8 ms·

I pay with cash wherever possible and if somewhere refuses me, I tell them I'll pay this time by card but I'm not coming back. The whole thing reminds me of th

by throwaway22032 5y ago

I pay with cash wherever possible and if somewhere refuses me, I tell them I'll pay this time by card but I'm not coming back. The whole thing reminds me of the Google tracking article posted on here earlier. I don't want you to know my name, and I don't want anyone other than us to know about this interaction. Simply - no. No further reason required.

sneak 5y ago
> I pay with cash wherever possible and if somewhere refuses me, I tell them I'll pay this time by card but I'm not coming back. Leave all your cards at home. Make it their problem. This is what I do.
dzhiurgis 5y ago
Opposite. Wish Google had search that shows places without PayWave. Handling cash is disgusting and so inconvenient.
walterbell 5y ago
In some U.S. cities, there's a legal requirement for every business to accept cash. One fast food place said they were only accepting cards because the manager had left and taken the cash drawer with them (not trusting the employees to handle cash?). After being reminded of the local law, which they knew, they found a couple of workarounds.
- galdosdi 5y ago
  In the entire US there is also the (sometimes misunderstood) "legal tender" doctrine. By law US currency is "legal tender" for settling any debt. This means cash cannot be refused for a service/product that has already been provided. Businesses are still free to be picky (eg, no cash, or no coins, or no $100 bills, etc) if they haven't actually provided the service yet. So for example at a cashless counter serve restaurant that requires me to pay before getting my food, they can indeed refuse to take cash. But at a place that gives you your food first and then the bill, they have to accept cash. They have no legal recourse if you give them cash and they don't want it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - traceroute66 5y ago
    > "legal tender" doctrine Yeah, erm. I think you might need to revise your understanding. Three things for you to contemplate: 1) Credit/debit cards are not "legal tender", a card transaction is not an exchange of "legal tender" and yet it is a perfectly valid means of payment. 2) "legal tender" relates to payments on or to the order of the government (i.e. taxes, fines etc.). The government is the only entity that is required to accept your cash as tender to pay the debt. Private businesses and private individuals can decide of their own free will as to whether or not they wish to accept cash. 3) The *ONLY* time "legal tender" applies to private transactions is if someone sues you for non-payment and you pay *INTO COURT* the value of the debt in cash (the "INTO COURT" bit being the important bit, i.e. it brings us back to (2) you are paying on the order of the court, a public-sector body, which is required to accept "legal tender").
    - iaabtpbtpnn 5y ago
      It says right on the face of all US paper money that it’s legal tender for all debts, public and private. So I think your explanation requires an authoritative source that agrees with you, like a government website.
      - traceroute66 5y ago
        > So I think your explanation requires an authoritative source that agrees with you The FED good enough for you ? ;-) https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm As I said. Its valid for private debts IF you decide to let it get to a point where you are forced to pay it INTO COURT. Otherwise the business is free to do what they like.
        vorpalhex 5y ago
        You may want to reread your source. > Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled "Legal tender," states: "United States coins and currency [including Federal Reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal Reserve Banks and national banks] are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues." This statute means that all U.S. money as identified above is a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor.
anonporridge 5y ago
More important than privacy issues, is the issue of control. Your credit cards can be turned off and bank accounts frozen. If all your money and payment ability is digital and controlled by a central authority, your ability to transact can be turned off with the flip of a switch. And in the complex world we live in, that can literally mean that your ability to keep eating can be digitally switched off at almost no cost to your attacker. Is that something that can be continued? Maybe not, but the attacker could drag out the issue in a bureaucratic and legal mess for long enough for you to fall into homelessness and despair if they're motivated enough to destroy you. Cash has the nice property that it enables permissionless economic transaction. We can exchange cash peer to peer without anyone's explicit or implicit consent. And being private is also nice because it gives the people you transact with some protection from potentially aiding some kind of blacklisted individual. I wonder if people like Harriet Tubman and the people that aided her would have been able to do what they did if their money could have been turned off due to their illegal actions helping slaves escape. Permissionless and peer to peer cash is a critical feature of a free society that we should be very fearful of losing.
- Double_a_92 5y ago
  How is that the issue of the card payments though. Do people that support your argument, just keep massive amounts of cash at home? I still keep my money at a bank, no matter if I pay with my card or if I use the ~100$ cash I have in my wallet.
  - throwaway22032 5y ago
    "Massive" is your framing, it's abnormal to you but not to others. You probably wouldn't say that I have a "massive" amount of clothes because I have enough for a couple of weeks without washing them. I see having about the same in cash as being fairly normal.
    - Double_a_92 5y ago
      My point was that I still need to rely on a bank to get new cash, and that bank still operates in digital ways, ... there is no point in just looking at the way you pay in a shop. Like you are not really better of in the long term just because you have some cash in your wallet. You would need to keep all your money as cash, to have a systematic advantage.
