It's especially important since the only other time I hear people defending cash is when they fear a take-over from a shady, world-wide organization. And it's not that they want freedom, but they want another shady, world-wide organization to not lose its foothold.
@catileptic I'm opposed to cashlessness for an entirely different reason, which is that it replaces a public infrastructure with a private one.In other areas this has not worked out well...
@zdl
sure, working on abolishing money and exploitation every day. until then, we need to keep cash so we can have a bit more power and leverage to fight. @wendyg@catileptic@jens
@zeh@wendyg@catileptic@jens I've been living cash-free for over a decade now. Further, I'm in an at-risk group, given that I live here only while the government chooses to allow me to live here.
Yet strangely, over a decade, living cashless as an outsider in a literal police state, I've seen none of the problems that westerners insistmust happen in a cashless society. What an interesting contradiction.
It's almost as if there's some kind of societal difference that explains this.
@zdl
Or maybe you just aren't the yard stick by which all things are measured.
(If you want to make an argument, go at it. I won't be trying to guess your positions from lines of sarcasm and ad hominem attacks) @wendyg@catileptic@jens
@zeh@wendyg@catileptic@jens All y'all so adorably believe that if you use cash you've got some element of power. You don't. Want some evidence for that? Go try to buy something illegal with your cash (like, let's say, cocaine). Notice how hard it is? Notice how likely it is that this works out badly for you?
It seems that even with the magical power of cash to free you from tyranny ... you're still being controlled.
Maybe the problem is that control, not cash-free society.
@catileptic I haven't used cash in ages. I don't miss it. I don't want to return to it.
When I travel this summer, the single thing I'm least looking forward to is having to carry pocket loads of easily-stolen paper to pay for things, but shrug, that's the price of going to backwaters like North America.
@jens@catileptic I started moving away from cash in about 2010. I went, for all meaningful purposes, 100% cashless by about 2013. (So much so that my 2016 visit to Canada had me really upset at the huge amount of money I suddenly had to carry around.) I am entirely un-eager to go back to cash.
Every advantage cited for cash is put in the category of "hypothetical bullshit" AFAIC, but the risk of theft and loss is something that is all-too-real with multiple real-world occurences.
I mean, I live cash-free for most intents and purposes. But I've had periods of my life where my income wasn't stable - I could always get money, but perhaps not right now - and that makes banking surprisingly hard. And without access to the banking system, you're immediately unable to access other things, like a safe place to sleep, etc. (again, this worked out for me always, but with significant effort).
@zdl@catileptic ... Vimes' Boot Theory (from Pratchett) in real life: trivial for the sufficiently privileged, and yet another unnecessary hurdle for those who are not.
The worst part IMHO is that the hurdle of "sufficient privilege" here is so low, it really only hits those folk hard who already have next to nothing, so it becomes largely invisible to the majority of folk.
I'm very, very adamant that cash must stay, even if I don't particularly want to use it most days.
@zdl@catileptic That said, there are definitely alternatives to keeping cash around that would address the same kinds of issues, but those nobody seems to want to talk about.
@jens@catileptic That sounds like a problem with how finance is handled in your country, then, not cash vs. cashless.
You're blaming a lack of cash for what is really a fucked-up system that stabs you in the neck. Fix the system. Don't force everyone to carry their purchasing power with them where it can be easily stolen or lost.
@zdl@catileptic I'm not forcing anyone. You can keep paying cash-free. I'm not arguing that you shouldn't be able to. I'm saying people should be able to pay with cash.
@jens@catileptic And I'm saying fix the financial system so that cashless is accessible to all instead of forcing, for example, every small business to have two separate systems for paying (one of which puts them at increased risk for criminal action), and other such matters.
The problems you're talking about aren't related to cash or the lack thereof. They're social organization issues that forcing cash on top of is at best a band-aid solution.
@zdl@jens paying via card / similar solutions puts every single
exchange into the databases of private entities. forcing citizens to only use card payments means there is no more exchange that involves money that isn't under surveillance.
two things happen. one: surveillance alters the behaviour of subjects. think: panopticon. two: whoever controls the surveillance controls what is permissable for citizens to do. what if we don't want to award this trust?
@catileptic@jens It's weird to keep hearing about how using cashless (nobody mentioned a card on this side of the conversation) will "change" me.
It's true. Going cashless did change my purchasing patterns.
I have easier access to goods that match what I actually want because of online purchasing and can buy expensive items without worrying about being robbed.
But the claim that this would somehow change what kind of stuff I buy because "SURVEILLANCE!!!111oneoneone!" isn't panning out….
