What is the cost of a cashless society? • Hacker News Board

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#241

Post by jeroenhd » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 12:56 PM UTC

mdp2021 wrote: post #176

jeroenhd wrote: post #145

I think a cashless society can work perfectly well. There's a single place that I still use cash with because they don't take card (probably avoiding tax) so every time I go there, I come back with change to tip to delivery people when I order food. Everything from my rent to my grocery shopping is done digitally and I honestly think it's great. However, that's probably because I live in a debit-based country. Debit…

> society ... that's probably You are creating a log of "everything you do", available to third parties, both statal and private. «That's probably» more because of lack of sense of "creepy". And «that's probably» also because you are not considering the infrastructure required, such as that time in spring the shop owner in front of me was having a nervous breakdown as a blackout had his transaction equipment off. In…

Good infrastructure is definitely one of the many requirements for a cashless society. I've personally experienced a blackout that lasted longer than 30 minutes and even then the amount of blackouts I've encountered can be counted on one hand. During those the cell tower backups managed to maintain connectivity for at least 15 minutes. Any store that invested in an UPS for their checkout systems would've just kept going for the entire time the power was out, maybe at a little slower rate because of the sudden influx of connections to the cell towers.

"What if the power goes out" is a question that needs to be answered for any part of society relying on technology, which, with the rise of ICS and IoT systems, is already affecting everything around us. Bridges will be stuck open (or closed), train will stop and grind to a halt, the shipping industry will grind to a halt, hospitals won't work for more than a day, electric cars will be unusable even sooner, the list goes on.

Good digital and electrical infrastructure is far from available everywhere, and in areas where it's not, a completely cashless society is simply not a good idea.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#242

Post by 1ark » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 12:56 PM UTC

SapporoChris wrote: post #204

When there are major power outages that take down networks how will cashless payments be made? I've seen stores stay open in a power outage with clever uses of extension cords running out to vehicles, enough to power the cash register and a few led lights. These stores were able to easily sell groceries (before they perished) and non-perishable items via cash.

Stores will be closed. It's not far to imagine a Kaseya-like incident, or just a power outage like you mention.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaseya_VSA_ransomware_attack

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#243

Post by 4ggr0 » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 12:57 PM UTC

cnasc wrote: post #239

4ggr0 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In some states, even 16 could drink beer prior to the feds fucking things up. That's one thing I always found funny when looking at the US as a european. When I had my first legal beer as a sixteen year old I remembered that I would only be allowed to do this in the US in five more years. Of course the actual first beer was drank when I was fifteen. What I always wondered - In countries where beer is allowed at six…

> In countries where beer is allowed at sixteen, people usually try it when fifteen, because doing forbidden things is obviously cool Pretty similar in the US. I didn’t try drinking at that age, but many high schoolers will.

I see, that does make sense. American kids must feel even more badass then, considering that they're doing something 5-6 years earlier than they'd be allowed to :)

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#244

Post by UncleEntity » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 12:57 PM UTC

4ggr0 wrote: post #232

noasaservice wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have a long tradition of this with our 21-year drinking age. People can differentiate between the laws they can break and the ones they shouldn’t. Well, not really. It was originally 18 to drink. Thanks to the federal government linking interstate funds to a requirement states support 21 drinking age is how they did that. In some states, even 16 could drink beer prior to the feds fucking things up.

> In some states, even 16 could drink beer prior to the feds fucking things up. That's one thing I always found funny when looking at the US as a european. When I had my first legal beer as a sixteen year old I remembered that I would only be allowed to do this in the US in five more years. Of course the actual first beer was drank when I was fifteen. What I always wondered - In countries where beer is allowed at six…

18 year olds in the military can’t buy beer, absolutely nobody cares if they drink it or not. In the whole time I was in not a single person got in trouble for the drinking but for whatever stupid things they did while drinking.

