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While I do not foresee this being adopted in the US I won't put it past lobbyists to try. Maybe they are already trying? I personally would never go for this

While I do not foresee this being adopted in the US I won't put it past lobbyists to try. Maybe they are already trying? I personally would never go for this. Cash in my pocket can't be "disabled" individually. In fact I am seeing a transition to targeted risks in many places. Amazon destroying small local stores facilitating the ability to disable someone's purchasing capabilities or limiting what one person may buy. As a side note, porch pirates are becoming a real nuisance for local authorities. Network connected cars can be remotely tracked, disabled or bricked. Smart homes that can monitor an individual. Smart phones tracking individuals. I don't think I could fully embrace the Amish way of life but I suspect my local community mostly farmers and ranchers could implement a barter system if we had to. Some of this already exists. We could be self sufficient for things like food, basic repairs, transportation via horses. I am personally not opposed to giving up some luxuries like internet and online shopping if it came to that. I realize some people born into these things perceive them as absolutely mandatory but I did just fine without them for a big part of my life. In the last several months I have not needed to travel more than 16 miles from home. I suppose I could stock up on e-bike parts and solar panels then fall back to horses. Come to think of it, we could build a local warehouse business that stocks up on things not made locally then sell them locally using cash or maybe even implementing a Craigslist-Style barter system over Lo-Rad. Am I alone on HN in thinking this way? I know I am not alone in my local community, but I am curious how many on HN have thought about this.

