In praise of cash • Hacker News Board

Re: In praise of cash

#361

Post by mtnygard » Mon, Mar 06, 2017, 3:13 PM UTC

canadian_voter wrote: post #16

CPLX wrote: post #9

The core concept to remember I think is that there are two ways to pay for things: * Ways that involve cash or cash equivalents * Ways where a purchase requires the permission of someone else Just think of the word authorization, which is a required element of essentially all non-cash transactions. It has the word authority embedded right in it. If you're OK with that concept, you are necessarily OK with the idea tha…

Bingo, I think you nailed it. The cashless society – which more accurately should be called the bank-payments society... is a utopia where money cannot leave – or even exist – outside the banking system, but can only be transferred from bank to bank. Such a system replaces a relationship between two parties with relationships between those parties and the bank. If either party falls out of favour with the bank, they…

I've experienced that directly more than once. Trying to use a credit card online to purchase from a merchant that the banks --- all of them! --- refused to process my payment. This was for legal products from an established seller.

The banks were happy to charge a big fee to send a bank wire or cashiers check. Just wouldn't deal with a credit card.

It's obviously because the bank ends up on the hook for liability in the case of disputed or reversed charges. They judged that market to be too likely to result in their losses so they simply refused to let me do business with the seller I wanted to use.

Re: In praise of cash

#362

Post by Jemmeh » Mon, Mar 06, 2017, 3:17 PM UTC

gyey wrote: post #281

Jemmeh wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." -Edward Snowden

To be the devil's advocate here, what situation can you imagine that would warrant a person to legitimately hide information or keep secrets from their own government?

I actually think this is a great question and I'm glad you asked it because it's such a common response to privacy. It's gotten good responses.

The government is not perfect. It's made of people. People who may be racist, sexist, homophobic, desperate for money, greedy, or corrupt.

- Someone's ex burned them, now they hate everyone of __ gender and go out of their way to dig through information of those people and get them in trouble.

- Someone is anti-LGBTQ+ and uses information to hunt people down and get them killed.

- A racist particularly hates a certain race, and now goes after them in particular for small law breaking things -- jaywalking when no cars are coming, not using their blinker, not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign. And while those are all crimes, now people of that race are being punished disproportionately.

- Businesses with their hands in the government now have information to use against their competitors and create monopolies

- Limits free speech - can't even discuss things privately.

- Further removal of all freedoms because now you can't get away with anything even if it's a controversial thing such as drugs, sexuality, art/music, and protest.

etc.

Re: In praise of cash

#363

Post by vkou » Mon, Mar 06, 2017, 5:14 PM UTC

M_Grey wrote: post #275

vkou wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My landlord doesn't accept turnips either. And he needs to pay property taxes regardless of whether or not I'm renting.

Do you live in a cashless society?

The only time I touch cash is:

1. When my girlfriend pays me her half for getting groceries.

2. Which I then use to feed the laundry card refill machine in my apartment.

Mind you, I don't want cash to go away, but yes, I essentially live in a cashless society.

Re: In praise of cash

#364

Post by vkou » Mon, Mar 06, 2017, 5:16 PM UTC

M_Grey wrote: post #274

vkou wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the annual volume of gold transactions, compared to the annual number of USD transactions? Hundreds of thousands, versus trillions? Is there anyplace in the country where I can pay my green-grocer with gold? Describing gold as an incredibly popular currency makes alternative-facts look honest.

We're talking about a hypothetical cashless future, and your argument is that right now, this isn't the case. ...

And you're conflating store of value (Which gold is... An OK one) with currency.

A currency is a store of value, but a store of value is not necessarily a currency. Gold, as a currency, has terrible properties.

Re: In praise of cash

#365

Post by frandroid » Mon, Mar 06, 2017, 7:31 PM UTC

nommm-nommm wrote: post #214

frandroid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ATMs are more hardened, and you visit less of them (and you keep visiting the same ones) so you can spot skimmers more easily.

