7 ms·

The Luddite's Guide to Defending Cash (2023)

54 points by t0bia_s 3y ago

t0bia_s 3y ago
Uber and bycicle comparison is great. Author should mention technical requirements for cashless society. Data around the globe, device for everyone and electricity to power those devices. Which is something that most people cannot afford. Also, this would require constitutional right for having those devices.
iteratethis 3y ago
I want to describe society in the 80s, Western Europe. Everything is cash-based. My dad got paid in cash. He spent in cash, in stores as well as freely transacting with friends and family. There were (hardly) any CCTV cameras anywhere and of course no smartphones. The personal freedom and lack of surveillance might be hard to imagine for young people. The government knows close to nothing about you. They know you exist and would know that you have a job. Nobody really knows how much money you have, what you spent it on, your whereabouts and the mentality very much was that this is nobody's business. The distributed nature of cash makes arbitrary seizure impractical. Now the burden of proof is reversed. "Money as software" makes possible an unlimited number of disturbing scenarios.
kkfx 3y ago
Just two note: I do not know what it will happen because there is not much public info but for us European the EU have started experimenting with GNU Taler https://social.network.europa.eu/@EC_NGI/111499172838284606 https://social.network.europa.eu/@EC_NGI/111499172838284606 with a not so clear roadmap https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-an-economy-that-works-for-people/file-digital-euro https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-an-ec... in this case Taler are eCashes, so they might be ok for public usage not being directly tied to a specific service just to exchange them, we just need the bank to cash in. BUT the main issue is simple offline availability witch is something we MUST have as a spare wheel: personally I buy essentially everything with electronic moneys (bank cards, wire transfers etc) BUT a day that my favorite grocery store loose connections due to some road works damage I've paid cash because I have them and both parties have no other choices. This is a rare events but we need to keep up small economy in case of major disruptive events and that' where even taler fall short since it allow just a SINGLE P2P exchange.
hcfman 3y ago
So how do you deal with more than 10,000 euros cash in the EU ? In the EU if you can’t account for your cash and it’s over a certain amount, I think 10,000 euros but it might be as low as 2000 euros, then the government can just take it all off you. Perfect accounting ? Keeping bank receipts? Videoing you whole waking life?
- evrimoztamur 3y ago
  Keeping bank receipts seems pretty straightforward and sufficient, no need to put it in between the two absurd takes.
  - hcfman 3y ago
    Years of distrust of the Dutch government. comes from having them facilitate criminality by proxy against me for 10 years after they busted a neigbour or for having weed. I was harassed (extremely mildly put) because I dared to complain about the trouble their informant and other neighbour was causing. 10,000 of thousands of euros later I don’t trust them strangely.
  - ThinkBeat 3y ago
    Except that if you are making it a point to use physical cash in your life, then you wont have bank receipts. Having over €15.000 in the piggy bank or mattress does not seem exceptionally unreasonable. But from what was stated earlier in the thread I guess that is illegal now. The state can take your piggy bank, just for living on physical cash.
- csydas 3y ago
  I honestly have no idea what you're talking about unless you're meaning about immigrating with more than 10,000€ worth of physical currency? I went through immigrating to EU recently and the declaration was as simple as signing a statement that I am able to show records of how I got the money if required by the country I was moving to, and one of the examples was as simple as bank statements showing you had an income that supported you having such money. I don't think you're talking about this, so maybe you can link to a government site with the relevant law you're discussing? It's pretty trivial to demonstrate it in most cases, and I think even a paper ledger is enough for most situations.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
Some nice fresh ideas in here. Love the Big Brother, Big Bouncer and Big Butler distinctions. Some more mundane reality from the streets... actual people who work in actual shops and people who actually buy stuff are on this week's Cybershow [0] saying just how much everyone hate this cashless and robotic rubbish. Everyone with a IQ above double figures can see it's one power outage away from food riots (resilience is my personal bugbear - and I sincerely think society is screwing itself with cashless ideology and that we ought to treat it as seriously as soil erosion, climate change and other threats to food and energy continuity of operation.) [0] https://cybershow.uk/ https://cybershow.uk/
- jameshart 3y ago
  > one power outage away from food riots Tell us more about this scenario. You’re positing a situation where due to an inability to accept cashless payments, supermarkets refuse to sell food to people for an extended period, leading to mass unrest? In the UK? The UK power grid is remarkably resilient. To the extent that a half hour long power outage in London over 20 years ago is considered notable enough to deserve a Wikipedia article [1] An extended power outage affecting access to payment capabilities across a large region would be an emergency but it wouldn’t collapse civilization. There’s little reason to suspect people would not find some way to transact while power is restored. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_London_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_London_blackout
  - twic 3y ago
    My local supermarket, in London, had an internet outage yesterday, and couldn't take card payments. Their cash machine was out of action too. They had staff outside telling everyone as they came in; some carried on in, many went elsewhere. Most people don't carry enough to cash to do meaningful grocery shopping these days.
    - jameshart 3y ago
      Did a food riot start?
vvpan 3y ago
