers dregs fund rewards programs for the 25% of households that pay off credit card balances each month. (Bread-and-circus rewards in my view.) The amounts skimmed wreak real havoc, especially at the poorer end of society: lost money, lost options, lost lives.

It's in our collective interest (including the interest of the 1%) that a cashless society not come to pass. And that e-payments execute in a non-profit, mutual, network structure.

Re:and when the system goes down? or they don't ta

[Anonymous Coward]

We're always acting like the techno-society is here to stay but it's wishful thinking.

Here in California

[Anonymous Coward]

During power outages or computer system outages, stores just shut down. They dont even *try* to work the till manually,

With that being the case, society can now be controlled entirely by simply shutting off the tap.

Just fucking great.

Privacy dangers

[Anonymous Coward]

Without more privacy laws, they can tell a lot about us and use the information against us.

We need to make it a felony to sell, rent, loan, or use the information collected on behalf of others not directly involved in the payment transaction. We should also require that the transaction data be deleted upon payment by the card holder and require a warrant for any government collection of data. This would greatly reduce the efforts to convert to cashless.

I'd like to see the retailers bear full responsibility for breaches at their locations that lead to identity theft AND the data restrictions and legal protections against fraudulent use apply to debit cards as well as credit cards.

Unfortunately, the PTB will not allow consumer protection to interfere with their data gathering.

Re: In a cashless society all legal tender is cont

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody will give you a loan in a negative interest rate regardless of central bank rate. The central bank might influence the rate, but it can't force the banks to loan. Even if they did loan, they'll add enough surcharges so that they won't lose. So a negative rate is survivable for the big banks.

The negative interest rate will ONLY apply to your savings and pensions. You cannot avoid saving (and in many places, you are legally obligated to set aside funds for pensions etc.), so you will have no choice but to lose. There won't be any loans to compensate you, since they don't have to lend while you have to save.

Re: In a cashless society all legal tender is cont

[misexistentialist]

People wouldn't deposit their money in the bank if they didn't have a legal right to withdraw it when they wanted, but in a cashless system they have no control over their money, so the terms of accessing it could be anything. No doubt the economists have their God fantasy all worked out, even in the absence of a crisis there might be limits on how much you are allowed to spend on fast food or gasoline, for example.

I'm pretty close to paper free today

[williambbertram]

The only time I really ever have cash is when someone puts it in a holiday card, or on rare occasions where my son needs it for something that's "cash only" at his school. I definitely never "miss" it, but I'm also 100% positive I don't understand the gestalt.

Some outcomes could be....

[Maelwryth]

....an inability to buy certain sets of products. For instance your card could be refused as you had also bought certain other products that could be combined to make an explosive. You might not even know what those products are.

....centralised control of spending such as a quota on CO2 spending habits or additional taxes to pay for carbon offset.

....geographic control such as we have nowadays (eg; your card was used in Ghana) but fine grained so you have to gain approval from your bank to travel.

....large scale rioting and theft when power and/or banking systems go down due to there being no other alternative currency.

etc.....

Re:Some outcomes could be....

[PPH]

You've eaten HOW MUCH fast food this month??! Your health insurance premiums are going up.

And then there's the booze and cigarettes. Weed? Cannot have, no matter what your state says. The feds have the banking industry by the balls.

Re:In a cashless society all legal tender is contr

[voss]

Why do you think poor people keep money in cash now? Because if you have small amounts in the bank you already have a negative interest rate...its called a monthly service charge or transaction fees,etc.

Leaving Slashdot....

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS dialogue decided it.

The conspiracy rhetoric and lack of intelligent debate has me going away.

A perspective.... I PREFER cashless, itâ(TM)s faster to interact, reduces my own risk. I live in Canada and raised 3 children. I used to argue with schools regularly about their form of payment (cheque only). I told them I would be happy to pay them in a plethora of mechanisms, including cash... but no... schools insist on being paid by cheque, which is the ONE form I abandoned 20 years ago. Letâ(TM)s start a consipiracy dialogue on THAT topic, maybe Iâ(TM)ll stick around for entertainment only ;)

Re:Leaving Slashdot....

[Anonymous Coward]

You should like cheques, it's cashless.

Read your bill

[shayd2]

If you read a U.S. bill, it says "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private."

Go to a cashless shop; offer to pay with bill(s); sue them.