brianwawok 5y ago
Not alone, but not in the majority I suspect. I touch maybe $100 in actual cash a year. Mostly for like a random garage sale or two. The less I touch the better.
- kmonsen 5y ago
  I don’t think I touch any cash at all, but I think society is better when the option is there and used. Also some people have a hard time getting a bank account etc.
- sslayer 5y ago
  So,what happens when the following get ahold of your data: Health insurance companies start buying your purchasing info and decide to up your premiums due to the amount of alcohol you buy, fast food you purchase, or your grocery shopping habits? Do you eat too much red meat, too many carbs, not enough greens? Is your sugar intake put you at a higher risk for diabetes? How may cigars/cigarettes are you smoking? What about marijuana use, or over the counter drugs? Home owners insurance: What if your shopping data shows risky patterns or behaviors - do you or spouse buy too many candles, is your home at a greater risk for fire hazard? Law Enforcement: How much ammo do you purchase? Are you frequently buying guns? Are you an active shooter risk? Are you spending too much at strip clubs? Are you spending too much money in high risk neighborhoods? Obviously these are all just examples, but don't think for a second that they don't already have most of this data, and can brainstorm many other use cases for it, honestly we are just living on borrow time at the moment before it gets unbearable.
  - themacguffinman 5y ago
    Then you vote to ban insurance discrimination on certain kinds of data. In California, for example, employers are forbidden to ask or use data on candidate salaries in their hiring process. In the US, health insurance companies are forbidden from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions. A huge amount of middle and upper class people already voluntarily use cashless methods to spend & earn money. A huge amount of businesses are basically online-only and don't really support cash payments. Visa & Mastercard etc already engage in data sharing. Cash is just too inconvenient and will slowly recede over time, if you want to avoid discriminatory outcomes then advocate for legislation directly.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > Cash is just too inconvenient It might be inconvenient for some things (e.g., online purchases, buying houses or cars), but buying something at the store has worked very well for centuries; it's quick and easy. People on HN can't figure out cash? Whatever is going on, it's not about convenience.
- NDizzle 5y ago
  How do you buy your guns and ammo?
daenz 5y ago
>I don't think I could fully embrace the Amish way of life but I suspect my local community mostly farmers and ranchers could implement a barter system if we had to. Funny thing, bartering is still subject to taxes from the IRS[0] 0. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420 https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420
- jxramos 5y ago
  bartering income, that's funny I always perceived bartering as an equal trade of no net difference. But that may be a perceptual thing, the value to the individual is equal but perhaps not on the open market of whatever the corresponding price tag differences are on the two goods?
  - adastra22 5y ago
    Any purchase is definitionally an equal exchange of value. It is still income.
    - f7ebc20c97 5y ago
      So the income tax is essentially a ~30% transaction fee. Imagine a world without that deadweight loss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss#Deadweight_loss_of_taxation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss#Deadweight_los...
      - adastra22 5y ago
        Costs are deducted though, so it is only 30% of the profits.
        f7ebc20c97 5y ago
        Technically everything is a cost, though, right?
        5y ago
atentaten 5y ago
I wouldn't go for it either but this will pushed to the masses as something good and necessary, and most will simply go along with it. For the individual, losing cash and going "digital everything" means losing privacy, autonomy and sovereignty.
orangepurple 5y ago
Barter systems are unstable and tend to exist under threat of violence and/or social distance between trading parties. Such a society could only be one in which everybody was an inch away from everybody else’s throat; but nonetheless hovering there, poised to strike but never actually striking, forever. True, barter does sometimes occur between people who do not consider each other strangers, but they’re usually people who might as well be strangers—that is, who feel no sense of mutual responsibility or trust, or the desire to develop ongoing relations. The Pukhtun of Northern Pakistan, for instance, are famous for their open-handed hospitality. Barter is what you do with those to whom you are not bound by ties of hospitality (or kinship, or much of anything else)
- brnaftr361 5y ago
  Eh, I reckon it'd default to debt systems. Jeb gives Jed a sack of potatoes, Jed owes Jeb. That's far more consequential and desirable at a highly localized scale. Lots of social dynamics to breed in civility, credibility and ultimately give rise to a more cohesive community. This shit where we narrate some fair and precise value is... Surprisingly nebulous...
  - orangepurple 5y ago
    The more frequent solution is to adopt some sort of credit system. When much of Europe “reverted to barter” after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and then again after the Carolingian Empire likewise fell apart, this seems to be what happened. People continued keeping accounts in the old imperial currency, even if they were no longer using coins.
regpertom 5y ago
Not alone, thanks for the nice post. Recently my area was very flooded, all govt resources were diverted to the larger population areas including our local volunteer firefighters etc. to an extent that they even locked their doors and were uncontactable. People remember that it was the same “last time” as well. The bigger the problem the more we’re on our own. Food, logistics, shelter, welfare checks, clean up was all handled by people stepping up. No power or phone or internet for 5 days. We’re putting together plans for all that you say but also for ad hoc radio coverage. It’s worth mentioning that there’s a nontrivial amount of 5g causes vaccine people or whatever other ‘evil’ group and other social outcasts as you should expect from being in the middle of nowhere but it didn’t matter except that some welfare checks were done at the front gate haha It was interesting in that people wanted to help but didn’t know how but once centralised organisation stepped up, say, someone with 10 lasagnes could drop them off and have them distributed. Or say a restaurant 70kms away can just rock up with 100 meals. It feels good to be able to apply job skills on the fly in a real way to help real people, excuse me for thinking that though.
- na85 5y ago
