41–50 of 257 posts
Cash can be made useless centrally just as easily (if not easier because of its central nature) and there have been instances of this in the past in cash-only societies.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_leu#Second_leu:_1947-...
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If people are below the poverty line then extra fees associated with transaction-handling, cost of technology for access etc are a big deal. Cash is closer to free to use. If you buy something used, a PC, fridge, whatever, because you can't afford new, do you want a transaction fee in addition? It may only be 1% or $1 (not accounting for the price of a smart phone and network costs) but that is still $1 more than you…
Cash is not free, there is a time cost to handling the cash, depositing it, there is a risk cost for vendors from employees stealing it, there is a risk cost from being robbed...there are always trade offs. A lot of these comments mention that cash gives the government less control, however try visiting India or China or Greece and ask people the real reason they use cash. It's to evade taxes and launder money! Same…
We're all responsible for our own actions.
That said, I like having and using cash - it gives me a greater sense and overview of how much I spend and I find it convenient in general.
> We already live in a world that is, as far as the > distribution of wealth is concerned, about as unequal > as it gets. It may even be as unequal as it’s ever been. Sure, if by "a world" you mean "a hyper-prosperous nation like the US or the UK"... and if by "unequal as it's ever been" you mean that third-world countries are taking our jobs and becoming much more prosperous, hitting our middle income brackets - the…
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I assume that you're referring to Revelation 13:17: > And [the Beast] causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name. Like most of Revelations, I think this need…
> to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark How else would you describe 21st century RFID using 1st century vocabulary? Revelation was written 2,000 years ago, and is supposed to be about things in its future, after all.
Why did it need to use 1st Century vocabulary?
I am a practising Christian, and in my heart, I suspect Jesus would say something like "don't worry about how you pay for physical stuff".
Just kidding.
Well almost, since it was what did it for me. I started withdrawing larger amounts, 500 or 1000 Euros, each time, after ending up with no cash too often.
And I didn't feel the need to use another payment method since. YMMV (obviously).
The best tip ever for saving to only spend cash. When you have the physical money leaving your hands it feels like a lot more than inserting a card and pressing a pin code. I am mostly using cash if I have the possibility to, which is kind of annoying sometimes since in Sweden (where I live) there are many "cashless" shops. Even in normal grocery stores checkouts it's like 50/50. I've never visited a country that has…
I haven't encountered a single grocery store that refuses cash and only accepts electronic/card payments yet. Was this a chain supermarket?
I don't understand this argument that people feel safer storing cash than keeping it in a bank. The cash is just as ephemeral as bank credit. With the exception that it's controlled by your central bank instead of the commercial banks. Cash can be made useless centrally just as easily (if not easier because of its central nature) and there have been instances of this in the past in cash-only societies.[1] [1] https:/…
Most monetary economists would disagree. The zero bound on interest rates exists on cash, not bank deposits. From a central location, one can interrupt electronic funds transfers to and from certain persons or looking like this or that. You can't prohibit Iran from holding dollars in cash, though. To do so means threatening the systemic value of the currency. Cash forces an all-or-nothing constraint on the powers that be.
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You fire one cashier and install 100 self checkout machines. Problem solved!
And replace those cashiers with people who have other job titles to manage inventory shrinkage. There's no getting around the fact that you need eyes near the doors to make sure that everything gets paid for, and you need enough eyes to monitor the traffic: more parallel traffic, more eyes needed. (Anecdotally, I see more staff at self-serve checkouts than at cash registers in stores that have both, yet the cashier l…
I've been "cash only" for 8 months now and I love it. Of course I need a credit card if I buy something on Amazon or a one-off web store, but the point is to move as many transactions offline as possible. There are so many privacy benefits to using cash, but one that really resonates with me is the physical nature of it. When you pay for something with cash, you can feel the transaction of money exchanging hands and…
I don't understand this argument that people feel safer storing cash than keeping it in a bank. The cash is just as ephemeral as bank credit. With the exception that it's controlled by your central bank instead of the commercial banks. Cash can be made useless centrally just as easily (if not easier because of its central nature) and there have been instances of this in the past in cash-only societies.[1] [1] https:/…