Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry
prospectmagazine.co.uk
Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry
1–10 of 498 posts
Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry
#2I live an hour or so outside of Austin and people still primarily write checks as that's the only acceptable payment method, along with cash.
My new wife said, "Wait, why not just use Stripe? I'll tell them."
I had to explain to her that one does not simply pull forward a society thirty years into the future. There is an incredible amount of cultural inertia to overcome.
So I carry a lot of cash out here.
Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry
#3I really really really like cashless payments
I really really really dislike that my money can be whisked away at the whim of a cray government or a glitch in the system
Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry
#4I live an hour or so outside of Austin and people still primarily write checks as that's the only acceptable payment method, along with cash. My new wife said, "Wait, why not just use Stripe? I'll tell them." I had to explain to her that one does not simply pull forward a society thirty years into the future. There is an incredible amount of cultural inertia to overcome. So I carry a lot of cash out here.
You'd be surprised. I visited South America and all I saw was phone payments... They basically skipped the credit card age, as cards were never popular among the poor.
Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry
#5I personally started using digital payments once phone touchpay systems came out previously you had to take out cash or card from your wallet to pay so I would still use cash. But once phone payment became common just tapping your phone to pay had a lot less friction than taking out wallet and paying cash or by card.
Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry
#6> [On] 23rd August 1994, the chaotic music duo and performance artists Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty burned £1m of notes behind a boathouse on the Scottish island of Jura. They are not alone in attempting to reduce money’s power…
They literally increased the purchasing power of each remaining pound by doing so.
Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry
#7I really really really like cashless payments I really really really dislike that my money can be whisked away at the whim of a cray government or a glitch in the system
A government can reduce the purchasing power of cash too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetis...
Or just issuing new money at a rate that exceeds demand for the money (meaning the relative desirability of the money, which relates to the trustworthiness of the community using the money and the economic productivity of the community using the money).
Like when the population pyramid starts turning upside down and the benefits promised to older people need to come into fruition from a smaller and smaller labor supply.
Edit to respond to 4bpp:
> With cash, they can only do it to everybody at once or not at all.
I think government can use the new money to inflate the price of certain things quicker than others, effectively advantaging certain portions of the population, which is what I allude to in my 3rd paragraph.
For example, inflating asset prices lets those who own more assets (or certain assets) lose purchasing power more slowly than those who do not (see most labor sellers).
This is a somewhat related example of how a policy change for all can be designed to affect certain populations differently:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-hutchins-center-expla...
Use lower CPI to update tax brackets, and higher CPI to calculate Social Security benefits, i.e. increasing wealth redistribution from young to old without explicitly saying it.
Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry
#8I personally started using digital payments once phone touchpay systems came out previously you had to take out cash or card from your wallet to pay so I would still use cash. But once phone payment became common just tapping your phone to pay had a lot less friction than taking out wallet and paying cash or by card.
they will get you by convenience
Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry
#9I will always recall the chaos of being in a northern Minnesota tourist town (Ely) when the single fiber-optic line serving the region was cut. I sure was glad our group brought cash. All the people with only third party companies willing to pay for them some time in the future had their trips and plans ruined. But that's sort of a trivial example. It could be much worse.
And then there's the rent seeking inherent in any commercially provider payment service combined with enshittification. No single company payment system will remain "good" for long. Not that credit cards are good to start given the puritanism and censorship they impose. And that's not even mentioning the US state dept. control of those networks preventing donations to political groups like wikileaks.
Cash matters. Having some corporation promise to pay for your stuff 3 days in the future means giving up control. You might not care now, but you might care in the future when $localpolitics get dicey. Imagine not being able to pay for an abortion with $companypay because it's illegal in $company's legal place of operation.
Plus cash is just so much more convient and faster.
Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry
#10I personally started using digital payments once phone touchpay systems came out previously you had to take out cash or card from your wallet to pay so I would still use cash. But once phone payment became common just tapping your phone to pay had a lot less friction than taking out wallet and paying cash or by card.
they will get you by convenience
Clever boy