  >Recently my area was very flooded, all govt resources were diverted to the larger population areas including our local volunteer firefighters etc. to an extent that they even locked their doors and were uncontactable. Fraser Valley? That episode made me realize just how little we can depend on the government in a real disaster. If a little bit of rain generates such a clusterfuck, what will the Big One do to us?
  - regpertom 5y ago
    It would be smart for me to neither confirm nor deny but I will say no. The way I see it the government has its own concerns and they may not align with mine. Can’t necessarily be angry that they’d want to maximise helped people. Not telling us and locking the doors though not so good. The other side of that is events like US disaster Katrina where there is too many people and too much paperwork that people become helpless wards of the state. That’s what makes a disaster a disaster, a failure of normal expectations? How would an individual even begin to feed 100000 people you know? There’s a certain helpless at scale. The army did eventually show up, “the government” eventually got the power and phones up again etc. the sun did eventually appear again. A skilled individual can produce excess, that excess can be shared with others, zooming out, family then community then state then country. But as we zoom out we have to rely on abstractions and quantisations. At the level I’m talking about though it was possible to say “if you’re on this map your one of us, the rest doesn’t matter” we could then ignore the rest. Much like the government ignored us? What I’m trying to get across is a certain inspiration from being abandoned by government, big one or little one, show a little passion and violently execute an average plan! Marcus Aurelius says something about being self reliant so that you can help society, not so that you can show off but so that you’re not a burden but that’s beyond my pay grade. Somebody said that it couldn’t be done so with a smile on his face he got to it.
SllX 5y ago
Well from what I just read in the article this isn’t a government effort or lobbyist-led so much as a progressing collective decision made by members of UK society. Personally I don’t deal with cash anymore, and not because I would refuse to accept it, but because I just use Apple Pay or card instead and it makes it easier to manage my finances. Even the physical cards are barely used anymore, I have an Apple leather wallet that can hold three cards on the back of my phone but I only carry two: my license and the CC I use to dine out.
- recursivedoubts 5y ago
  you are an acceptable level of threat and if you were not you would know about it
mdorazio 5y ago
I'm actually surprised no one has mentioned crypto as an alternative. This is one of the (very) few use cases where it might make sense if implemented properly.
- acjohnson55 5y ago
  The article is about the accessibility of digital money, particularly for the elderly. Not the privacy and sovereignty aspects that are most important to crypto enthusiasts. Crypto would be a humongous step back in accessibility.
  - mdorazio 5y ago
    The vast majority of comments in this post, including the one I replied to, are about privacy and control rather than accessibility.
    - acjohnson55 5y ago
      Yeah, I get that. But I don't think people are actually reading the article and in the push for their concerns--which are relatively ideological and theoretical--they risk railroading the millions of people who are struggling with the digital transition. The crypto world loves to concern troll about the unbanked, yet can't seem to hold an article's worth of space for people suffering consequences of tech trends right now.
- fny 5y ago
  Crypto can be legislated too.
throwaway0x7E6 5y ago
>While I do not foresee this being adopted in the US I won't put it past lobbyists to try. it will. and it would only take a few years of concentrated brainwash from the telescreens for the people who will oppose that to be branded as the enemy. and unlike the few other principal things powers that be want to take away from us - privacy, freedom of expression, gun ownership, there is no right to bear cash, so they can take it away anytime.
- rob74 5y ago
  Kind of jarring to see one of those four things you seem to cherish so casually mentioned beside the others...
  - sattoshi 5y ago
    While there isn’t a risk of cash being banned or anything of the sort, we should cherish it as if it can be. Cash gives you a level of financial discretion for which the only comparable alternative is gold, but more liquid.
  - throwaway0x7E6 5y ago
    just one? there are at least two that are nearly equally problematic
  - uncomputation 5y ago
    Don’t play the pronoun game, it makes the conversation hard to follow and reply to. Which one of the four things - privacy, freedom of expression, gun ownership, or right to bear cash - are you finding jarring?
    - rob74 5y ago
      Sorry for being too nebulous, it was the guns.
      - s1artibartfast 5y ago
intended 5y ago
The appeal to a simpler past is in effect a slowing down of the pace of life. With those extra minutes and extra space, people come up with ways to speed up life. It seems we are much better at creating complex solutions, over maintaining them.
mulmen 5y ago
Too late. The list of places that do not accept cash is growing. It's a common restriction at food trucks for example. Maintaining a Square reader is just so much easier than a cash box and a trip to the bank, plus the security concerns. It's too bad. I actually prefer cash. But I understand where merchants are coming from.
- StanislavPetrov 5y ago
  The list of places I'm willing to solicit is shrinking, since I only do business with people who accept cash as an option, even if I don't happen to be paying with cash at the time. Merchants are free to make their choices, as are consumers. The problems really start when the government steps in and removes your freedom at the point of a gun.
mschuster91 5y ago
> As a side note, porch pirates are becoming a real nuisance for local authorities. Wonder how every other country manages to get by... oh wait, our postal services don't just leave parcels to be stolen and our mailboxes unlocked. Porch pirates only exist because some parts of the US still operate on the assumption of "community trust" like the early colonists, the early Internet with BGP, SMTP or the phone networks with SS7 and caller ID. Everyone else grew up, time for parcel delivery to follow.
- esyir 5y ago
  My house is unlocked, my packages left on the open and hey, no theft. A high trust society has its benefits.
mcintyre1994 5y ago
> While I do not foresee this being adopted in the US I won't put it past lobbyists to try. The article isn’t actually talking about a government policy FWIW. It’s basically falling demand for ATMs and bank branches leading to less of them. Less bank branches means some stores don’t want cash because it’s more of a hassle when there isn’t a bank branch around the corner. There definitely are reasons for governments to want less cash and to force people to have more easily controlled money. But that’s not what this is talking about, it’s just people having less access to cash because of businesses taking decisions with government not being involved at all in those decisions.