@zdl@catileptic The problems are not related to cash or lack thereof, but they exist the same everywhere. Changing the system around it is a noble goal, but so far off that saving cash is a necessary intermediate step.
@zdl If you give me a lever to fix the financial system, I will.
Instead, I have a lever to help those people screwed over by the financial system: keep using cash.
Hereabouts, cash is the preferred payment method for small businesses, for what it's worth. It seems that the risk of criminal action is not as high here as the cost cashless payment systems incur.
Am I telling you to fix your crime rate? Because it seems that is the problem, not the fact cash exists.
Since nobody carries cash and most businesses (begrudgingly) have a small amount of cash, robberies, pick-pocketing, etc. have basically vanished as an entire category of crime.
(Other crimes are also on their way out, but for far more troublesome reasons.)
That being said, your parallel doesn't really work. You want to keep cash because your society is broken. The crime rate dropping wasn't the goal of going cashless, it was a side effect.
@zdl@catileptic And yet you argue that it's crime that makes cash a problem, when I'm telling you that hereabouts, it doesn't.
So maybe where the problem lies is not as clear cut as you would like it to be.
Which brings me back to my main argument: even if the long term goal may be to fix the financial system here, that does not help folk in the short term. Cash does.
I'm not sure when it was: might have been picked while I was outdoors, might have been stolen from my hotel room while I was out at the pool. But it was stolen. It's happened to me here too. Indeed small property crime is commonplace in most places I've ever lived in or visited; I've been fortunate enough to have it happen only a small handful of times in my life.
@jens@catileptic Something very strange happened in the slightly over a decade of me not using cash, though: nobody has stolen money from me at any point. Hell, I'm not even at risk from the kind of weird ways people have stolen from credit cards (double-imprints, say) or bank cards (apparently some way of capturing the PIN when paying?; I lack technical knowledge of how that works).
It seems that going cashless has solved a problem that has been around since I was a teen.
@jens@catileptic (P.S. Would you care to guess who the most common victim of small property theft, like cash, is? Sadly it's not the rich fucks who deserve it. It's the poor folk.)
@zdl First of all, you will note that I did not claim stealing cash doesn't exist. Very specifically I stated that hereabouts the burden of accepting cash payments seems to be lower on businesses than the burden of cashless payments. In fact, for anything below ca. EUR 20, many businesses flat-out refuse cash-free payments. Hence, your claim that cash theft makes handling cash too problematic is not substantiated here.
@zdl Second,
if we want to have a conversation based in personal anecdotes, I've had way more money stolen from me by businesses, including banks, simply because cashless payments allow them to act on funds that aren't strictly speaking theirs. In one case, a bank just lost me a few grand, which caused me follow-on costs that they didn't reimburse.
You're right that the financial system is bonkers and needs fixing. You'll note as well that I keep telling you I agree with that.
@zdl What you keep refusing to engage with is the only thing I care about in this situation: that in view of a bonkers and broken system, the only sane alternative is payment via some alternative venue that bypasses this system. Bonus points for allowing exchange between the two.
I don't even care if it's fiat cash. What I do know is that people will seek such an alternative, and create one if there is none on offer. That gets you the "aww isn't it nice" things like pre-paying..
@zdl ... for meals for people in need to claim. Which is just another form of alternative payment system that relies heavily on the good will and governance of restaurants instituting such schemes, i.e. is utterly opaque to auditing.
Which highlights the main problem, really: when there is a need for alternative payments, and there is no reasonably transparent system in place, this creates an opportunity for all kinds of shenanigans.
@zdl I mean, alternative payment shenanigans is what draws crypto bros to cryptocurrencies. If you ever needed an illustration for how strong the drive towards non-fiat payment systems is, there is your proof.
Of course that's not cash, but - equally of course - some crypto bros were arguing for "physical tokens" as an exchange medium for their currencies.
We don't use payments much between friends. We keep an imprecise ledger. You paid the meal last time, it's our turn now.
@zdl There are a ton of different ways people regularly use non-digital payment systems.
Cash is just the only one you can use in lieu of trust, because physically handing over those coins or notes finalizes the transaction.
Which, given the size and diversity of the population we tend to interact with on a regular basis, seems to be the only way we can go about our ways without worrying too deeply about whether we'll get screwed over.
@zdl So, yes, I mean... fix society. Fix the financial system. Find me a cash-free payment system that isn't going to require trust in a third party with the power to screw me.
All great things, but also not in immediate reach.
Add comment