The principle they're being banned on is because they're cashless, not because they're automated. The logic is sound - unbanked people exist, including in San Francisco, and without a bank account these stores are inaccessible.
This policy is needlessly destructive.
The article is clickbait.
This wouldn't work with Amazon's grab-and-go vision. If someone loads $5 of cash on a card and walks out with $20 of product, what do you do?
Wouldn't it be better to solve the root cause instead of the symptoms?
Give residents a legal right to open a bank account - as it's for example the case in some European countries (e.g., in Austria banks are required by law to provide at least a "basic" bank account to people that don't have any other bank account at another bank).
With this approach the stores would still be inaccessible to unbanked people - but everyone would have the choice to become "banked", even if they have a bad credit history, etc.
Simpler: make it a requirement that the banks the city does business with have to offer free no-fee checking to city residents. ("Does business with" meaning issues bonds, holds deposits, does tax refunds, manages pensions, et cetera through.)
Requiring vendors sell a commercial product to anyone is legally tricky. It also adds yet another convoluted cost to launching a new bank in the city. That adds incumbency bias to an already monstrously incumbency-biased banking system.
Paper money is well over 1,000 years old, though it only became popular in Europe, IIRC, a little over 400 years ago.
So the solution is to ban cashless stores instead of creating a banking option for the poor?
Why not both? Those both seem like good ideas to me.
One example, FastTrack express lanes in the Bay area (unlike the lanes on bridges, there is no cash-accepting substitute.)
Oh, and it's open : M-F, 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Your argument is a bit lazy though, right? The point is that cash itself says you have to accept it for "all debts public and private" and as an equitable society we have an incentive to make sure that is true. Out of hand dismissals of a coherent argument do not help us learn more; they only serve to make you feel good about being smarter than some other people.
But to answer your question: no, we should not have 0 bounds on what is acceptable, and there should be some guardrails to make sure that the pedants in all of us don't take over, and that our economy doesn't end up running on pennies (not that they would, that argument is marginal at best). However, not accepting cash is a problem of a different magnitude than not accepting some annoying forms of cash. I support a ban on cashless stores, but, yes, like you pointed out, with some caveats on what they have to support and what they don't.
Restaurants have to accept cash. When you order food you incur a debt. That's what "all debts" on cash means. Buying things in a store is different. No debt is incurred.
Such bans are a cosmetic solution to poverty. They give the illusion of dealing with the problem. But they solve nothing. Prices will be a little higher for all San Franciscans (handling cash, even intermittently, is risky and expensive). Meanwhile, the poor will have no more income or opportunities. But hey, they will have the theoretical ability to buy a plush toy from an Amazon store. (Assuming such stores still make economic sense to deploy.)
I don't see a need to ban it because it's fairly unlikely that someone can both afford a Lazy Bear ticket and also be unbanked.
But if you take the nuance out of this question and forced me to choose, then yes, I would say that Lazy Bear should be required to offer a cash-based way to buy tickets.
I, too, find it easier to apply consequentialism, but bureaucracies work well when they have clear rules.
I'm pretty sure we have machines that can take cash and give change /s. Anyway, I'm skeptical of how many people can manage living without a bank account in SF.
Are landlords accepting cash for payment? I checked and at least you can technically pay property taxes and traffic citations with cash (it may be a big hassle but it is possible). I'm still skeptical that besides cashless stores SF is 'friendly' to the bankless. And technically, don't you pay with the Amazon Go app? You could, in theory, buy Amazon Gift cards with cash (ironically at a different store) and then pay with an Amazon account. If anything, I would complain that these stores require a smartphone and the Amazon Go app just to enter the store. I think this is a larger barier than a bank account and has far more privacy implications.
Plenty. Most of us step over their belongings on the way to work and try to avoid eye contact.
Money orders.
I don't even keep a checkbook anymore. The one vendor that doesn't take cards gets a money order once a month.
Why is it hard for these stores to process cash in some way? Why not just have the ability to put cash into a machine in the store and spit out an anonymous account? (asking seriously)
I 100% get the logic, but for progress to happen we unfortunately need to break some norms. Like, Uber also requires a phone and doesn't accept cash... if they had to do both of those, they'd just be taxis.