brianwawok 5y ago

Not alone, but not in the majority I suspect. I touch maybe $100 in actual cash a year. Mostly for like a random garage sale or two. The less I touch the better.

kmonsen 5y ago
I don’t think I touch any cash at all, but I think society is better when the option is there and used. Also some people have a hard time getting a bank account etc.
sslayer 5y ago
So,what happens when the following get ahold of your data: Health insurance companies start buying your purchasing info and decide to up your premiums due to the amount of alcohol you buy, fast food you purchase, or your grocery shopping habits? Do you eat too much red meat, too many carbs, not enough greens? Is your sugar intake put you at a higher risk for diabetes? How may cigars/cigarettes are you smoking? What about marijuana use, or over the counter drugs? Home owners insurance: What if your shopping data shows risky patterns or behaviors - do you or spouse buy too many candles, is your home at a greater risk for fire hazard? Law Enforcement: How much ammo do you purchase? Are you frequently buying guns? Are you an active shooter risk? Are you spending too much at strip clubs? Are you spending too much money in high risk neighborhoods? Obviously these are all just examples, but don't think for a second that they don't already have most of this data, and can brainstorm many other use cases for it, honestly we are just living on borrow time at the moment before it gets unbearable.
- themacguffinman 5y ago
  Then you vote to ban insurance discrimination on certain kinds of data. In California, for example, employers are forbidden to ask or use data on candidate salaries in their hiring process. In the US, health insurance companies are forbidden from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions. A huge amount of middle and upper class people already voluntarily use cashless methods to spend & earn money. A huge amount of businesses are basically online-only and don't really support cash payments. Visa & Mastercard etc already engage in data sharing. Cash is just too inconvenient and will slowly recede over time, if you want to avoid discriminatory outcomes then advocate for legislation directly.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > Cash is just too inconvenient It might be inconvenient for some things (e.g., online purchases, buying houses or cars), but buying something at the store has worked very well for centuries; it's quick and easy. People on HN can't figure out cash? Whatever is going on, it's not about convenience.
NDizzle 5y ago
How do you buy your guns and ammo?

daenz 5y ago

>I don't think I could fully embrace the Amish way of life but I suspect my local community mostly farmers and ranchers could implement a barter system if we had to. Funny thing, bartering is still subject to taxes from the IRS[0] 0. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420 https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420

jxramos 5y ago
bartering income, that's funny I always perceived bartering as an equal trade of no net difference. But that may be a perceptual thing, the value to the individual is equal but perhaps not on the open market of whatever the corresponding price tag differences are on the two goods?
- adastra22 5y ago
  Any purchase is definitionally an equal exchange of value. It is still income.
  - f7ebc20c97 5y ago
    So the income tax is essentially a ~30% transaction fee. Imagine a world without that deadweight loss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss#Deadweight_loss_of_taxation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss#Deadweight_los...
    - adastra22 5y ago
      Costs are deducted though, so it is only 30% of the profits.
      - f7ebc20c97 5y ago
        Technically everything is a cost, though, right?
        5y ago

atentaten 5y ago

I wouldn't go for it either but this will pushed to the masses as something good and necessary, and most will simply go along with it. For the individual, losing cash and going "digital everything" means losing privacy, autonomy and sovereignty.

