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Comment by pishpash | Hacker News Reader

If you lose your wallet how do you pay for food with no wallet? This is a false line of argument.

I'd estimate dead battery and network signal problems occur two orders of magnitude more often than people losing their wallet.

Even for rarer problems like phone software freezing up, touch sensor going awry, phone memory full but can't clean it (a bug but still), and losing network access because someone didn't pay the phone bill or it's pay-as-you-go and can't afford the top-up quantum - I think I've seen all of those more often than I've seen people lose all their cash.

And then there's the cost of replacement. If you urgently have to get a new phone to replace a broken, lost or stolen one, to pay for necessities - many people don't have enough short-term funds to cover it, nor access to credit.

Some of these can be addressed, but we've a long way to go.

Plus, I’m privileged, but I’m really not more than mildly annoyed if I loose my wallet with $50-$100.

The way I see it some person will have the opportunity to do the right thing and turn it in, or I like to imagine that a homeless will have a great a day.

The only thing that bothers me is my information in my wallet, which I will pay far more than $100 to keep safe.

I have $200 in a variety of denominations in my glove box.

I have $2 000 cash at home.

Once I’m home I can write myself a cheque, and with my passport, easily withdrawal more money at any bank (or grocery store).

Also, if a natural disaster happens (earthquake, fire, flood, hurricane, Norsemen with iPhones disembark on our shores) I don’t have to rely on any network to buy something. I just pay cash, or write a cheque.

Cash is very robust. (Booze, cigarettes and gold more so, but that’s another story)

I don't. Perhaps mostly as I live in a different country.

I do have a £5 or 20 note as an emergency money in my bag and £20-40 in some drawers at home. E.g. to buy lunch if I come across a food stall that doesn't accept card payments. Rarer and rarer is it needed in the UK, and when I lived in Norway it was months between each time I needed cash.

I do however have spare debit/credit cards at home and my bag as well in case I lose my wallet. (I have never actually lost a wallet, but have left it in my coat/trousers at home etc)

With more and more stores (especially in Scandinavia as the OP details) no longer accept cash, and have not accepted cheques for decades, I am not sure your solution is a long-term solution.

[1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/08/03/paying-cash-...

[2] https://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/no-cash-sign...

With the spare cash I have at home. I don't have a spare phone at home, with a spare SIM card.

So... the logical conclusion is you would instead have a spare phone at home.

Hmm, keep $200-600 of quickly depreciating assets whose creation is a sin against our children’s enviroment when I can have five crisp linen Benjamins at home?

And do the same for car.

And the hotel room when you are travelling.

Doesn’t seem too logical.

You know I already have a spare phone at home. Cost me nothing technically since when I upgraded I just kept it instead of throwing it out.

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Y'all bitch it's ridiculous (and I ain't saying it's right or that I agree with the premise of having to do it in the first place), I'm just saying thats what people will do faced with the situation.

Which is a significantly bigger investment. An extra phone is a permanent loss of the money that went into buying it, it requires maintenance (of a sort) and needs to be replaced on a regular basis since the payment apps will presumably continue to require relatively recent operating systems. It also requires a dedicated SIM card with associated cost.

As a bonus, phones sometimes explode and set fire to things - when they're not busy getting hacked :)

You'll adjust.

Logical: perhaps. Ridiculous: definitely.

Most of life beyond the hunter/gatherer stage is ridiculous.

It's ridiculous all the way down.

SIM card is key. In the US, last I checked, networks won’t give you an extra SIM for the same line.

So you’d have to get an extra service line :S

You don't have all your paper money in your wallet with you all the time, right?

If I lose my wallet now I can go to my house and I have money to eat. If I lose my phone (or my wallet with card in a cashless society) I'm in a bigger problem in the short term

The staff in the local branch of our bank know who we are without asking (no, this isn't because we're particularly good customers, just regulars)

I can just go up to the counter and ask to withdraw some of my money and (against my signature) they'll hand it over. No ID required, really handy if you've mislaid your wallet.

I realise this one can't really scale (!) but it is definitely a nice feature.

We both know the way to make this scale is visual pattern matching for identification using artificial intelligence on the blockchain.

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