whathappenedto 5y ago
Interesting, I'm the opposite. I'll pay with card when possible, and if it's cash only, I'll offer to Venmo or I'm leaving. I put a lot of value in being able to track my own spending, and that itself is worth more than the potential issues of using a card.
- tasty_freeze 5y ago
  Paying with cash doesn't preclude tracking your spending in any way. It might be less convenient to have to make a memo to yourself, but that is another issue. Having electronic-only precludes anonymity, unless some robust/secure/stable form of crytocurrency appears.
syshum 5y ago
Canada's actions to suppress their citizens speech by using the financial system has driven me back to cash I used to be the same way as you, but cards became more convenient so I slowly moved away.. I now have a cash supply.
- Nursie 5y ago
  Canada's freezing of the funds of people breaking the law and blockading border crossings? So terrible. I don't see that as suppression of speech though. (As I said elsewhere - take note that there is no evidence that any donors had their accounts frozen. One person was reported by a local politician to have had her accounts frozen, but when a list of donors was leaked later, no matching name was found, and no other information about that case has been shown. AFAICT, and I've looked, there is no decent evidence that any donors had their accounts frozen. It's just a right wing talking point. The donated funds were frozen, temporarily, while the border blockage and other illegal protest activities were cleared up. But donors? Nope. )
  - jollybean 5y ago
    This is repulsive, especially in a world where we're seeing authoritarians use all sorts of bullshit, made up excuses to arbitrarily punish people. No - the government does (should) not have the authority in any normal democracy to arbitrarily freeze the finances of those who have not committed any crimes, especially those that have not been proven in court or whereupon there isn't any threat of impending violence. The situation is obviously politicized, as there are perennially 'protest' activities in every nation which may technically 'criminal'. The are innumerable protests and related activities in Canada related such things as block Oil pipelines from being built, Aboriginal blockades etc.. In Portland, Oregon, several city blocks were taken over by violent force - with a militia of self-appointed 'soldiers' brandishing weapons, prevent police and emergency services in. Were their finances blocked? Were the supporting charities blocked? Did those donating to the charities have their assets frozen - no in all cases. The justice system of most governments have ample power to enforce basic laws, as exemplified by the police response at the border in Alberta and Ontario, and should not be partial to the 'types of protesters' they chose to pursue let alone pursue extra constitutional measures. That extra judicial measures were taken in Canada is a stain on Democracy and definitely an indication that the government can't be trusted with basic civil liberties specifically with respect to the issue of the transfer of money. The last thing we need is more oversight over basic finances. If the police, acting independently of any politicians impetus, get a warrant from a judge to intervene in something or the other - they can do that, and it's why those mechanisms exist in the first place.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
I'm the opposite: if some place only takes cash, I don't shop there because I haven't carried cash around for more than a half a decade now. I'm already very annoyed when I have to whip out my credit card from the case behind my phone because they don't take Apple Pay/NFC from my watch.
- gs17 5y ago
  Where do you run into places that only take cash so often? Where I am even the guys selling street papers have Venmo as an option (they hate it since they don't get the money in a usable form as easily that way, but they'll gladly use it).
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    I know of a few Chinese bakeries or other Asian bakeries that only take cash (and my wife wants to buy something there). Also, amusement coin ops at the mall for my kid.
  - Mountain_Skies 5y ago
    "Your DeKalb's Farmers Market", one of the two largest/most popular farmers market stores in metro Atlanta has never accepted credit cards. They do accept debit cards, so it's not quite cash only, but they take a very hard line one the issue of credit cards, having vowed to never accept them. Doesn't seem to have hurt business any as the most common complaint about the place is that it's too crowded.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      Is there an NFC-based debit card solution yet for the states?
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    Plenty of restaurants are cash only. They do not want to share their very thin profit margin with the electronic money vendors.
oneoff786 5y ago
I’m imagining a lot of uninterested clerks giving you a blank stare of indifference when you say this.
wolverine876 5y ago
If you think about it, cash is a pretty amazing technology hack: All that meaning and power are embedded in a piece of paper that works securely, easily, anonymously, instantly. > tracking Though I wonder: The serial numbers on US cash look quite machine-readable. It seems like banks could trace the bills you take from the cash machine and the bills the restaurant deposits, and connect dots - not perfectly, but form a pretty good idea, especially using patterns over time.
- Nursie 5y ago
  > securely, easily Do you have any idea of the security measures that go into creating cash?! It's anything but easy to create cash that's hard to counterfeit.
  - butlerm 5y ago
    Ease of manufacturing and ease of use are two different things.
jjgreen 5y ago
I went into a London pub a couple of weeks ago, and after my pint was pulled and I held up a £10 note the barman told me the pub was cashless. "Oh, OK" I said and started to walk away, "Wait a minute, I'll take the cash and pay with my card if that's OK?" which was fine by me.