Brett Scott is a great public money intellectual. Happened to be listening to this podcast with him yesterday. I know it has "blockchain" in the name but that actually provokes Scott to answer some interesting hypothetical questions. https://theblockchainsocialist.com/how-to-live-with-contradiction-and-seeing-crypto-for-what-it-is-with-brett-scott/ https://theblockchainsocialist.com/how-to-live-with-contradi...
popol12 3y ago
Monero FTW
gieksosz 3y ago
I was genuinely curious to learn what are the arguments to keep cash around (I myself am pretty happy with digital payments). This article was such as tedious read and in the end I am still not well educated on the arguments. mostly that there is a narrative against cash, that it is demonized and that somehow digital money is like casino chips? As far as I know banks and their apps do function based on gov regulations so it is pretty far from chips or uber points.
- t0bia_s 3y ago
  Try digitally give money to your kids or homeless people. Or anyone who does not have data, device or even access to electricity (most of people).
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    Gen Z here. My parents just handed me their credit card when I needed to buy things. Also made use of prepaid visa cards that were not attached to a bank account before I got an account of my own.
    - sickofparadox 3y ago
      From one Gen Z to another, I'm glad one of our own claimed that username.
- jjav 3y ago
  > As far as I know banks and their apps do function based on gov regulations so it is pretty far from chips or uber points. Electronic payments depend on a long series of things working correctly, any one of which can block you. Electricity and internet connectivity are two obvious ones, which do fail. More subtle, both you and the recipient of the payment must be in good standing with whatever authority (or multiple ones) the payment is flowing through. If either one is blocked for whatever obscure reason, no payment can be made or received. So now you have the denial of service risk of a third party arbiter on whether the payment you're trying to make is fine with them, or risk being blocked. Cash suffers from none of these problems! It is strictly peer to peer, requires absolutely nothing external to be functioning and has no dependency on any third parties. You have bills in your pocket, you can pay anyone at any time for whatever you want. Completely anonymously and it cannot be blocked. Aside from the small inconvenience of having to carry the bills, cash is the perfect payment mechanism.
doug_durham 3y ago
Wow, that was amazingly bad. The author is clearly in love with their ideas. However what few points they make is buried in pages of patronizing, self-indulgent prose. Advice, distill this down on one page and do a good-faith challenge of other ideas.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  Meta, but 1) I am not the author 2) I agree with the ideas presented 3) I've written similar pieces on similar ideas, have researched the topic and been interviewed as an expert for documentary film and television. So, I experienced the piece as well written, accessible and thorough, covering most of the common talking points and offering some good new thoughts. Now obviously we each experience things we agree with differently than those we disagree with. It does seem that ideas around cashless commerce are very polarising. But what I am seeing in this this thread is some quite disappointing modes of argument, including your own comment which is really just fulminating against the style of writing and the author. It would be much more interesting to know why you feel aggrieved by opposition to cashless technologies. Can you tell us that?
gomox 3y ago
If you are in any way concerned about your life's keys being at the mercy of Google or Apple picking up the phone when your account eventually gets locked up ("risk algorithm flag" - good luck!), you should easily be able to understand why a cashless society based on banks or governments as gatekeepers can be just as bad, if not a lot worse.
hakfoo 3y ago
What I prefer about cash is that it enforces a different attitude towards money. If you have a pile of notes or coins and watch them diminish, it definitely changes your attitude towards spending versus "present a card, and at the end of the month, you'll get a statement." Yeah, online banking and notifications get your finger closer to the pulse of your financial state, but it's hardly the same experience as "there are no more notes, spending must stop now." Ironically, I'd be more comfortable with digital payments if they were implemented through the state than the current private-sector plays. The government has obligations to service all legal customers, so there's limited wiggle room for them to deplatform. Meanwhile, private banks and card networks can be bullied into making some industries off-limits.
gomox 3y ago
Just last week my brother in law (in the US) wanted to send an Uber Eats gift card to my girlfriend (his sister, in Mexico) because she is staying home recovering from a minor surgery. He is not able to purchase such a gift card from the US site (gift cards are country specific). He is also not able to purchase such a gift card from the Mexico site (which demands a Mexican national ID to process the payment). He asks for my help. I try to use the same Mexican site, which refuses to take any of the 4 cards I try. I then use the website's option to "pay at OXXO" (a low tech system to pay for bills, in cash, through a large network of convenience stores owned by the local Coca Cola distributor). Cash saves the day. Next up he wants to pay me back. Cashapp/Venmo/Zelle are only for US residents. Local wires within the US are a pain. International wires are worse, and cost half of the amount he borrowed. Solution? Pay me back in cash next time im in town. The more suprising bit is that in this random anecdote cash ends up being superior to "cashless" even for one of its worse use cases (cross border transactions).
- t0bia_s 3y ago
  You cannot pay Uber by crypto?
- theragra 3y ago
  Because current electronic money are too centralized and gated. I have the same issue with payment from USA. I don't want PayPal, and my sister says ACH payment is expensive for her. So, I tell her to give cash to my parents when they visit. But when I needed to transfer cryptocurrency to her, it was easy and quick.
  - jjav 3y ago
    > Because current electronic money are too centralized and gated. Electronic payments are by definition centralized and gated, because someone has to operate them. That someone(s) is the gate. (Sure, blockchain.. I don't see that happening.)

