5 ms·

> The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. I don't think you realize how cashless society really is. For a long time, we've been running on fiat mo

by lhorie 5y ago

> The simple answer is to reject the cashless society. I don't think you realize how cashless society really is. For a long time, we've been running on fiat money, debt, and other forms of monetary constructs that are, for all intents and purposes, just numbers in some database without the backing of physical bills. Imagine coordinating all of the stakeholders for a condominium building project with only paper currency; it'd be a madness only marginally better than bartering. The idea of rejecting a cashless society is eerily similar to Project Mayhem from the movie Fight Club, with all the chaotic anarchy that supposedly comes with it.

throwaway22032 5y ago
No-one is talking about banning the concept of a transaction. It's about being able to pay for basic needs (rent, bills, food) via cash. This is not some impossible crazy thing. Cash was used for >90% of purchases including weekly bills not that long ago whilst skyscrapers and big business deals didn't involve briefcases of cash being thrown around.
- globular-toast 5y ago
  > It's about being able to pay for basic needs (rent, bills, food) via cash. One thing many don't realise is just how difficult the banks have made this for us now. The money supply consists of three parts: physical cash, digital central brank reserves, and digital private bank money. This is how it is in the UK, but the US will be roughly the same. Physical cash, everyone knows. It's printed (and destroyed) by the government. Digital central bank reserves exist in a ledger kept by the government which private banks use to settle up every night (to handle inter-bank transfers). Digital private bank money is money created by private banks when they issue loans. It is what exists between someone taking out a loan and paying back the loan. Digital bank money is about 80% of the money supply. Central bank reserves about 18%. Physical cash: 2-3%. The banks have inflated the money supply so much it's simply not possible to live with cash for most people any more. Assuming someone pays rent, it's not unusual to get paid in digital bank money and for 40% of that to be digitally transferred to your landlord. None of this ever becomes physical. There simply isn't enough physical money to go around. How do we stop this? It would take a huge government intervention and a brave one. Society is on the brink of chaos at any moment and everyone is too afraid to rock the boat.
- aembleton 5y ago
  How do you even pay for rent or utility bills with cash? I'm 39; so maybe too young to have experienced that but how does it even practically work? Did your landlord pop round once a month? For utility bills, did you go to the bank and ask them to transfer cash to a utility company; or maybe at a post office? Or did the utility company send someone around to collect cash payments?
  - rbut 5y ago
    Rent - Drop cash off at the Real Estate Agent/Property Manager Bills - Pay in cash at the Post Office In Australia I still see people in Post Offices waiting to pay their bills. Some simply haven't got out of the habbit yet..
  - throwaway22032 5y ago
    You're here because you're an engineer, right? I have a bank account. You give me £100 and tell me to send £100 to 00273 00338435. Done. As other posters have said, in many countries this is a Service(tm) but generally, unless you've gimped payments anyone can just do this.
    - aembleton 5y ago
      Good way to clean some dirty money
- lhorie 5y ago
  But surely you must realize that there's more to money than just paying bills. Japan still has a strong cash culture, but even there people put their money in a bank. A cash society cannot be resilient to an evil government if you consider that said government could theoretically freeze funds at the bank level. In fact, this scenario sort of happened in Brazil in the 90s, and that's a country that had a very large portion of the population that was unable to transact digitally (because credit cards/ApplePay/etc weren't really a thing back then and a lot of people were poor to begin with). If you want to argue for a world where said attack vector isn't possible, then you're implicitly arguing for a world where people literally stash money under their mattress as a standard model of security, but that implies constructs like mortgages can't exist. Point being, how money is represented has a big impact on how society is able to function.
  - throwaway22032 5y ago
    There is a distinction between freezing someone's accounts and ability to open accounts for the long term vs. them beginning to starve within days because they don't have any way to pay for anything immediately.
    - lhorie 5y ago
      > them beginning to starve within days because they don't have any way to pay for anything immediately I mean, if that's the only scenario you care about, you can just carry more cash in your wallet. But when you said "a system that allows governments to arbitrarily "turn off" thousands or millions of people at the push of a button", that sounded like you were worried about more than just not having enough money for groceries for the week.
tryptophan 5y ago
Paper money in the usa is a fiat money... (as is bank ledger money) All fiat means is that it is unbacked by physical things, such as gold or silver.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> The idea of rejecting a cashless society is eerily similar to Project Mayhem from the movie Fight Club, with all the chaotic anarchy that supposedly comes with it. Fight Club is satire.

