I'm all for privacy-respecting payment methods, and I'm familiar with the paradox of thrift, but I'm not at all convinced that negative interest rates are a net

I'm all for privacy-respecting payment methods, and I'm familiar with the paradox of thrift, but I'm not at all convinced that negative interest rates are a net social benefit. The experience of the past 10+ years has been that ultra-loose monetary policy is far more about bidding up the prices of existing assets than encouraging productive investment. So it disproportionately benefits the old and rich, who own assets, at the expense of the young and poor, who hope to acquire them. I also don't see that there's much difference between nominal negative rates on the one hand and ZIRP plus inflation on the other, which is what pretty much all the big central banks are doing already and which cash doesn't protect against at all. They both punish saving at a time when the ratio of retired to working people is increasing and the latter's ability to support the former is looking shaky. There's a separate argument to be had about financial repression [1], but it's a bit more contentious and I don't think you need to accept the badness of that to be against negative interest rates. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_repression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_repression