54 points by t0bia_s 3y ago

Uber and bycicle comparison is great. Author should mention technical requirements for cashless society. Data around the globe, device for everyone and electricity to power those devices. Which is something that most people cannot afford. Also, this would require constitutional right for having those devices.

iteratethis 3y ago

I want to describe society in the 80s, Western Europe. Everything is cash-based. My dad got paid in cash. He spent in cash, in stores as well as freely transacting with friends and family. There were (hardly) any CCTV cameras anywhere and of course no smartphones. The personal freedom and lack of surveillance might be hard to imagine for young people. The government knows close to nothing about you. They know you exist and would know that you have a job. Nobody really knows how much money you have, what you spent it on, your whereabouts and the mentality very much was that this is nobody's business. The distributed nature of cash makes arbitrary seizure impractical. Now the burden of proof is reversed. "Money as software" makes possible an unlimited number of disturbing scenarios.

kkfx 3y ago

Just two note: I do not know what it will happen because there is not much public info but for us European the EU have started experimenting with GNU Taler https://social.network.europa.eu/@EC_NGI/111499172838284606 https://social.network.europa.eu/@EC_NGI/111499172838284606 with a not so clear roadmap https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-an-economy-that-works-for-people/file-digital-euro https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-an-ec... in this case Taler are eCashes, so they might be ok for public usage not being directly tied to a specific service just to exchange them, we just need the bank to cash in. BUT the main issue is simple offline availability witch is something we MUST have as a spare wheel: personally I buy essentially everything with electronic moneys (bank cards, wire transfers etc) BUT a day that my favorite grocery store loose connections due to some road works damage I've paid cash because I have them and both parties have no other choices. This is a rare events but we need to keep up small economy in case of major disruptive events and that' where even taler fall short since it allow just a SINGLE P2P exchange.

hcfman 3y ago

So how do you deal with more than 10,000 euros cash in the EU ? In the EU if you can’t account for your cash and it’s over a certain amount, I think 10,000 euros but it might be as low as 2000 euros, then the government can just take it all off you. Perfect accounting ? Keeping bank receipts? Videoing you whole waking life?