by lhorie 5y ago

throwaway22032 5y ago

No-one is talking about banning the concept of a transaction. It's about being able to pay for basic needs (rent, bills, food) via cash. This is not some impossible crazy thing. Cash was used for >90% of purchases including weekly bills not that long ago whilst skyscrapers and big business deals didn't involve briefcases of cash being thrown around.

globular-toast 5y ago
> It's about being able to pay for basic needs (rent, bills, food) via cash. One thing many don't realise is just how difficult the banks have made this for us now. The money supply consists of three parts: physical cash, digital central brank reserves, and digital private bank money. This is how it is in the UK, but the US will be roughly the same. Physical cash, everyone knows. It's printed (and destroyed) by the government. Digital central bank reserves exist in a ledger kept by the government which private banks use to settle up every night (to handle inter-bank transfers). Digital private bank money is money created by private banks when they issue loans. It is what exists between someone taking out a loan and paying back the loan. Digital bank money is about 80% of the money supply. Central bank reserves about 18%. Physical cash: 2-3%. The banks have inflated the money supply so much it's simply not possible to live with cash for most people any more. Assuming someone pays rent, it's not unusual to get paid in digital bank money and for 40% of that to be digitally transferred to your landlord. None of this ever becomes physical. There simply isn't enough physical money to go around. How do we stop this? It would take a huge government intervention and a brave one. Society is on the brink of chaos at any moment and everyone is too afraid to rock the boat.
aembleton 5y ago
How do you even pay for rent or utility bills with cash? I'm 39; so maybe too young to have experienced that but how does it even practically work? Did your landlord pop round once a month? For utility bills, did you go to the bank and ask them to transfer cash to a utility company; or maybe at a post office? Or did the utility company send someone around to collect cash payments?
- rbut 5y ago
  Rent - Drop cash off at the Real Estate Agent/Property Manager Bills - Pay in cash at the Post Office In Australia I still see people in Post Offices waiting to pay their bills. Some simply haven't got out of the habbit yet..
- throwaway22032 5y ago
  You're here because you're an engineer, right? I have a bank account. You give me £100 and tell me to send £100 to 00273 00338435. Done. As other posters have said, in many countries this is a Service(tm) but generally, unless you've gimped payments anyone can just do this.
  - aembleton 5y ago
    Good way to clean some dirty money
lhorie 5y ago
But surely you must realize that there's more to money than just paying bills. Japan still has a strong cash culture, but even there people put their money in a bank. A cash society cannot be resilient to an evil government if you consider that said government could theoretically freeze funds at the bank level. In fact, this scenario sort of happened in Brazil in the 90s, and that's a country that had a very large portion of the population that was unable to transact digitally (because credit cards/ApplePay/etc weren't really a thing back then and a lot of people were poor to begin with). If you want to argue for a world where said attack vector isn't possible, then you're implicitly arguing for a world where people literally stash money under their mattress as a standard model of security, but that implies constructs like mortgages can't exist. Point being, how money is represented has a big impact on how society is able to function.
- throwaway22032 5y ago
  There is a distinction between freezing someone's accounts and ability to open accounts for the long term vs. them beginning to starve within days because they don't have any way to pay for anything immediately.
  - lhorie 5y ago
    > them beginning to starve within days because they don't have any way to pay for anything immediately I mean, if that's the only scenario you care about, you can just carry more cash in your wallet. But when you said "a system that allows governments to arbitrarily "turn off" thousands or millions of people at the push of a button", that sounded like you were worried about more than just not having enough money for groceries for the week.

tryptophan 5y ago

Paper money in the usa is a fiat money... (as is bank ledger money) All fiat means is that it is unbacked by physical things, such as gold or silver.

heavyset_go 5y ago

> The idea of rejecting a cashless society is eerily similar to Project Mayhem from the movie Fight Club, with all the chaotic anarchy that supposedly comes with it. Fight Club is satire.