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Nah because banks exist and can make digital transactions when you give them cash. Literally, if you were standing next to me, you can give me 10 quid and I ca
by throwaway22032 5y ago
Nah because banks exist and can make digital transactions when you give them cash.
Literally, if you were standing next to me, you can give me 10 quid and I can send someone else that ten quid. You have paid them ten quid using cash, reasonably anonymously in a way that cannot be easily blocked or censored as long as cash exists.
This becomes far, far less convenient or feasible if we only have barter and now you need to find someone that accepts some arbitrary valuable object of a value that isn't exactly the amount you want to send.
No-one is arguing that electronic transactions are not useful, this is a strawman. It makes no logical sense, so perhaps you should consider that I'm not making that argument.
- pdonis 5y ago> banks exist and can make digital transactions when you give them cash. And as soon as I use a bank for this, I am no longer protected against law enforcement preventing me from paying my bills and supporting myself, which was supposed to be the whole point of using cash in the first place. Law enforcement can block banks from making digital transactions on my behalf just as easily as they can freeze my accounts at those same banks.
- throwaway22032 5y agoOk, so go to me, I'll send the funds. I feel like people want this centralized vision of money. Just give someone cash to do a transfer. Why so bureaucracy? What's the point?
- thebean11 5y agoSo cash is convenient because you have the option to not use it, and use a digital payment instead? Really?
- throwaway22032 5y agoNo, it's convenient because anyone can accept or transfer it without a middleman. It's a physical thing you just give to someone. You can't (reasonably) censor it or block it or sanction it without just disabling the whole currency. I was just describing the fact that it's not some sort of crazy idea to pay bills using cash. If HN weren't full of 21 year olds we wouldn't even be having this chat, it's like these guys forgot that not even that long ago we just paid each other with envelopes at the end of the week/month. Like, they're literally saying that you can't do X, where X is something that most of us did less than 50 years ago, and no we didn't spend half of our days running around.
- thebean11 5y agoThe point is that it’s a huge pain as evidenced by the fact that nobody does it now that there is an alternative..not that it’s literally impossible.