For years, I've actively pushed against the cashless society, I'll withdraw cash from an automatic teller and use it in preference to using my cards. For start

For years, I've actively pushed against the cashless society, I'll withdraw cash from an automatic teller and use it in preference to using my cards. For starters there's privacy, one's cash transactions aren't sold off to data brokers or if they are then it's much harder to link a sale to a particular person. Then there's the reliability of cash, I'd hate to guess the number of times I've been held up in a supermarket aisle because someone's electronic transaction hasn't worked. Also, cash is just so convenient for small transactions. Several weeks ago at a café where I get my takeaway coffee I had the owner whinge to me that the electronic transaction network had been down and he lost much business because customers carried no cash. To not disappoint customers he offered some services on an honor system where customers would later pay what they owed but this turned out to have several negative effects, the first was that a large percentage of customers failed to honor the debt and second, he actually lost customers overall because those who had not paid up were embarrassed to show their faces again in his café. One wonders what will happen in a cashless society when we have a repeat of the Carrington Event and electronic systems go down for extended periods everywhere. As sure as eggs, such an event will happen eventually. At present, the move to a cashless society seems almost inevitable, perhaps the only thing that will stop it would be such an event.