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This is a false comparison. Physical cash, in your possession, cannot be frozen or revoked unless those entities stop accepting government fiat currency. It has nothing to do with being self-sufficient.

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> Physical cash, in your possession, cannot be frozen or revoked unless those entities stop accepting government fiat currency.

Which is exactly what happened in Sweden, according to the article.

But it can be stolen. Much more so than money in your bank account

And that's why the ideal is a choice between cash and electronic currency.

Sweden made cash (practically) illegal so now everyone has one less choice.

At this point in time I'm at much higher risk of my electronic money being stolen than my cash, and if someone steals my cash I know about it instantly.

They can't skim my cash, can't MITM my cash transactions, they can't accept payment and then not deliver (more fraud than theft, but still) because the cash and the object being purchased are both right there.

So I think you are wrong.

I think the point is even with cash in your wallet it is already a society where you have to obtain permission from unknown people to "obtain food, water, shelter, or transportation" because all of these things are delivered to you after many rounds of market exchanges which require clearing houses, escrows, the Fed, SWIFT, etc. Society has been essentially cashless for ages.

Whats the bar for declaring foo illegal vs keeping foo from effectively keeping people from doing foo by making it impossible to pay for foo.

This would be abused in the US in very short order. How it works for the swedes should be interesting.

Then a cashless society requires permission from multiple entities- the government, the financial providers, and the entity you want to transact with.

Not at all like cash, which just requires the entity to accept it as legal tender.

Unless the entity you're transacting with is also interested in operating in a completely cash-based economy, they will need to deposit your cash with a private bank and enter into the electronic money market. They will then worry about the source of your money by profiling you in case the risk accrues to them. Stores already do this if you pay for something with a large amount of cash and stand out as a target. That's my point that society is already essentially cashless. You're only talking about the margins of exchanges on the last hop that may be conducted in cash. Within one hop of conventional transactions it's almost certainly electronic. So I'm not sure that's a real distinction.

You are talking about an edge case which just isn't true.

It is entirely possible to live your entire life, paying with only cash, in the United States. The hardest part would likely be paying rent, but even that isn't unheard up to pay with using cash.

Society is not cashless. The edge cases you are talking about rarely ever come up. If it is possible to only pay with cash, then the last hop is all that matters for you as an individual.

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