ATM skimmers are not always easy to spot and sometimes aren't even viable from the outside, for example, Bluetooth skimmers. http://krebsonsecurity.com/all-about-skimmers/

You still reduce your exposure if you just withdraw your money from a few ATMs and pay cash everywhere else, instead of paying by card everywhere, no?

Re: In praise of cash

#366

Post by fian » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 2:12 AM UTC

gyey wrote: post #281

Jemmeh wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." -Edward Snowden

To be the devil's advocate here, what situation can you imagine that would warrant a person to legitimately hide information or keep secrets from their own government?

A bit late to this discussion, but the question of why someone would want to hide information from the government of today is not necessarily the right question.

Governments are not permanent. Significant changes in government can occur through democratic election, revolution, invasion (Ukraine?). Such changes can happen very rapidly. Records can not always be easily purged.

If the incoming government is ideologically opposed to something that you are or you declare (race, religion, political views) and they have a lot of information about you collected by the previous government - then you could very well be in mortal danger.

There are many examples of this in history.

So benign governments should aim to collect the minimum of information required to deliver good service to its citizens. Neither you nor your hopefully benign current government can trust the governments that are to come.

Re: In praise of cash

#367

Post by Symbiote » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 12:08 AM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #359

Symbiote wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still costs to handling cash, which will vary in each case based on business size. Hiring those armoured vans to move it around, loss by theft or error by staff, time spent counting money, making cash deposits or withdrawals from the bank, and perhaps higher insurance. Whether those costs are more or less than cash presumably varies. A public transport operator seems the obvious case where cash costs are hi…

Every small business owner I've talked to in the US is either indifferent or prefers cash.

If [1], of which I've only skimmed the summary, shows that the EC was aiming to "calculate a level of interchange fee that makes the merchants, on average, indifferent between a transaction by cash or by card", and if that's the level that's been implemented in the EU, then they can probably call it a success.

In the last 3-4 years, I've been surprised a few times when small businesses (plumber, street food seller, dry cleaner) have preferred a card.

[1] http://ec.europa.eu/competition/sectors/financial_services/d...

Re: In praise of cash

#368

Post by giardini » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 8:43 PM UTC

rz2k wrote: post #240

giardini wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year I tired of reconciling my credit card and checkbook accounts, so shifted to using cash only (I have credit cards if there's an emergency). So far I'm spending ~10% less each month. I'm more careful about purchases. I get and seek cash discounts. Best of all I don't need to do the reconciliation.

How do you ask for a cash discount?

Just ask! "Do you give a cash discount?"

Re: In praise of cash

#369

Post by jnunoferreira » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 3:40 PM UTC

__jal wrote: post #254

kolinko wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter of better governance though. Ideally, anti-trust government entities should monitor how companies like PayPal operate.

So, "ideally", we'd 1) ban cash, so that humans need permission to interact when an exchange of value is involved; 2) improve the oversight of the permission-givers, so that the permission-giver-watchers are less arbitrary and annoying, in order to fix the problem that never existed before point 1. Other than lining the pockets of poor, underfed bankers and giving busy-bodies veto power over our interactions with oth…

I believe that the main reasonable concern with large transactions of money is mostly buyer/seller protection, for large sums of money. When buying, say, a house/car and spending well over €/£/$ 3k (typical over-3k transaction), it is customary to have a series of formalities/assurances so that both parties are protected against fraud. These formalities require the kind of proof (that money exchanged hands) that generally only banks can provide.

I fully agree that this places a big amount of power in the banks' hands, but what alternatives are there? (I'm honestly asking, are banks the lesser/only evil here?)

I'm not seeing cryptocurrency fixing this, but maybe it is possible. From my limited understanding, if transactions were mapped to some contract, it would void some anonymity of the system, and it probably wouldn't be possible to get money back in case of fraud anyway, so there's that.