4 ms·

That is such a dangerous trend. I perfectly understand the appeal though. Automatic book keeping, no more cash to move around that can temp thieves, less mista

That is such a dangerous trend. I perfectly understand the appeal though. Automatic book keeping, no more cash to move around that can temp thieves, less mistakes and cons. But for the society ? This just get rid of another grey area, a safety valve, a space so you have margin to maneuver. Indeed, no systems are perfect, but they will try to enforce their own rules, and have a big inertia and cost to be changed. Having those greys area allows for people not to be crunched by the unperfect system, or to experiment with alternatives that the system would not let exist. Without cash, kids can't mess around as much without adults knowing. But doing so is very important to their development. Without cash, you can't pay for a service that is illegal, even if it's not immoral. Do you know that we have freaking tomatoes that are legal to grow, but illegal to sell in France ? Yes, delicious, healthy tomatoes. Without cash, you can't finance an activity deemed immoral, even if it's legal. Because people will learn about it and make your life a leaving hell. Without cash, you can't disappear. But what if you need to ? Do you really trust the system to protect you if your life goes south ? We are not in the movies, the cops won't post guards in front of your house because you dated a drug dealer. Without cash, you don't have the right to make mistakes. How many of us are perfect ? I'm certainly not, and I paid for plenty of my sins. I have many purchases I'm not proud of, but I would like them to be forgotten. Without cash, there is no black market. Which mean if I'm looking for something that is not allowed in my country (say, boric acid to kill cock roaches), I can't. Without cash, society is less resilient. Power outage, network trouble or your card being unusable make you unable to pay for anything. Without cash, we give way too much power to entities managing the payment systems. Card companies don't like you ? You can't pay or take money anymore. That happened with wikileak, remember ? It was not illegal in my country, but VISA and paypal sure prevented me to make a donation to them. They stopped me to use my money in a legal way because they didn't like it. This is such a slippery slope. So yeah, cash can be misused in plenty of ways. So can be a knife. But I certainly not want my life to be limited to a spoon-only consumption. Also, saying it will fight cash laundering is telling only half of the story. The super-rich will still be able to do so.

ksec 9y ago
I love cash, but I really dislike coins. What we need isn't a cash or E-payment only, but a Hybrid. You should be able to pay with cash, and the changes should automatically be refunded to a payment system, since the retailer are highly unlikely to change their 98 or $99.99 pricing, those pennies will continue to exist. This system and tech is already in multiple places in South East Asia. The problem is companies like to hype themselves as a replacement of cash, and most people aren't aware of the privacy concern and implication with a cashless society.
- pc86 9y ago
  Combining cash and card payments gives you the worst of all of them. Buying things takes even longer (giving them cash, them counting it, calculating your change, giving them your payment system card or whatever, them applying your change to that) and you still have all the privacy concerns in the paper trail of what places have been issuing you change and when.
  - geggam 9y ago
    When I go to Mexico its mostly cash dealings. The cashiers work much faster than the credit card machines and people act a bit put off if you pull out a credit card. It is interesting to see the difference from the US to Mexico.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    When everything works, electronic payment system are way more convenient. But that's a big problem with our current societies: we keep trading "good for democracy" to "convenient for best case". People use electronic voting machines, centralize all their data in the GAFAs databases, buy everything from amazon, get all entertainments from DRMized ad saturated controlled medias... And then, when you discuss at diner about the big world issues, everybody say that "we can't do anything about it". Well, for a start, we could live our live thinking about the society we are building instead of just what's comfortable right now. We are enjoying a lof of peace right now in rich countries. It's not going to last forever, since nothing does (and history calls). In 10 years or 200 years, our countries will drift to a dictatorship phase. But it's not an immediate state you get to. It's a slow decent into madness. You really, really want to have cash to have a healthy society. You need something malevolent players can't control. You need something less centralized so you can't be stopped from using it, or by spied on if you use it. At least for a reasonable small amount. I get you need control for big sums. There is not good reason for a company or an entity to hide money transactions. But for humans ? There are a ton of good ones, and it's just being a good citizen to stand for keeping it around.
ThrowawayIP 9y ago
>Without cash, we give way too much power to entities managing the payment systems. Card companies don't like you ? You can't pay or take money anymore. That happened with wikileak, remember ? It was not illegal in my country, but VISA and paypal sure prevented me to make a donation to them. They stopped me to use my money in a legal way because they didn't like it. This is such a slippery slope. Also, payment processors are not legally required to issue cards to everyone who asks. This adds yet another burden to those who are already poor/un-banked/un-documented.
- sametmax 9y ago
  And all cards are not created equals. They are literally tokens of how private companies see you. When I started being a consultant, I had suddenly very low and very large ups and downs on my bank account. It was very irregular and my bank decided I was not to be trusted anymore and switched my regular card for a toy one. I could not even pay tolls and parking with it, and was caped to 500$ I could pay with for a month. In that case, having cash is the only reason you can keep living like you used too. Also I switched bank.