And it’s because they make you follow the local laws, when we were down in Panama the officers all chipped in and bought us a shitton of beer on our last night there. There was another time at Ft Bragg where they were like “anyone not over 21 can’t drink” and then just walked away leaving us with another shitton of beer.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#245

Post by jeroenhd » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 12:59 PM UTC

1ark wrote: post #237

preisschild wrote: post #214

Cash is going away someday, thats for sure. Digital payments are just more comfortable to use and it allows to send money over vast distances in a few seconds, which is useful for buying stuff on the internet. I'd just wish open source, decentralized, not-crypto-bro currencies like Monero ( https://www.getmonero.org/ ), that are unlike Bitcoin actually anonymous, would be more commonly accepted outside of darknet mar…

In a way Monero has been good money last couple of years. Not fluctuating too much up or down compared to others. So using it as fungible money could be ok. Monero has trade-offs though, how many are mined and have there been exploits/bugs in the supply?

It's good for a cryptocurrency, but looking at the exchange rates, that's still fluctuating way too much to make me feel comfortable in using it as a real currency.

I love the concept of the blockchain, but the cryptobros turned any kind of decentralized money into a gambling game, even the ones designed to be reasonably stable. This type of greed is why we can't have nice things.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#246

Post by 1ark » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 1:05 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #51

willnonya wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably the most naive comment in this thread. At that bar is set pretty high. Where there's a will there's a way...

Is this your first encounter with sarcasm?

They were born yesterday, or actually, 3 months ago.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#247

Post by 4ggr0 » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 1:12 PM UTC

UncleEntity wrote: post #244

4ggr0 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In some states, even 16 could drink beer prior to the feds fucking things up. That's one thing I always found funny when looking at the US as a european. When I had my first legal beer as a sixteen year old I remembered that I would only be allowed to do this in the US in five more years. Of course the actual first beer was drank when I was fifteen. What I always wondered - In countries where beer is allowed at six…

18 year olds in the military can’t buy beer, absolutely nobody cares if they drink it or not. In the whole time I was in not a single person got in trouble for the drinking but for whatever stupid things they did while drinking. And it’s because they make you follow the local laws, when we were down in Panama the officers all chipped in and bought us a shitton of beer on our last night there. There was another time a…

I'm sure that they do drink it, what I meant was the weird logic of a government restricting drinking to 21 but allowing military at 18. Essentially the US government thinks that beer is more dangerous to 18 year olds than the military?

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#248

Post by Inhibit » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

The article's first paragraph proposes that "we" didn't understand that respiratory illness spreads through water droplets in the air.

I honestly doubt that was ever the case; it certainly makes everything else posited seem a bit orwellian.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#249

Post by LinkLink » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

The cost is that you cannot easily break the law. Despite the current state of the world and the continued apathy of lawmakers to anything but corporate pockets, people insist on furthering policy which only gives more trust and control to the government. America came to be out of a bloody rebellion against tyranny, and 200 years later people seem determined to recreate the British authoritatian system that our founders once destroyed.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#250

Post by 2000UltraDeluxe » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 1:17 PM UTC

MrYellowP wrote: post #225

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #201

The article is very superficial about cost. It's not just about money, it's about freedom and democracy. A cashless society, like everything with computer, information control or centralize power, is fine when you are riding the happy path. As soon as you are not inline with society, or that slthe system itself become no more adapted to it's context, it's a nightmare.

> when you are riding the happy path. You've mistyped "when you submit to the correct groupthink."

It doesn't have to be that dramatic. Sure, abolishing cash is problematic from a civil rights perspective, but a simple thing like a payment major processor having a two-day outage would be disastrous in a cash-less society.

Many proponents of abolishing cash seem to think that one can avoid outages by simply requiring that payment processors aren't allowed to have outages. Unfortunately, outages tend to happen even when they're inconvenient. And that's just technical issues -- add the risk of cyber attacks, acts of war, or the Sun ejecting a load straight in the face of Mother Earth, and it's not a matter of _if_ there will be an outage. It's just a matter of when and how we deal with t.

Cash is a very good backup plan for such occasions.