Just be sure to get good management for your new business

Re:Read your bill

[Anonymous Coward]

The key word there is "debts". If you go to a "shop" where you get your item/service up front then and then they balk at you paying in cash you might have a case (car service, dine in restaurant, etc). However locations where you instead receive ownership of your item/service after payment are likely well within their rights to refuse you service (grocery/retail/clothing stores, fast food restaurants, garden shops, etc). The latter are more common, at least in my area.

File this under "Duh..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it has dangers, almost nothing about it is redeemable when used on a mass scale. It is usually based on centralized transaction systems, creating a perfect area for intrusive governments and corporations to control society (lock accounts, confiscate funds, track usage, etc). It is almost always useless in disaster situations (economic, war, natural), increasing the hardship for those trying to get by when they occur. It tends to be credit based which for some reason induces people to spend beyond their means. And it creates an easy location for nefarious individuals to pilfer massive amounts of money. It has its uses, but society shouldn't become too dependent on it because it WILL end badly.

No cash = No privacy

[biggaijin]

When cash is gone, there will be an electronic trail available to tell anyone who can look exactly where and when you have been spending all your time and what you ate for lunch every day, The New Jersey "Easy Pass" system for paying highway tolls had only been in place for a few months before it was used in a court case to prove that a cheating spouse was not where he said he was at a particular time. This is a very small, minor example of what can happen. I prefer cash, thanks.

Slate Propagana

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen a flurry of recent articles citing how businesses are refusing cash.

There may be a few hipster-run taquerias in this Slate writer's daily activities that prefer Square to cash. But, on the whole, it is utter bullshit. Most businesses will take whatever payment form a bulk of their customers want to pay.

Only a few years ago, fast food restaurants were cash only. They didn't start accepting credit cards due to efficiencies, security, or cost reduction. Credit cards offer almost none of those advantages over cash. They started accepting them because the bulk of their customers wanted to use that payment method as the didn't want to carry cash, or didn't have enough money and had to finance their lunch.

This hasn't changed. yet despite the fact that the bulk of fast food transactions are now credit cards, exactly none of the major chains and none of the mom and pops that I have encountered has any problem accepting cash. In fact they prefer it as it increases their profit margin.

So, why is this subject being repeatedly resurfaced lately? Why is such a blatant lie being repeated? Why are people seemingly accepting it as accurate? Who, other than the obvious credit card industry, is pushing this agenda?

This Slate article and others like it are propaganda!

One word

[denis.goddard]

Monero

Duh. Yes, more so than any other.

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh. If you put your money into an ATM and one day the ATM just says, "Sorry Charlie. StarKist don't like you." What do you do? What do you do when no one listens to you rant and scream because face it, no one cares about you and your situation?

Without the ability to hold your wealth you are always at the mercy of those that hold it for you. If the government grabs your account, locks your bitcoin down, or simply prohibits those institutions from doing business with you than you are totally screwed. Heck, you can't even hire a lawyer as you have no money let alone buy a cup of coffee or a meal.

If you are a celeb or just someone who the media likes to follow around forget it, you won't be able to find a minutes worth of peace as every transaction you do can be and will be watched. I can say that having someone following you around recording all of your actions without your consent is no fun. I never know who exactly they are and why they are doing it, nor what false accusations in the future I'll be charged with. Your paranoia grows along with your anger and hatred. Imagine a society where everyone can find out anything about your past transactions. I'm sure that there are a lot of butt squelching occurring when people think about the foolish things that they have done and just wish to forget.

'Cashless' in a world of ZERO data security

[Rick Schumann]

With the current state of data security everywhere in the world, the world being 'cashless', where everything is paid electronically even if it's a small-change purchase, is roughly equivalent to just walking around bad neighborhoods with $100 bills hanging out of your back pocket, it's not a matter of if you'll get robbed, it's a matter of when you'll get robbed. Fight against this 'cashless' bullshit, it's a bad idea.

refusing cash is for idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Refusing cash is for idiots, here's why : it voids the debt.

https://www.federalreserve.gov...

Rob you for your credit cards

[bussdriver]

It doesn't work ONLY because they let you LIVE after they steal your cards so you can report them stolen. If they simply put you into a coma or kill you, it'll be a while before your cards are frozen. Same with your phone; after the cut off your finger or beat the unlock PIN out from you.

So much safer to let them have some cash.

FYI

[bussdriver]

In the USA it is required by law that all debts be payable by US Dollars. They can not legally require only an alternative to cash.

Re:FYI

[JesseMcDonald]

In the USA it is required by law that all debts be payable by US Dollars.

