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Having just come from the cyclone ravaged Gisborne region in New Zealand, where internet and communications have been down now for 5 days. The first thing we di

Having just come from the cyclone ravaged Gisborne region in New Zealand, where internet and communications have been down now for 5 days. The first thing we did was count all the cash we had, because it is the only way we could buy food and fuel. Cash works when there is no power or communication.

Clubber 4y ago
Also cash isn't easily trackable. This is nice if you are uneasy with all the tracking and surveillance going on today.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  It's also really hard to stop people from using their cash. Of course governments see this as a weakness, but everyone concerned about government overreach should appreciate how your cards and bank accounts can be frozen, but your cash is yours (as long as you have physical control over it).
  - DoctorOW 4y ago
    Cops just straight up take people's cash in some parts of the world
    - Clubber 4y ago
      They do that in the US. It's called civil asset forfeiture, and the federal government supports it and takes a cut. No due process needed. https://jalopnik.com/heres-another-reminder-that-the-police-can-just-steal-y-1847606139 https://jalopnik.com/heres-another-reminder-that-the-police-...
- shortcake27 4y ago
  This is always brought up as an argument against cashless. I don’t get it. I’m quite passionate about tracking, collection, and use of personal data. But I really couldn’t care less about my day to day purchases. My bank knows that I buy a coffee every morning and lunch from a local vendor, and some groceries or dinner in the evening. My bank won’t use this for any kind of targeted advertising and I trust them to keep it secure. This data seems so unimportant compared to the frustration of cash. The second I step foot in a cash economy I start having issues with large bills (do you have a smaller note etc), losing change, having to keep on visiting ATMs. It’s extremely irritating once you’ve gotten used to cashless. What is everyone buying on a daily basis with cash that is so secret the banks and governments must not know?
  - notdang 4y ago
    All good and convenient untill some governmental agency decides that you cannot use the cashless methods and by that time cash is not available because no one protested since it was so convenient.
  - starkd 4y ago
    No offense intended, but what this is is a failure of imagination. You assume conditions of a liberal democracy where people engaging in commerce without prejudice. That is still the case most of the time. But suppose you speak out publicly and it is taken the wrong way. If you are content self-censoring, you will probably be fine. But society that has a habit of self-censoring feels free?
  - Clubber 4y ago
    >My bank won’t use this for any kind of targeted advertising and I trust them to keep it secure. Well maybe you shouldn't. Banks Profit From Selling Customers’ Spending Data https://www.courthousenews.com/banks-profit-from-selling-your-spending-data/ https://www.courthousenews.com/banks-profit-from-selling-you... 10 biggest financial data breaches of 2022 https://www.americanbanker.com/list/10-biggest-financial-data-breaches-of-2022 https://www.americanbanker.com/list/10-biggest-financial-dat... I use cards all the time, but I just prefer cash for small everyday purchases. If I'm buying a TV or something, I use the card; if I'm getting lunch, I just use cash. Plus, it's super easy to just give the waiter a $20 for a $12 meal and tell them to keep the change. Also, if you do a person to person sale, most people can't take cards, so eliminating cash eliminates a good chuck of the secondary market without adding a middleman like a pawn shop. I bought about $1000 worth of gym equipment for $150 from someone moving and it was just like new.
iforgotpassword 4y ago
This is my core concern really. So far, most outages I experienced here in Germany were mildly annoying, mostly due to the fact that cash is still King here and I had enough around the house to cover a couple days, but everytime it happens I think of what it would be like if we were as cashless as for example China. I'm not against all those modern payment methods, but I seriously think it should be mandatory for stores offering the basic necessities to accept cash.
- kqr 4y ago
  Yup, this is my stance as well. I switched to a cash-friendly bank, I always carry a few bills on me, and I prefer to shop at stores that do take cash. (This is in a region of the world that's virtually cashless in everyday business.) When people hear this they assume I must be anti-electronic payment but that's far from true. I love the convenience. I just think it's really, really important we retain the option of physical cash, and hope that we rarely have to exercise it. It's worth the additional investment to achieve resilience.
  - starkd 4y ago
    There is also something very pleasant about the feeling of cash. It establishes a permanence and a respect for the currency that has to figure into the psychology of money.
- krzyk 4y ago
  You had a power outage that lasted few days? BTW. For short outage batteries in terminal is enough, and BTSes have UPS that last quite long. Basically when my neighborhood has power outage (once a year maybe) for max 2-4 hours, cell service still works (a bit slower because everyone switched to it).
  - artificialLimbs 4y ago
    Works great if your country isn't at war.
  - loloquwowndueo 4y ago
robocat 4y ago
Here is a news video partly about a queue at a cash machine: https://youtube.com/watch?v=I6gVliTmPGA https://youtube.com/watch?v=I6gVliTmPGA NZ translations: Spark == ATT, kai == food, munted == fucked, Gisbourne == town of 40000 in the wop-wops (I loved the place when I last visited there!) Off topic, but I would be interested to know what people from the US think of NZ reporting compared to US reporting.
dzhiurgis 4y ago
FWIW one of the bottle shop reopened while storm was ongoing using a generator and was taking payments for some cards offline, tho my card wasn’t enabled for that. I had cash, but that’s NZ for you - first to implement paywave but now there’s surcharge’s everywhere. I was completely cashless/wallet-less in europe.
pyuser583 4y ago
When I moved to San Francisco, I was told to always keep two weeks cash on hand. If there is an earth quake, the bridges can be down for a while, and cash will become very important.
auxbuss 4y ago
There's a real world example of this situation from the six-month Irish bank strike of 1970. Cheques, pubs, and trust ultimately replaced the banking system; and everything kept moving; not perfectly, of course, but neither are our current systems. A couple of links to get you going, but there's a lot of data out there on this: https://archive.is/20180106184835/https://www.ft.com/content/b8bc4a7a-20c3-11e5-ab0f-6bb9974f25d0 https://archive.is/20180106184835/https://www.ft.com/content... https://archive.ph/20120802230107/http://www.independent.ie/business/how-sixmonth-bank-strike-rocked-the-nation-388755.html https://archive.ph/20120802230107/http://www.independent.ie/... It's also an object lesson on how money is created out of thin air.

