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Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

prospectmagazine.co.uk

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Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#291

Post by alkonaut »

Not used a coin or paper bill for several years now. It’s now at the point where I don’t know what the most common bills and coins look like since they were changed a few years back and I have never owned most of them.

I should keep cash as a backup just like I keep some canned food, but I wonder how society would work in that scenario when many stores don’t have cash registers, many bank offices don’t allow cash deposits and so on. The US would be far more resilient in that situation.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#292

Post by fzeroracer »

HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #276
fzeroracer wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government has always been able to shut you down. If they wanted to, they would pull you aside with no recourse and the police would execute civil forfeiture (see also: steal) against anything on your person, car or home. Cash makes this worse. Nor does it save you from 90% of transactions you do. Banks will know when you deposit/withdraw money. Stores know the moment you walk in. Unless you deal purely in cash (…

There's a qualitative difference between the government being able to freeze the accounts of every person whose phone was detected at a protest, and the government having to send agents out to physically find each of those people, search them and their property, and seize their cash. The first is cheap and easy for the government to do on a large scale, and difficult for the protesters to block. The second is far mor…

Let's be real here: You, I, and most of the people in this thread talking about privacy concerns when it comes to cash and what not are playing pretend. I say this because the odds are we have a significant amount of our money invested in some form of digital investment. Whether it's stocks, certificates, money sitting in a bank account. The nature of cash means it scales up poorly; and the nature of holding cash means you are literally losing money year over year thanks to inflation. The system is built to encourage this.

If the government wanted to freeze your accounts and take most of your net worth, they can. And while cash transactions can be secure, in our day to day life where our transactions are done cash is not meaningfully adding anything to our privacy. To actually achieve any sort of privacy with cash involves operating purely with cash: That means no bank accounts, no investments, you are paid directly by your workplace with cash etc.

That's why again, cash will not protect you. It will not protect most of the people here acting like it will.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#293

Post by HomeDeLaPot »

jas- wrote: post #274

Be worried when laws get passed against barter systems that would circumvent these systems

I don't think barter is a realistic way to circumvent the disappearance of cash. Sure, it'll work once in a while, when you happen to have something of equal value that the other guy wants—but most of the time it'll be such a drag on every transaction that transactions just won't happen often. Want to get some groceries? Are you just going to hand the cashier a pair of shoes in return? There are good reasons physical currencies have existed for thousands of years, in many forms across many societies. I think rather than barter, we'd have to fall back on something like gold, seashells... Something that's hard to fake, hard to make, easy to appraise, and easy to carry. Like cash.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#294

Post by dudefeliciano »

scotty79 wrote: post #239
happytiger wrote: post #148

Not using cash means someone gets a cut of a processing fee. Every time, with almost no exceptions. I’m not down to have rent seeking companies taking a slice of my hard earned money just so I don’t have to manage a few pieces of paper. You’re generally paying 3-4 percent of every transaction now, as that’s pretty standard for debit cards on businesses, and it doesn’t matter if it’s charged to the card holder or the…

Exchanging value between two economical entities using pieces of paper seems crazy when you have better ways. Try to explain buying with cash in 200 years to someone who never seen it. What if I need to pay just a little, do I tear a bit of the paper? No, you can't tear. If your piece of paper is worth too much then the seller gives you other pieces of paper worth less. Can I throw out the rest of paper after I'm don…

I don't think OP was arguing to completely get rid of all wired transactions. And for all the points you made you still missed OPs major gripe, paying a third party for every single transaction you make. Wanna give your children pocket money? bank gets a cut...doesn't seem right tbh

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#295

Post by hilbert42 »

yard2010 wrote: post #244
hilbert42 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Bank of England destroys between 10-30 billion pounds worth of notes per year (no longer fit for circulation)." The difference is that when BoE destroys notes they are accounted for by either the issuing of new notes and or crediting their withdrawal with a bank-entry credit thus the money in circulation does not change. Burning notes willy nilly effectively reduces the amount of currency in circulation because…

I believe he meant it's such a low number it wouldn't be relevant anyway - same as merging facebook accounts with wifey to not take that space on facebook

Right, clearly burning a million or perhaps even quite some millions would have a negligible effect on the currency, similarly millions in counterfeit money would have to be circulated to actually destabilize the currency (that's assuming the dud notes aren't noticed first).

Clearly, in modern times in modern democracies it's very unlikely that in any practical scenario that some entity would be capable of unofficially adding or withdrawing enough money from a currency to actually destabilize it, moreover in such an event the central bank/government would be onto it in seconds.

It's however an altogether different scenario if the citizenry somehow has the perception that the currency isn't exactly what the central bank purports it to be. Just the notion that something may be wrong with the currency could destabilize it, hence hellishly tight laws to ensure this never happens.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#297

Post by tyfon »

vixen99 wrote: post #273
tyfon wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in a bank and cash handling is a major headache in terms of internal control, logistics, reconciliation and AML. It's a large extra cost. It is much cheaper for the bank and customers to use cards, but where I live the banks own a payment network that does not involve visa and mastercard so the cost is much lower and there is no rent seeking so card use have no fees. We also have an app for sending "cash" for…

Some quote! "I work in a bank and cash handling is a major headache". Doubtless but perhaps we should reconsider the larger purposes of the banks in relation to their customers.

The biggest reason for banks to exist is too provide "grease" for the economy, i.e. to connect people with money to people who needs to borrow :)

Most banks here don't handle the actual payments themselves except the biggest ones.

The small "savings banks" like the one I work in doesn't have shareholders either, they are owned by the depositors. Almost every small town and community here has one.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#298

Post by SoftTalker »

j7ake wrote: post #230
beAbU wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, when last did you get a 3-4% discount when paying cash? I remember that from the 90s and 00s. In fact, I have seen some small places ask a 3-4% surcharge for cash payments, because banks don't process cash for free any more.

Cash only restaurants are often 10-20 percent cheaper than comparable restaurants.

My barber only takes cash. $18 for a standard haircut.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#299

Post by HomeDeLaPot »

switch007 wrote: post #128

Regarding Mr Corbyn's strawberries, if he takes them (or eats them, spoils them etc), is he not then in debt with Aldi? In which case his cash serves as payment of his debt? I guess you'd be in hot water for the prior act of stealing though

Taking something does not legally incur a debt, it's just a crime. The merchant did not agree to lend you anything, so there's no loan, so you can't pay it off with "legal tender".

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#300

Post by pxx »

SoftTalker wrote: post #286
noodlesUK wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were already costs. There were always costs and risks associated with cash handling: armored trucks doing cash collection, risks of money in tills being lost. If it really were a lot cheaper you wouldn’t see businesses clamouring to go cashless. That’s not to say I think cash should go the way of the dodo, but I don’t think there’s that much difference paying g4s to collect your money vs Mastercard. IMO the ben…

Yes there are costs to handling cash. And they are vastly higher than the cost of handling bits. A 3% fee to write some bits to a database is insane. A 3% fee to pay all the people who need to handle the currency in a cash transaction is probably not covering costs.

Yeah so you get consumer surplus if you pay 2.5% to a credit card processor instead of paying more than 3% to physical cash logistics. Everybody's happy besides your weird sense of "insane."

Furthermore you get a lot more than just writing a few bits with a credit card transaction. You can bypass the cc companies and cash logistics costs by taking checks. But certainly the revealed preference is to not do that.

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