Emphasis on debts. Businesses which do not extend credit are under no obligation to accept cash in exchange for goods or services.

It's the same with electric cars

[RogueWarrior65]

Cash is totally anonymous and its use can't be restricted. If you have cash, you can go anywhere you want, any time you want, and do anything you want without having to ask permission from some faceless agency. An electronic payment can be denied if some faceless agency decides that you aren't allowed to do whatever it is you're trying to pay for. By the same token, electric cars are a slippery slope. As long as you have cash, you can buy gasoline and go wherever you want, whenever you want. But if you have to use some internet-connected machine to charge an electric car, the aforementioned faceless agency can decide that no, as a matter of fact, you aren't allowed to charge your car. To be sure, restricting your movement is easier when the car has to get permission to move at all via wireless internet but even if you manage to disable that aspect of it, eventually, you'll have to charge the battery and no charging station takes cash.

Re:It's the same with electric cars

[b0s0z0ku]

Charge at home. Slip a motel clerk some cash to "borrow" their 220v dryer outlet over night.

You mean we're not already cashles?

[Tony Isaac]

Of course, I know that cash still exists. But I can't remember the last time I actually used it.

Funny..

[SuperDre]

Not even two weeks ago we had a problem here were noone with a meastro related pin/creditcard could pay due to a malfunction. Also it isn't uncommon for networks being down where pin-machines don't work (or the pin-machines themselves are broken, happens in our bar regularly). Also not everywhere where it's digital only there is a good sign before you enter that it's digital only, so how to deal with customers who don't want to pay digital and only cash (you should always be able to accept cash, even if it's at one station and it's station has a timelock of 10 minutes in case of robberies).

Cashless society is inevitable totalitarianism

[Anonymous Coward]

Never, ever, give the government or any central institution, really, more power than you would give THAT EVIL OTHER CANDIDATE, whoever that might be. How can people that hate Trump, and Slate Magazine hates Trump, advocate to giving the government more powers? It's crazy. All day the same in most mainstream media: Page 1 "Trump is authoritarian" and the very next page "hmm, why do we need anonymous cash and the right to keep and bear arms?"

It literally doesn't compute with me. After all the lessons of the 20th century, with an average of one European country turning into a dictatorship up every 10-15 years and an average of one country per 25 years that has murdered at least a million of their own citizens, it is absolutely inconceivable that people still advocate for giving their government more power.

I can't even begin to understand why people cannot recognize that "a government turning into a tyranny" and "a tyranny murdering a million citizens" are not rare and inexplicable outliers, these are *common events*.

Anyone who doesn't know that the chance of "government starts murdering citizens" is about 1-3% per year per country is utterly incapable of deciding what powers the government shall have. Anyone who doesn't care must be regarded as complicit in the act.

Re:In a cashless society all legal tender is contr

[Agripa]

So there's nothing preventing the government from taxing your savings by declaring a negative interest rate or from bailing out banks using your money (a 'bail-in').

Or they could control the interest rate such that the inflation rate is always higher.

Re:In a cashless society all legal tender is contr

[urusan]

You realize that they can do those things without a cashless society, right? Just pass a law to tax savings or bail out the banks.

Simply moving savings to cash doesn't prevent these actions because it's illegal not to follow these rules and they're relatively well enforced. Your money is already their money.

Racist, against the poor

[ebvwfbw]

Black people often don't have credit so this hurts them the most.

order something; buy something THEN pay

[bussdriver]

If they wouldn't let me pay then I'd leave it behind right there. They can put it away. If it is food.... then it's a debt and it's their fault for letting me eat it before paying for it.

Re:order something; buy something THEN pay

[JesseMcDonald]

If they wouldn't let me pay then I'd leave it behind right there. They can put it away.

If you knew up front that they didn't accept cash then this is pure vandalism. On the other hand, if a reasonable person in your position would not have known about the policy (your first time & not clearly posted) then that would be a reasonable course of action. The store would probably prefer to have their own employees restocking the shelves, actually, just to ensure everything goes back where it belongs.

If it is food.... then it's a debt and it's their fault for letting me eat it before paying for it.

If you're referring to a restaurant where the expectation is that you eat first and pay later, then I agree that this represents a debt and legal tender laws would apply. If you offer to settle your bill in full with cash (with no expectation of receiving change) and they refuse, they can't later legally claim you still owe them for the meal. The simple solution if they don't want to deal with cash is to collect the payment up front when the order is placed.