orangepurple 5y ago

Barter systems are unstable and tend to exist under threat of violence and/or social distance between trading parties. Such a society could only be one in which everybody was an inch away from everybody else’s throat; but nonetheless hovering there, poised to strike but never actually striking, forever. True, barter does sometimes occur between people who do not consider each other strangers, but they’re usually people who might as well be strangers—that is, who feel no sense of mutual responsibility or trust, or the desire to develop ongoing relations. The Pukhtun of Northern Pakistan, for instance, are famous for their open-handed hospitality. Barter is what you do with those to whom you are not bound by ties of hospitality (or kinship, or much of anything else)

brnaftr361 5y ago
Eh, I reckon it'd default to debt systems. Jeb gives Jed a sack of potatoes, Jed owes Jeb. That's far more consequential and desirable at a highly localized scale. Lots of social dynamics to breed in civility, credibility and ultimately give rise to a more cohesive community. This shit where we narrate some fair and precise value is... Surprisingly nebulous...
- orangepurple 5y ago
  The more frequent solution is to adopt some sort of credit system. When much of Europe “reverted to barter” after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and then again after the Carolingian Empire likewise fell apart, this seems to be what happened. People continued keeping accounts in the old imperial currency, even if they were no longer using coins.

regpertom 5y ago

Not alone, thanks for the nice post. Recently my area was very flooded, all govt resources were diverted to the larger population areas including our local volunteer firefighters etc. to an extent that they even locked their doors and were uncontactable. People remember that it was the same “last time” as well. The bigger the problem the more we’re on our own. Food, logistics, shelter, welfare checks, clean up was all handled by people stepping up. No power or phone or internet for 5 days. We’re putting together plans for all that you say but also for ad hoc radio coverage. It’s worth mentioning that there’s a nontrivial amount of 5g causes vaccine people or whatever other ‘evil’ group and other social outcasts as you should expect from being in the middle of nowhere but it didn’t matter except that some welfare checks were done at the front gate haha It was interesting in that people wanted to help but didn’t know how but once centralised organisation stepped up, say, someone with 10 lasagnes could drop them off and have them distributed. Or say a restaurant 70kms away can just rock up with 100 meals. It feels good to be able to apply job skills on the fly in a real way to help real people, excuse me for thinking that though.

na85 5y ago
>Recently my area was very flooded, all govt resources were diverted to the larger population areas including our local volunteer firefighters etc. to an extent that they even locked their doors and were uncontactable. Fraser Valley? That episode made me realize just how little we can depend on the government in a real disaster. If a little bit of rain generates such a clusterfuck, what will the Big One do to us?
- regpertom 5y ago
  It would be smart for me to neither confirm nor deny but I will say no. The way I see it the government has its own concerns and they may not align with mine. Can’t necessarily be angry that they’d want to maximise helped people. Not telling us and locking the doors though not so good. The other side of that is events like US disaster Katrina where there is too many people and too much paperwork that people become helpless wards of the state. That’s what makes a disaster a disaster, a failure of normal expectations? How would an individual even begin to feed 100000 people you know? There’s a certain helpless at scale. The army did eventually show up, “the government” eventually got the power and phones up again etc. the sun did eventually appear again. A skilled individual can produce excess, that excess can be shared with others, zooming out, family then community then state then country. But as we zoom out we have to rely on abstractions and quantisations. At the level I’m talking about though it was possible to say “if you’re on this map your one of us, the rest doesn’t matter” we could then ignore the rest. Much like the government ignored us? What I’m trying to get across is a certain inspiration from being abandoned by government, big one or little one, show a little passion and violently execute an average plan! Marcus Aurelius says something about being self reliant so that you can help society, not so that you can show off but so that you’re not a burden but that’s beyond my pay grade. Somebody said that it couldn’t be done so with a smile on his face he got to it.

