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Even if it weren't a terrible, awful idea from a democratic point of view, it's just silly from a logistic point of view. This means you create a single point

Even if it weren't a terrible, awful idea from a democratic point of view, it's just silly from a logistic point of view. This means you create a single point of failure for your entire society: electricity provision. Got a power shot down? Suddenly nobody can buy anything. Got a war on your territory? Your trade routes will get destroyed 4 times faster. Want to be a reserve currency? Guess what, now you have to do like China and have 2 currencies cause the rest of the world uses cash. And congrats, a cyber attack can now hurt your economy. Hope nothing in 70000 years of history won't repeat itself cause you are now going down next time something goes wrong.

danpalmer 3y ago
Most stores aren't going to be able to sell you anything with no power, regardless of taking card or cash, because sales need to go into a database via a register, update inventory, etc. Sure a few small family run businesses, maybe restaurants, might be able to take cash, but almost no chains will be able to run and that's most stores in most places.
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  First days, you don't need all stores, a few is enough. After a few days, I guarantee even the big ones will manage the inventory with pen and paper, with the blessing of the boss and the gov. But even without all that, having the ability to have a black market in a time of crisis is priceless.
- canucker2016 3y ago
  It's the network that's the problem. In Europe, the Visa network went down in 2018. see https://www.wired.com/story/visa-outage-shows-the-fragility-of-global-payments/ https://www.wired.com/story/visa-outage-shows-the-fragility-... In Canada, the Rogers network went down in July 2022 for several hours which caused debit card transactions to fail (after the outage, Interac said it was going to add a SECOND network provider - *facepalm*). Many businesses which relied on the Rogers network for credit card transactions were also affected. from https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rogers-outage-interac-debit-restored-1.6515869 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rogers-outage-interac-debit...: "Small business owners were among those hardest hit by the outage, which left them unable to process debit card payments. Sharif Ahmed, the owner of Plantforsoul plant shop in Toronto's west end, said the outage left him feeling helpless, as he turned away customers who didn't have cash."
- ImAnAmateur 3y ago
  Home Depot has a backup generator or battery in order to still allow transactions to go through in the event of a power outage. It even ran the air conditioning. They stored the payments offline until they were able to connect online again. What I've seen happen more often is that there is a network error and digital payments can't be processed for hours. Digital money relies on a lot more complex infrastructure than just electricity.
- precommunicator 3y ago
  In my country it's required for cash registers to have a backup power enough for 48h of outage. We don't get outages that often (probably once a year or so) but the requirement is there.
- fomine3 3y ago
  On emergency situation like earthquake, it's possible to bypass every system and just exchange items to cash. Maybe write a receipt on memo paper.
zeroonetwothree 3y ago
Stores used to process card payments before they had digital registers. So it’s not required. And now I suspect even cash won’t work without power.

danpalmer 3y ago

Most stores aren't going to be able to sell you anything with no power, regardless of taking card or cash, because sales need to go into a database via a register, update inventory, etc. Sure a few small family run businesses, maybe restaurants, might be able to take cash, but almost no chains will be able to run and that's most stores in most places.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago
First days, you don't need all stores, a few is enough. After a few days, I guarantee even the big ones will manage the inventory with pen and paper, with the blessing of the boss and the gov. But even without all that, having the ability to have a black market in a time of crisis is priceless.
canucker2016 3y ago
It's the network that's the problem. In Europe, the Visa network went down in 2018. see https://www.wired.com/story/visa-outage-shows-the-fragility-of-global-payments/ https://www.wired.com/story/visa-outage-shows-the-fragility-... In Canada, the Rogers network went down in July 2022 for several hours which caused debit card transactions to fail (after the outage, Interac said it was going to add a SECOND network provider - *facepalm*). Many businesses which relied on the Rogers network for credit card transactions were also affected. from https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rogers-outage-interac-debit-restored-1.6515869 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rogers-outage-interac-debit...: "Small business owners were among those hardest hit by the outage, which left them unable to process debit card payments. Sharif Ahmed, the owner of Plantforsoul plant shop in Toronto's west end, said the outage left him feeling helpless, as he turned away customers who didn't have cash."
ImAnAmateur 3y ago
Home Depot has a backup generator or battery in order to still allow transactions to go through in the event of a power outage. It even ran the air conditioning. They stored the payments offline until they were able to connect online again. What I've seen happen more often is that there is a network error and digital payments can't be processed for hours. Digital money relies on a lot more complex infrastructure than just electricity.
precommunicator 3y ago
In my country it's required for cash registers to have a backup power enough for 48h of outage. We don't get outages that often (probably once a year or so) but the requirement is there.
fomine3 3y ago
On emergency situation like earthquake, it's possible to bypass every system and just exchange items to cash. Maybe write a receipt on memo paper.

zeroonetwothree 3y ago

Stores used to process card payments before they had digital registers. So it’s not required. And now I suspect even cash won’t work without power.