Clubber 4y ago

Also cash isn't easily trackable. This is nice if you are uneasy with all the tracking and surveillance going on today.

wongarsu 4y ago
It's also really hard to stop people from using their cash. Of course governments see this as a weakness, but everyone concerned about government overreach should appreciate how your cards and bank accounts can be frozen, but your cash is yours (as long as you have physical control over it).
- DoctorOW 4y ago
  Cops just straight up take people's cash in some parts of the world
  - Clubber 4y ago
    They do that in the US. It's called civil asset forfeiture, and the federal government supports it and takes a cut. No due process needed. https://jalopnik.com/heres-another-reminder-that-the-police-can-just-steal-y-1847606139 https://jalopnik.com/heres-another-reminder-that-the-police-...
shortcake27 4y ago
This is always brought up as an argument against cashless. I don’t get it. I’m quite passionate about tracking, collection, and use of personal data. But I really couldn’t care less about my day to day purchases. My bank knows that I buy a coffee every morning and lunch from a local vendor, and some groceries or dinner in the evening. My bank won’t use this for any kind of targeted advertising and I trust them to keep it secure. This data seems so unimportant compared to the frustration of cash. The second I step foot in a cash economy I start having issues with large bills (do you have a smaller note etc), losing change, having to keep on visiting ATMs. It’s extremely irritating once you’ve gotten used to cashless. What is everyone buying on a daily basis with cash that is so secret the banks and governments must not know?
- notdang 4y ago
  All good and convenient untill some governmental agency decides that you cannot use the cashless methods and by that time cash is not available because no one protested since it was so convenient.
- starkd 4y ago
  No offense intended, but what this is is a failure of imagination. You assume conditions of a liberal democracy where people engaging in commerce without prejudice. That is still the case most of the time. But suppose you speak out publicly and it is taken the wrong way. If you are content self-censoring, you will probably be fine. But society that has a habit of self-censoring feels free?
- Clubber 4y ago
  >My bank won’t use this for any kind of targeted advertising and I trust them to keep it secure. Well maybe you shouldn't. Banks Profit From Selling Customers’ Spending Data https://www.courthousenews.com/banks-profit-from-selling-your-spending-data/ https://www.courthousenews.com/banks-profit-from-selling-you... 10 biggest financial data breaches of 2022 https://www.americanbanker.com/list/10-biggest-financial-data-breaches-of-2022 https://www.americanbanker.com/list/10-biggest-financial-dat... I use cards all the time, but I just prefer cash for small everyday purchases. If I'm buying a TV or something, I use the card; if I'm getting lunch, I just use cash. Plus, it's super easy to just give the waiter a $20 for a $12 meal and tell them to keep the change. Also, if you do a person to person sale, most people can't take cards, so eliminating cash eliminates a good chuck of the secondary market without adding a middleman like a pawn shop. I bought about $1000 worth of gym equipment for $150 from someone moving and it was just like new.