sneak 5y ago

> I pay with cash wherever possible and if somewhere refuses me, I tell them I'll pay this time by card but I'm not coming back. Leave all your cards at home. Make it their problem. This is what I do.

dzhiurgis 5y ago

Opposite. Wish Google had search that shows places without PayWave. Handling cash is disgusting and so inconvenient.

walterbell 5y ago

In some U.S. cities, there's a legal requirement for every business to accept cash. One fast food place said they were only accepting cards because the manager had left and taken the cash drawer with them (not trusting the employees to handle cash?). After being reminded of the local law, which they knew, they found a couple of workarounds.

galdosdi 5y ago
In the entire US there is also the (sometimes misunderstood) "legal tender" doctrine. By law US currency is "legal tender" for settling any debt. This means cash cannot be refused for a service/product that has already been provided. Businesses are still free to be picky (eg, no cash, or no coins, or no $100 bills, etc) if they haven't actually provided the service yet. So for example at a cashless counter serve restaurant that requires me to pay before getting my food, they can indeed refuse to take cash. But at a place that gives you your food first and then the bill, they have to accept cash. They have no legal recourse if you give them cash and they don't want it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- traceroute66 5y ago
  > "legal tender" doctrine Yeah, erm. I think you might need to revise your understanding. Three things for you to contemplate: 1) Credit/debit cards are not "legal tender", a card transaction is not an exchange of "legal tender" and yet it is a perfectly valid means of payment. 2) "legal tender" relates to payments on or to the order of the government (i.e. taxes, fines etc.). The government is the only entity that is required to accept your cash as tender to pay the debt. Private businesses and private individuals can decide of their own free will as to whether or not they wish to accept cash. 3) The *ONLY* time "legal tender" applies to private transactions is if someone sues you for non-payment and you pay *INTO COURT* the value of the debt in cash (the "INTO COURT" bit being the important bit, i.e. it brings us back to (2) you are paying on the order of the court, a public-sector body, which is required to accept "legal tender").
  - iaabtpbtpnn 5y ago
    It says right on the face of all US paper money that it’s legal tender for all debts, public and private. So I think your explanation requires an authoritative source that agrees with you, like a government website.
    - traceroute66 5y ago
      > So I think your explanation requires an authoritative source that agrees with you The FED good enough for you ? ;-) https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm As I said. Its valid for private debts IF you decide to let it get to a point where you are forced to pay it INTO COURT. Otherwise the business is free to do what they like.
      - vorpalhex 5y ago
        You may want to reread your source. > Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled "Legal tender," states: "United States coins and currency [including Federal Reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal Reserve Banks and national banks] are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues." This statute means that all U.S. money as identified above is a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor.

anonporridge 5y ago

More important than privacy issues, is the issue of control. Your credit cards can be turned off and bank accounts frozen. If all your money and payment ability is digital and controlled by a central authority, your ability to transact can be turned off with the flip of a switch. And in the complex world we live in, that can literally mean that your ability to keep eating can be digitally switched off at almost no cost to your attacker. Is that something that can be continued? Maybe not, but the attacker could drag out the issue in a bureaucratic and legal mess for long enough for you to fall into homelessness and despair if they're motivated enough to destroy you. Cash has the nice property that it enables permissionless economic transaction. We can exchange cash peer to peer without anyone's explicit or implicit consent. And being private is also nice because it gives the people you transact with some protection from potentially aiding some kind of blacklisted individual. I wonder if people like Harriet Tubman and the people that aided her would have been able to do what they did if their money could have been turned off due to their illegal actions helping slaves escape. Permissionless and peer to peer cash is a critical feature of a free society that we should be very fearful of losing.

Double_a_92 5y ago
How is that the issue of the card payments though. Do people that support your argument, just keep massive amounts of cash at home? I still keep my money at a bank, no matter if I pay with my card or if I use the ~100$ cash I have in my wallet.
- throwaway22032 5y ago
  "Massive" is your framing, it's abnormal to you but not to others. You probably wouldn't say that I have a "massive" amount of clothes because I have enough for a couple of weeks without washing them. I see having about the same in cash as being fairly normal.
  - Double_a_92 5y ago
    My point was that I still need to rely on a bank to get new cash, and that bank still operates in digital ways, ... there is no point in just looking at the way you pay in a shop. Like you are not really better of in the long term just because you have some cash in your wallet. You would need to keep all your money as cash, to have a systematic advantage.

whathappenedto 5y ago

Interesting, I'm the opposite. I'll pay with card when possible, and if it's cash only, I'll offer to Venmo or I'm leaving. I put a lot of value in being able to track my own spending, and that itself is worth more than the potential issues of using a card.

tasty_freeze 5y ago
Paying with cash doesn't preclude tracking your spending in any way. It might be less convenient to have to make a memo to yourself, but that is another issue. Having electronic-only precludes anonymity, unless some robust/secure/stable form of crytocurrency appears.

syshum 5y ago

Canada's actions to suppress their citizens speech by using the financial system has driven me back to cash I used to be the same way as you, but cards became more convenient so I slowly moved away.. I now have a cash supply.

