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What is the cost of a cashless society?

thewalrus.ca

271–280 of 294 posts

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#271
post #129

New Zealand has gone largely cashless (and entirely chequeless). Everyone is paid by direct credit to their account. You pay your bills via direct credit / debit. I don't think any bank is charging fees (for customers) for electronic transactions via card, or direct credits/debits. They don't even charge a fee for using another bank's ATM anymore. I am always amazed at how often people in the US mention cheques. NZ r…

In the US checks (cheques) are used mostly for significant transactions, because it acts as a contract. As a consumer you can easily get away with using electronic or credit/debit transactions for almost everything. However, some transactions over $5-10k are worth using checks. If you get a car loan, you don't need a check, but if you pay "cash" then a check is most likely preferred by you and the dealer. For house d…

>> And except for very small grocery purchases ($1-5) cash is pretty rare too

Not in my neighborhood. Only half of the self-checkout machines take cash and there is often a long line for the ones that take cash while some of the ones that only take cards sit unused.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#272
post #68

I am certainly not pro-cashless, but the points this article makes are lackluster at best. In an entirely cashless society, the problem isn't that "not everyone is included", the problem is surveillance. You can solve inclusion easily enough... Replace cash with prepaid cards (an idea posed in the article), or issue small, purpose-built digital wallets (equivalent to a low-power smartphone, except only for managing y…

>> Replace cash with prepaid cards

Prepaid with what?

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#273
post #227

New Zealand has gone largely cashless (and entirely chequeless). Everyone is paid by direct credit to their account. You pay your bills via direct credit / debit. I don't think any bank is charging fees (for customers) for electronic transactions via card, or direct credits/debits. They don't even charge a fee for using another bank's ATM anymore. I am always amazed at how often people in the US mention cheques. NZ r…

Sure, it's convenient for now. You never know what turn society is going to take somewhere down the line. The government is in a much better position to dictate rules for all of your commerce. Whether that happens in a few years or decades from now is anybody's guess, but the temptation to excercise that power is all the more likely.

I'll let you know when New Zealand becomes a dictatorship, I guess.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#274

This twitter thread might be a bit extreme, but it raises interesting points ( https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1494444624630403083?lang... ). Basically, if you are not allowed to spend money (transact) then you are really not able to exercise your other rights. And if everything was cashless there is an actual risk of Gov or BigBank having the power to stop you transacting completely. It has happened in 1st world…

> Granted, it was kind of an emergency situation, No, it wasn't an emergency, it was a bunch of angry truckers, outdoors. Cutting off banking to some of those who supported them with a donation was a direct political threat to everyone, a highly authoritarian response.

is there any scenario where you would change your mind about the topic?

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#275
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like cash, people ignore the benefits of checks. I remember buying a house and receiving about 3 notices of rampant wire fraud when you send closing costs. Realtors or even worse title organizations and crappy security meant you needed to double, triple check the wire details, because once you send that money - it's gone. Instead of that silly game, I went to bank, got a draft made out to the title company, and…

> I went to bank, got a draft made out to the title company, and stay with me here hand delivered the check You could do the same, except with your bank on the phone while the title agency reads out wire instructions. Hell, you could bring your banker.

How do I know the bank is talking to the real title company? Hackers have been know to put fake numbers in emails.

Will they pay me back if the money is sent to the wrong place? Probably not.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I recently bought a roti on store credit when a major internet outage hit my city. The owner said he was out 1500-worth-of-sales for the day, recognized my friend as a regular, and wrote our names down in a book. We went back the next day to pay up.

It was like visiting a retro store in the 90s.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Granted, it was kind of an emergency situation, No, it wasn't an emergency, it was a bunch of angry truckers, outdoors. Cutting off banking to some of those who supported them with a donation was a direct political threat to everyone, a highly authoritarian response.

is there any scenario where you would change your mind about the topic?

Why would they need to change their mind?

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#279
post #43
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what’s terrorism?

Any sort of violence that the people in power don't like

Where the term "violence" is a sliding scale, without admitting it's a scale at all. Even silence is violence.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#280
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and most people don't have showdead on. Well, that's on them. Lots of valuable comments get flagged. You have a point though. If snobbery and walking in eggshells is what's valued here, why waste my time?

Walking on eggshells is what built the human society since like forever. You can complain about fantasy wokeism online as much as you like, but in the real world a comment like the above would have gotten you punched in every corner of the world.

>but in the real world a comment like the above would have gotten you punched in every corner of the world.

Of course not.

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