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Comment by oculusthrift | Hacker News Reader

Maybe this is harsh, but why would I care? It sounds like a problem for the store. And many of the mom and pop shops around me require a minimum purchase or charge a 50 cent fee for using a card.

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>Maybe this is harsh, but why would I care? It sounds like a problem for the store.

The store passes the cost right back to you, the consumer, in the form of higher prices. You didn't just think they absorbed the cost out of the goodness of their hearts, did you?

Of course not. But some percentage of customers still use cash. So the store might raise prices by 1.5 pct instead of the 3pct that Visa charges them. This essentially means those who use cash are subsidizing the card users. If they raise it the full 3 percent then the cash users are paying extra for a service they don't even use!

That doesn't negate either coldpie's or my points; if anything, having people use cash effectively helping to subsidize the "credit card tax" only adds more weight to the argument that it's an unreasonable arrangement that only serves to enrich the credit card companies.

yes it does. from a game theoretic perspective, it only would make sense for me to switch to cash if everyone else did so that the store wouldn't incorporate the extra fee into the price of their goods. However, one can't control others, they can only control their own behavior. So in a situation where there goods cost extra, because others are still using their cards and the owner has to markup prices, the only rational thing to do is to use the payment method you prefer. And economically speaking, all the cash users are paying extra for a good they don't use.

You forgot a rule of the "game".

You can negotiate price with cash.

By your own admission a few comments up you'd personally be saving 50 cents every time you shopped at a mom & pop store.

Because as much as HN praises the notion of passive income streams, widespread parasitism by monopolistic and unproductive sectors of the economy are an anchor on the broader, actually-productive economy.

The payment card industry is a parasite on all of us, full stop.

I started caring a lot more when I started selling things. It's a substantial amount of money that I'm not getting because people don't want to take out cash. But I have to accept it because I'd make even less money if I was cash-only.

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