Nursie 5y ago
Canada's freezing of the funds of people breaking the law and blockading border crossings? So terrible. I don't see that as suppression of speech though. (As I said elsewhere - take note that there is no evidence that any donors had their accounts frozen. One person was reported by a local politician to have had her accounts frozen, but when a list of donors was leaked later, no matching name was found, and no other information about that case has been shown. AFAICT, and I've looked, there is no decent evidence that any donors had their accounts frozen. It's just a right wing talking point. The donated funds were frozen, temporarily, while the border blockage and other illegal protest activities were cleared up. But donors? Nope. )
- jollybean 5y ago
  This is repulsive, especially in a world where we're seeing authoritarians use all sorts of bullshit, made up excuses to arbitrarily punish people. No - the government does (should) not have the authority in any normal democracy to arbitrarily freeze the finances of those who have not committed any crimes, especially those that have not been proven in court or whereupon there isn't any threat of impending violence. The situation is obviously politicized, as there are perennially 'protest' activities in every nation which may technically 'criminal'. The are innumerable protests and related activities in Canada related such things as block Oil pipelines from being built, Aboriginal blockades etc.. In Portland, Oregon, several city blocks were taken over by violent force - with a militia of self-appointed 'soldiers' brandishing weapons, prevent police and emergency services in. Were their finances blocked? Were the supporting charities blocked? Did those donating to the charities have their assets frozen - no in all cases. The justice system of most governments have ample power to enforce basic laws, as exemplified by the police response at the border in Alberta and Ontario, and should not be partial to the 'types of protesters' they chose to pursue let alone pursue extra constitutional measures. That extra judicial measures were taken in Canada is a stain on Democracy and definitely an indication that the government can't be trusted with basic civil liberties specifically with respect to the issue of the transfer of money. The last thing we need is more oversight over basic finances. If the police, acting independently of any politicians impetus, get a warrant from a judge to intervene in something or the other - they can do that, and it's why those mechanisms exist in the first place.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

I'm the opposite: if some place only takes cash, I don't shop there because I haven't carried cash around for more than a half a decade now. I'm already very annoyed when I have to whip out my credit card from the case behind my phone because they don't take Apple Pay/NFC from my watch.

gs17 5y ago
Where do you run into places that only take cash so often? Where I am even the guys selling street papers have Venmo as an option (they hate it since they don't get the money in a usable form as easily that way, but they'll gladly use it).
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  I know of a few Chinese bakeries or other Asian bakeries that only take cash (and my wife wants to buy something there). Also, amusement coin ops at the mall for my kid.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  "Your DeKalb's Farmers Market", one of the two largest/most popular farmers market stores in metro Atlanta has never accepted credit cards. They do accept debit cards, so it's not quite cash only, but they take a very hard line one the issue of credit cards, having vowed to never accept them. Doesn't seem to have hurt business any as the most common complaint about the place is that it's too crowded.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Is there an NFC-based debit card solution yet for the states?
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Plenty of restaurants are cash only. They do not want to share their very thin profit margin with the electronic money vendors.

oneoff786 5y ago

I’m imagining a lot of uninterested clerks giving you a blank stare of indifference when you say this.

wolverine876 5y ago

If you think about it, cash is a pretty amazing technology hack: All that meaning and power are embedded in a piece of paper that works securely, easily, anonymously, instantly. > tracking Though I wonder: The serial numbers on US cash look quite machine-readable. It seems like banks could trace the bills you take from the cash machine and the bills the restaurant deposits, and connect dots - not perfectly, but form a pretty good idea, especially using patterns over time.

Nursie 5y ago
> securely, easily Do you have any idea of the security measures that go into creating cash?! It's anything but easy to create cash that's hard to counterfeit.
- butlerm 5y ago
  Ease of manufacturing and ease of use are two different things.

jjgreen 5y ago

I went into a London pub a couple of weeks ago, and after my pint was pulled and I held up a £10 note the barman told me the pub was cashless. "Oh, OK" I said and started to walk away, "Wait a minute, I'll take the cash and pay with my card if that's OK?" which was fine by me.