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What Is a Cashless Society?

jleyank 4y ago
A cashless society is a tracked society. It is a society that is more brittle, in that a power fail makes things revert to barter. Transactions have more friction in that cards and readers can and do wear out. It also sux to be a tourist since they’re probably charging 3% currency fees every transaction. Yeah, you get a record of every donut and coffee but so does everybody else on the network who cares. And members of such a society damn near disappear when there’s an issue with their account(s).
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > It is a society that is more brittle This is one of the very serious issues that isn't really on our radar, and is not well addressed in the documentary. Disclaimer: I am interviewed in this short film, which is why I submitted it (not really appropriate for a Show HN post). It's a pop piece so they only used a couple of bites. However, the interview was over an hour and we went into technical depth on several topics. Other than the "convenience" being a con for consumers and traders alike - its main benefit serves the banks profit and the Visa/Mastercard duopoly will hike transaction fees brutally, far beyond the costs of any cash - the most serious social issue is neither privacy nor inclusion but that a "cashless" economy is a resilience and stability anti-pattern. The economic stabilising function of a pool of liquid currency (capacity) in circulation is literally the difference between gracefully weathering technical crises and all-out civil disorder with people shooting each other over a loaf of bread. Visa's declared "war on cash" is criminally irresponsible and naked sabotage of essential civil technologies honed over centuries to support social harmony. I was disappointed the editor chose the words "misinformation" rather than "disinformation" because I think the campaigns being run by banks are dishonest and corrosive propaganda. Their message belongs in the same category as malinfluence by hostile nation states.

A cashless society is a tracked society. It is a society that is more brittle, in that a power fail makes things revert to barter. Transactions have more friction in that cards and readers can and do wear out. It also sux to be a tourist since they’re probably charging 3% currency fees every transaction. Yeah, you get a record of every donut and coffee but so does everybody else on the network who cares. And members of such a society damn near disappear when there’s an issue with their account(s).

nonrandomstring 4y ago
> It is a society that is more brittle This is one of the very serious issues that isn't really on our radar, and is not well addressed in the documentary. Disclaimer: I am interviewed in this short film, which is why I submitted it (not really appropriate for a Show HN post). It's a pop piece so they only used a couple of bites. However, the interview was over an hour and we went into technical depth on several topics. Other than the "convenience" being a con for consumers and traders alike - its main benefit serves the banks profit and the Visa/Mastercard duopoly will hike transaction fees brutally, far beyond the costs of any cash - the most serious social issue is neither privacy nor inclusion but that a "cashless" economy is a resilience and stability anti-pattern. The economic stabilising function of a pool of liquid currency (capacity) in circulation is literally the difference between gracefully weathering technical crises and all-out civil disorder with people shooting each other over a loaf of bread. Visa's declared "war on cash" is criminally irresponsible and naked sabotage of essential civil technologies honed over centuries to support social harmony. I was disappointed the editor chose the words "misinformation" rather than "disinformation" because I think the campaigns being run by banks are dishonest and corrosive propaganda. Their message belongs in the same category as malinfluence by hostile nation states.