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What is the cost of a cashless society?

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Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#211

Post by aceofspades19 »

kurthr wrote: post #129
EdwardDiego wrote: post #91

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…

How is the dispute resolution process different with a cheque vs other forms of payment? What do you have to put in the note line that makes this legal requirement? and how is this different than a regular sales contract? I don't know what you would buy for $5k+ that doesn't already have some sort of sales contract which would be legally binding. It's not like you can show up to a dealership with $20k in cash and just drive a car off the lot without signing anything.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#212

Post by Asooka »

JetAlone wrote: post #9
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give me the choice between a government that tries to force me to cede my autonomy and my privacy in order to buy a loaf of bread or go hungry, I'm sharpening my pitchfork and lighting my torch ten times out of ten.

Governments don't even have to get involved, we are heading in the direction fo functional cashlessness by the influence of corporations and the market alone. Hope you like incinerating fat cats to doom music, my friend.

> incinerating fat cats to doom music

Don't threaten me with a good time.

Though I don't think that would help. Let's say we go cashless some day, then people get oppressed and manage to put together an uprising. Will the result be the return of cash, or just putting another despot in charge? So many times it's the latter. Perhaps the only real answer is smashing the datacentres, like modern-day luddites..

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#213

Post by mellavora »

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…

Wait- your argument that a cashless society can work well is that debit cards can be distributed to everyone, and debit cards limit bank risk?

which boils down to: "a cashless society can work well because we can use tech to make society cashless."

this is not a substantive argument.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#214

Post by preisschild »

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 markets.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#215

Post by lrvick »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #32

Australia's been cashless for a long time now and has no laws requiring acceptance of cash so a lot of places are cashless only. Even the old lady who has a tea and snack cart at the train station is cashless here. I'll state some benefits: Public transport becomes much better. You tap your card or phone and never bother with the hassle of a ticket ever again. You probably never realized just how much of a barrier th…

So basically you are saying that all citizens are required to accept the terms of service and privacy policy of their pick of Apple or Google to participate in commerce, travel, etc.

As someone that typically leaves home with no electronics, only uses open source privacy respecting software, has no cell phone, and uses no google/apple products, it seems I would be unwelcome in your country.

It sounds a lot like your country has ceded to a US surveillance capitalism duopoly

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#216

Post by wink »

kurthr wrote: post #129
EdwardDiego wrote: post #91

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…

> I'm sure there's a grandma out there using checks at the grocery store

Someone living in San Francisco excitedly! told me just 1-3 years ago that they could now use some 'photograph your check' feature on their mobile - not 100% sure where the checks were used, but said person was not used to using checks where they came from.. sounds kinda widespread.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#217

Post by paskozdilar »

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.

This rigidity of computers is exactly why we must not let them control society.

Society is responsible for each and every member of it. Having 0.001% of population's lives ruined because of an error is not acceptable.

Humans may be slower and less efficient than machines (and require living wages), but humans are flexible and understand context. Replacing them with machines will only remove the useful human capabilities that we need so much in this society where most of the rules are still ad-hoc and implicit.

Imagine being assaulted by a robot policeman whose crime detection facility has malfunctioned, while you can't even complain to his robot colleague because it hasn't been programmed for malfunction of other robot policemen.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#218

Post by noasaservice »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #186
anovikov wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd raise the opposite point: for every reaction there is counterreaction. Going cashless will inevitably become a major boost for crypto and will greatly help detach crypto from fiat, becoming a major facilitator of illicit transactions of all kinds, to the point that people will stop seeing breaking the law as anything objectionable, destroying the very notion of law and order. People should be permitted to do less…

> Going cashless will inevitably become a major boost for crypto These are unlinked. Demographics using crypto loosely correlate with those going cashless. Cashless countries even more loosely correlate with crypto adoption. > people will stop seeing breaking the law as anything objectionable We have a long tradition of this with our 21-year drinking age. People can differentiate between the laws they can break and t…

> 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.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#219

Post by bluedino »

kurthr wrote: post #129
EdwardDiego wrote: post #91

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…

Most grandmas are still writing checks for groceries. It's also not uncommon for people 50+ to 'not trust' debit cards, ATM's, etc as well.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#220

Post by wink »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #179

My biggest fear is not cashless society, it's humanless payment processing. If you think losing access to your Google account for unspecified terms violations is bad, what about a payment processing computer malfunctioning? A few years ago my debit card refused checkout at a supermarket. After the cashier rebooted the card reader machine, it ate a hundred bucks from my account without confirming the purchase. When I…

The ATM in Cuba ate my VISA on a Friday night while on vacation. That was a fun diversion getting it back.

And on an actual disaster scale that ranks pretty low, as we had a second card (with a low limit) and still some amount of cash, so we weren't even completely out of money. Maybe it's better if you're somewhere close to home... but on the other hand if everyone is cashless, who could you borrow money from? Maybe a prepaid card that your friend would fill up for you... No, I'm a really huge fan of cash, at least as valid backup payment - even though, of course I enjoy the usual ease of use of card to tap payments.

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