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D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

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Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#21

Post by Guvante »

aketchum wrote: post #15

I have no dog in this fight as I rarely deal with cash and do not run a retail business. However from a conceptual point of view I really have a viscerally negative reaction to not accepting cash. It is a societal acceptance of the rent seeking behavior of the credit processing networks. I already have to pay a sales tax to ${TAX_ENTITIES.length} different government entities, I don't love that I also have a 3% tax g…

Visa gets 1% and the bank gets the rest actually.

Which they use to fund cash back programs...

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#22

Post by wly_cdgr »

fragmede wrote: post #3

Interesting. I get why you'd want to ban cashless business, but many business in a nearby town with a high crime rate are going cashless because you can't rob a Square reader quite as easily as a cash register.

The answer to that is to help your citizens so they don't need to rob a Shake Shack, not to exclude even more people from enjoying Shake Shack while going surveillance mode on everyone's calorie intake

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#23

Post by dools »

Larrikin wrote: post #13
dools wrote: post #7

Instead of banning cashless businesses because it's discriminatory to the unbanked perhaps they should focus on reducing discrimination in the banking sector and providing a publicly run electronic payment system.

Why not both? I would hope the government could do two things at once. There's no reason the post office couldn't also function as a basic bank, the same way it does in many other countries, while eliminating a discriminatory business practice.

Yes a postal savings system would be a way to provide a government run electronic payments system.

The point is that there are many benefits for businesses to not accepting cash payments, especially if they're maintaining the service for a decreasing portion of their customers.

Also, if customers had access to a government run cashless payment system (the same privilege that private banks enjoy) then they might find themselves less interested in carrying cash in the first place.

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#24

Post by lotsofpulp »

joegibbs wrote: post #18
farzinadil wrote: post #8

Ridiculous. Why not also then force cash only businesses into taking card and mobile payments also?

Card payments are done through a middleman (Visa, MasterCard) and therefore require a surcharge that's going to a private company. They charge much more than it actually costs them, even including chargebacks etc, which is how they're able to offer things like credit card rewards. In my opinion it was justifiable back when it was new and not heavily used, but now that the economy revolves around it it's just parasiti…

A business can always choose to only accept debit to limit their card transaction costs to near zero.

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#25

Post by jonhohle »

dools wrote: post #7

Instead of banning cashless businesses because it's discriminatory to the unbanked perhaps they should focus on reducing discrimination in the banking sector and providing a publicly run electronic payment system.

The answer to unfairness is not let the government take it over. That is unless you want to raise costs for everyone, eliminate all competition, and end up with the same institutional problems.

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#26

Post by DerekL »

fragmede wrote: post #3

Interesting. I get why you'd want to ban cashless business, but many business in a nearby town with a high crime rate are going cashless because you can't rob a Square reader quite as easily as a cash register.

It looks like many stores cut down on robbery opportunities by not having a cash register. They don't give change back, they only give store credit if you don't pay in exact change. That way, they can just put each cash payment in an envelope and drop it into a time-locked safe. (I imagine that they would do that, I don't know for sure.)

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#27

Post by lotsofpulp »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #22
fragmede wrote: post #3

Interesting. I get why you'd want to ban cashless business, but many business in a nearby town with a high crime rate are going cashless because you can't rob a Square reader quite as easily as a cash register.

The answer to that is to help your citizens so they don't need to rob a Shake Shack, not to exclude even more people from enjoying Shake Shack while going surveillance mode on everyone's calorie intake

That is not viable nor the responsibility of an individual business.

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#28

Post by supertrope »

dools wrote: post #7

Instead of banning cashless businesses because it's discriminatory to the unbanked perhaps they should focus on reducing discrimination in the banking sector and providing a publicly run electronic payment system.

Make access to a bank account a right. Take all of the unbanked/unprofitable customers and assign them to banks weighted by each bank’s market share. No matter their Chexsystems report status.

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#29

Post by dools »

PumpkinSpice wrote: post #12
dools wrote: post #7

Instead of banning cashless businesses because it's discriminatory to the unbanked perhaps they should focus on reducing discrimination in the banking sector and providing a publicly run electronic payment system.

In that position, the government would inevitably try to meddle. Look up Operation Choke Point back in the Obama years, when the government pressured banks to cut off a variety of "undesirable" businesses, such as payday lenders, gun dealers, and so on. Cash serves an important purpose. It is a safety valve in case of such extrajudicial overreach. Yeah, because it's private, it also enables some bad stuff (tax dodgin…

Operation Choke Point was run by the government within the framework of the existing banking sector. It was enacted by DoJ (one part of the government) then:

"In August 2014, U.S. Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer introduced a bill that would limit law enforcement's ability to restrict access to the banking system as a response against Operation Choke Point.[12]"

So it was stopped by Congress, another part of government.

The existence or non-existence of cash wouldn't have made a difference to the ability of pay day lenders or firearms dealers to continue operating because I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be able to get access to cash to conduct their business unless they had bank accounts!

My point is that a government supplied electronic payment system would make no difference to the ability of a government to engage in anything more or less nefarious than they can already do, and the legislative process is capable of dealing with that (and if it's not, cash won't save you either).

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#30

Post by lotsofpulp »

SuperNinKenDo wrote: post #20
dools wrote: post #7

Instead of banning cashless businesses because it's discriminatory to the unbanked perhaps they should focus on reducing discrimination in the banking sector and providing a publicly run electronic payment system.

I agree that the state should do more to alleviate the situation of being unbanked, but this is a major win for the unbanked that will offer immediate relief and comes with a number of other benefits for all different kinds of stakeholders. It's a non-brainer starting point even if your only goal was helping the unbanked

The first step to helping the unbanked is removing banks from the picture altogether.

They are technically wholly unnecessary in the 21st century for the purposes of sending/receiving/keeping a running total of funds in an electronic database entry ascribed to an entity.

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