evrimoztamur 3y ago
Keeping bank receipts seems pretty straightforward and sufficient, no need to put it in between the two absurd takes.
- hcfman 3y ago
  Years of distrust of the Dutch government. comes from having them facilitate criminality by proxy against me for 10 years after they busted a neigbour or for having weed. I was harassed (extremely mildly put) because I dared to complain about the trouble their informant and other neighbour was causing. 10,000 of thousands of euros later I don’t trust them strangely.
- ThinkBeat 3y ago
  Except that if you are making it a point to use physical cash in your life, then you wont have bank receipts. Having over €15.000 in the piggy bank or mattress does not seem exceptionally unreasonable. But from what was stated earlier in the thread I guess that is illegal now. The state can take your piggy bank, just for living on physical cash.
csydas 3y ago
I honestly have no idea what you're talking about unless you're meaning about immigrating with more than 10,000€ worth of physical currency? I went through immigrating to EU recently and the declaration was as simple as signing a statement that I am able to show records of how I got the money if required by the country I was moving to, and one of the examples was as simple as bank statements showing you had an income that supported you having such money. I don't think you're talking about this, so maybe you can link to a government site with the relevant law you're discussing? It's pretty trivial to demonstrate it in most cases, and I think even a paper ledger is enough for most situations.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

Some nice fresh ideas in here. Love the Big Brother, Big Bouncer and Big Butler distinctions. Some more mundane reality from the streets... actual people who work in actual shops and people who actually buy stuff are on this week's Cybershow [0] saying just how much everyone hate this cashless and robotic rubbish. Everyone with a IQ above double figures can see it's one power outage away from food riots (resilience is my personal bugbear - and I sincerely think society is screwing itself with cashless ideology and that we ought to treat it as seriously as soil erosion, climate change and other threats to food and energy continuity of operation.) [0] https://cybershow.uk/ https://cybershow.uk/

jameshart 3y ago
> one power outage away from food riots Tell us more about this scenario. You’re positing a situation where due to an inability to accept cashless payments, supermarkets refuse to sell food to people for an extended period, leading to mass unrest? In the UK? The UK power grid is remarkably resilient. To the extent that a half hour long power outage in London over 20 years ago is considered notable enough to deserve a Wikipedia article [1] An extended power outage affecting access to payment capabilities across a large region would be an emergency but it wouldn’t collapse civilization. There’s little reason to suspect people would not find some way to transact while power is restored. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_London_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_London_blackout
- twic 3y ago
  My local supermarket, in London, had an internet outage yesterday, and couldn't take card payments. Their cash machine was out of action too. They had staff outside telling everyone as they came in; some carried on in, many went elsewhere. Most people don't carry enough to cash to do meaningful grocery shopping these days.
  - jameshart 3y ago
    Did a food riot start?

vvpan 3y ago

Brett Scott is a great public money intellectual. Happened to be listening to this podcast with him yesterday. I know it has "blockchain" in the name but that actually provokes Scott to answer some interesting hypothetical questions. https://theblockchainsocialist.com/how-to-live-with-contradiction-and-seeing-crypto-for-what-it-is-with-brett-scott/ https://theblockchainsocialist.com/how-to-live-with-contradi...

popol12 3y ago

Monero FTW

gieksosz 3y ago

I was genuinely curious to learn what are the arguments to keep cash around (I myself am pretty happy with digital payments). This article was such as tedious read and in the end I am still not well educated on the arguments. mostly that there is a narrative against cash, that it is demonized and that somehow digital money is like casino chips? As far as I know banks and their apps do function based on gov regulations so it is pretty far from chips or uber points.