ksec 9y ago

I love cash, but I really dislike coins. What we need isn't a cash or E-payment only, but a Hybrid. You should be able to pay with cash, and the changes should automatically be refunded to a payment system, since the retailer are highly unlikely to change their 98 or $99.99 pricing, those pennies will continue to exist. This system and tech is already in multiple places in South East Asia. The problem is companies like to hype themselves as a replacement of cash, and most people aren't aware of the privacy concern and implication with a cashless society.

pc86 9y ago
Combining cash and card payments gives you the worst of all of them. Buying things takes even longer (giving them cash, them counting it, calculating your change, giving them your payment system card or whatever, them applying your change to that) and you still have all the privacy concerns in the paper trail of what places have been issuing you change and when.
- geggam 9y ago
  When I go to Mexico its mostly cash dealings. The cashiers work much faster than the credit card machines and people act a bit put off if you pull out a credit card. It is interesting to see the difference from the US to Mexico.
- sametmax 9y ago
  When everything works, electronic payment system are way more convenient. But that's a big problem with our current societies: we keep trading "good for democracy" to "convenient for best case". People use electronic voting machines, centralize all their data in the GAFAs databases, buy everything from amazon, get all entertainments from DRMized ad saturated controlled medias... And then, when you discuss at diner about the big world issues, everybody say that "we can't do anything about it". Well, for a start, we could live our live thinking about the society we are building instead of just what's comfortable right now. We are enjoying a lof of peace right now in rich countries. It's not going to last forever, since nothing does (and history calls). In 10 years or 200 years, our countries will drift to a dictatorship phase. But it's not an immediate state you get to. It's a slow decent into madness. You really, really want to have cash to have a healthy society. You need something malevolent players can't control. You need something less centralized so you can't be stopped from using it, or by spied on if you use it. At least for a reasonable small amount. I get you need control for big sums. There is not good reason for a company or an entity to hide money transactions. But for humans ? There are a ton of good ones, and it's just being a good citizen to stand for keeping it around.

ThrowawayIP 9y ago

>Without cash, we give way too much power to entities managing the payment systems. Card companies don't like you ? You can't pay or take money anymore. That happened with wikileak, remember ? It was not illegal in my country, but VISA and paypal sure prevented me to make a donation to them. They stopped me to use my money in a legal way because they didn't like it. This is such a slippery slope. Also, payment processors are not legally required to issue cards to everyone who asks. This adds yet another burden to those who are already poor/un-banked/un-documented.

sametmax 9y ago
And all cards are not created equals. They are literally tokens of how private companies see you. When I started being a consultant, I had suddenly very low and very large ups and downs on my bank account. It was very irregular and my bank decided I was not to be trusted anymore and switched my regular card for a toy one. I could not even pay tolls and parking with it, and was caped to 500$ I could pay with for a month. In that case, having cash is the only reason you can keep living like you used too. Also I switched bank.