iforgotpassword 4y ago

This is my core concern really. So far, most outages I experienced here in Germany were mildly annoying, mostly due to the fact that cash is still King here and I had enough around the house to cover a couple days, but everytime it happens I think of what it would be like if we were as cashless as for example China. I'm not against all those modern payment methods, but I seriously think it should be mandatory for stores offering the basic necessities to accept cash.

kqr 4y ago
Yup, this is my stance as well. I switched to a cash-friendly bank, I always carry a few bills on me, and I prefer to shop at stores that do take cash. (This is in a region of the world that's virtually cashless in everyday business.) When people hear this they assume I must be anti-electronic payment but that's far from true. I love the convenience. I just think it's really, really important we retain the option of physical cash, and hope that we rarely have to exercise it. It's worth the additional investment to achieve resilience.
- starkd 4y ago
  There is also something very pleasant about the feeling of cash. It establishes a permanence and a respect for the currency that has to figure into the psychology of money.
krzyk 4y ago
You had a power outage that lasted few days? BTW. For short outage batteries in terminal is enough, and BTSes have UPS that last quite long. Basically when my neighborhood has power outage (once a year maybe) for max 2-4 hours, cell service still works (a bit slower because everyone switched to it).
- artificialLimbs 4y ago
  Works great if your country isn't at war.
- loloquwowndueo 4y ago

robocat 4y ago

Here is a news video partly about a queue at a cash machine: https://youtube.com/watch?v=I6gVliTmPGA https://youtube.com/watch?v=I6gVliTmPGA NZ translations: Spark == ATT, kai == food, munted == fucked, Gisbourne == town of 40000 in the wop-wops (I loved the place when I last visited there!) Off topic, but I would be interested to know what people from the US think of NZ reporting compared to US reporting.

dzhiurgis 4y ago

FWIW one of the bottle shop reopened while storm was ongoing using a generator and was taking payments for some cards offline, tho my card wasn’t enabled for that. I had cash, but that’s NZ for you - first to implement paywave but now there’s surcharge’s everywhere. I was completely cashless/wallet-less in europe.

pyuser583 4y ago

When I moved to San Francisco, I was told to always keep two weeks cash on hand. If there is an earth quake, the bridges can be down for a while, and cash will become very important.

auxbuss 4y ago

There's a real world example of this situation from the six-month Irish bank strike of 1970. Cheques, pubs, and trust ultimately replaced the banking system; and everything kept moving; not perfectly, of course, but neither are our current systems. A couple of links to get you going, but there's a lot of data out there on this: https://archive.is/20180106184835/https://www.ft.com/content/b8bc4a7a-20c3-11e5-ab0f-6bb9974f25d0 https://archive.is/20180106184835/https://www.ft.com/content... https://archive.ph/20120802230107/http://www.independent.ie/business/how-sixmonth-bank-strike-rocked-the-nation-388755.html https://archive.ph/20120802230107/http://www.independent.ie/... It's also an object lesson on how money is created out of thin air.