SllX 5y ago

Well from what I just read in the article this isn’t a government effort or lobbyist-led so much as a progressing collective decision made by members of UK society. Personally I don’t deal with cash anymore, and not because I would refuse to accept it, but because I just use Apple Pay or card instead and it makes it easier to manage my finances. Even the physical cards are barely used anymore, I have an Apple leather wallet that can hold three cards on the back of my phone but I only carry two: my license and the CC I use to dine out.

recursivedoubts 5y ago
you are an acceptable level of threat and if you were not you would know about it

mdorazio 5y ago

I'm actually surprised no one has mentioned crypto as an alternative. This is one of the (very) few use cases where it might make sense if implemented properly.

acjohnson55 5y ago
The article is about the accessibility of digital money, particularly for the elderly. Not the privacy and sovereignty aspects that are most important to crypto enthusiasts. Crypto would be a humongous step back in accessibility.
- mdorazio 5y ago
  The vast majority of comments in this post, including the one I replied to, are about privacy and control rather than accessibility.
  - acjohnson55 5y ago
    Yeah, I get that. But I don't think people are actually reading the article and in the push for their concerns--which are relatively ideological and theoretical--they risk railroading the millions of people who are struggling with the digital transition. The crypto world loves to concern troll about the unbanked, yet can't seem to hold an article's worth of space for people suffering consequences of tech trends right now.
fny 5y ago
Crypto can be legislated too.

throwaway0x7E6 5y ago

>While I do not foresee this being adopted in the US I won't put it past lobbyists to try. it will. and it would only take a few years of concentrated brainwash from the telescreens for the people who will oppose that to be branded as the enemy. and unlike the few other principal things powers that be want to take away from us - privacy, freedom of expression, gun ownership, there is no right to bear cash, so they can take it away anytime.

rob74 5y ago
Kind of jarring to see one of those four things you seem to cherish so casually mentioned beside the others...
- sattoshi 5y ago
  While there isn’t a risk of cash being banned or anything of the sort, we should cherish it as if it can be. Cash gives you a level of financial discretion for which the only comparable alternative is gold, but more liquid.
- throwaway0x7E6 5y ago
  just one? there are at least two that are nearly equally problematic
- uncomputation 5y ago
  Don’t play the pronoun game, it makes the conversation hard to follow and reply to. Which one of the four things - privacy, freedom of expression, gun ownership, or right to bear cash - are you finding jarring?
  - rob74 5y ago
    Sorry for being too nebulous, it was the guns.
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago

intended 5y ago

The appeal to a simpler past is in effect a slowing down of the pace of life. With those extra minutes and extra space, people come up with ways to speed up life. It seems we are much better at creating complex solutions, over maintaining them.

mulmen 5y ago

Too late. The list of places that do not accept cash is growing. It's a common restriction at food trucks for example. Maintaining a Square reader is just so much easier than a cash box and a trip to the bank, plus the security concerns. It's too bad. I actually prefer cash. But I understand where merchants are coming from.

StanislavPetrov 5y ago
The list of places I'm willing to solicit is shrinking, since I only do business with people who accept cash as an option, even if I don't happen to be paying with cash at the time. Merchants are free to make their choices, as are consumers. The problems really start when the government steps in and removes your freedom at the point of a gun.

mschuster91 5y ago

> As a side note, porch pirates are becoming a real nuisance for local authorities. Wonder how every other country manages to get by... oh wait, our postal services don't just leave parcels to be stolen and our mailboxes unlocked. Porch pirates only exist because some parts of the US still operate on the assumption of "community trust" like the early colonists, the early Internet with BGP, SMTP or the phone networks with SS7 and caller ID. Everyone else grew up, time for parcel delivery to follow.

esyir 5y ago
My house is unlocked, my packages left on the open and hey, no theft. A high trust society has its benefits.

mcintyre1994 5y ago

> While I do not foresee this being adopted in the US I won't put it past lobbyists to try. The article isn’t actually talking about a government policy FWIW. It’s basically falling demand for ATMs and bank branches leading to less of them. Less bank branches means some stores don’t want cash because it’s more of a hassle when there isn’t a bank branch around the corner. There definitely are reasons for governments to want less cash and to force people to have more easily controlled money. But that’s not what this is talking about, it’s just people having less access to cash because of businesses taking decisions with government not being involved at all in those decisions.