t0bia_s 3y ago
Try digitally give money to your kids or homeless people. Or anyone who does not have data, device or even access to electricity (most of people).
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Gen Z here. My parents just handed me their credit card when I needed to buy things. Also made use of prepaid visa cards that were not attached to a bank account before I got an account of my own.
  - sickofparadox 3y ago
    From one Gen Z to another, I'm glad one of our own claimed that username.
jjav 3y ago
> As far as I know banks and their apps do function based on gov regulations so it is pretty far from chips or uber points. Electronic payments depend on a long series of things working correctly, any one of which can block you. Electricity and internet connectivity are two obvious ones, which do fail. More subtle, both you and the recipient of the payment must be in good standing with whatever authority (or multiple ones) the payment is flowing through. If either one is blocked for whatever obscure reason, no payment can be made or received. So now you have the denial of service risk of a third party arbiter on whether the payment you're trying to make is fine with them, or risk being blocked. Cash suffers from none of these problems! It is strictly peer to peer, requires absolutely nothing external to be functioning and has no dependency on any third parties. You have bills in your pocket, you can pay anyone at any time for whatever you want. Completely anonymously and it cannot be blocked. Aside from the small inconvenience of having to carry the bills, cash is the perfect payment mechanism.

doug_durham 3y ago

Wow, that was amazingly bad. The author is clearly in love with their ideas. However what few points they make is buried in pages of patronizing, self-indulgent prose. Advice, distill this down on one page and do a good-faith challenge of other ideas.

nonrandomstring 3y ago
Meta, but 1) I am not the author 2) I agree with the ideas presented 3) I've written similar pieces on similar ideas, have researched the topic and been interviewed as an expert for documentary film and television. So, I experienced the piece as well written, accessible and thorough, covering most of the common talking points and offering some good new thoughts. Now obviously we each experience things we agree with differently than those we disagree with. It does seem that ideas around cashless commerce are very polarising. But what I am seeing in this this thread is some quite disappointing modes of argument, including your own comment which is really just fulminating against the style of writing and the author. It would be much more interesting to know why you feel aggrieved by opposition to cashless technologies. Can you tell us that?

gomox 3y ago

If you are in any way concerned about your life's keys being at the mercy of Google or Apple picking up the phone when your account eventually gets locked up ("risk algorithm flag" - good luck!), you should easily be able to understand why a cashless society based on banks or governments as gatekeepers can be just as bad, if not a lot worse.

hakfoo 3y ago

What I prefer about cash is that it enforces a different attitude towards money. If you have a pile of notes or coins and watch them diminish, it definitely changes your attitude towards spending versus "present a card, and at the end of the month, you'll get a statement." Yeah, online banking and notifications get your finger closer to the pulse of your financial state, but it's hardly the same experience as "there are no more notes, spending must stop now." Ironically, I'd be more comfortable with digital payments if they were implemented through the state than the current private-sector plays. The government has obligations to service all legal customers, so there's limited wiggle room for them to deplatform. Meanwhile, private banks and card networks can be bullied into making some industries off-limits.

gomox 3y ago

Just last week my brother in law (in the US) wanted to send an Uber Eats gift card to my girlfriend (his sister, in Mexico) because she is staying home recovering from a minor surgery. He is not able to purchase such a gift card from the US site (gift cards are country specific). He is also not able to purchase such a gift card from the Mexico site (which demands a Mexican national ID to process the payment). He asks for my help. I try to use the same Mexican site, which refuses to take any of the 4 cards I try. I then use the website's option to "pay at OXXO" (a low tech system to pay for bills, in cash, through a large network of convenience stores owned by the local Coca Cola distributor). Cash saves the day. Next up he wants to pay me back. Cashapp/Venmo/Zelle are only for US residents. Local wires within the US are a pain. International wires are worse, and cost half of the amount he borrowed. Solution? Pay me back in cash next time im in town. The more suprising bit is that in this random anecdote cash ends up being superior to "cashless" even for one of its worse use cases (cross border transactions).

t0bia_s 3y ago
You cannot pay Uber by crypto?
theragra 3y ago
Because current electronic money are too centralized and gated. I have the same issue with payment from USA. I don't want PayPal, and my sister says ACH payment is expensive for her. So, I tell her to give cash to my parents when they visit. But when I needed to transfer cryptocurrency to her, it was easy and quick.
- jjav 3y ago
  > Because current electronic money are too centralized and gated. Electronic payments are by definition centralized and gated, because someone has to operate them. That someone(s) is the gate. (Sure, blockchain.. I don't see that happening.)