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Comment by pengaru | Hacker News Reader

> My daughter is old enough to walk to the ice cream store with her friends, but they will not sell her any ice cream unless she pays using a card. They are unable to except cash.

It should be illegal for any business to refuse cash payment, full stop.

I've heard some cities have already passed laws in this vein, it should be made universal. Homeless people or otherwise marginalized groups are often limited to cash only transactions, that shouldn't mean they can't participate in commerce. Hell even just victims of identity theft can find themselves unable to get a bank account or credit card, cash should always be an option.

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> It should be illegal for any business to refuse cash payment, full stop.

No. We should just have legislation ensuring that anyone can go to any post office or bank and exchange cash for a prepaid card. The same way you've been able to exchange cash for a money order at the post office for... well, as long as I've been alive, that's for sure.

Managing physical cash and registers is a huge headache that costs businesses a lot of money (not to mention risk of violent crime), and just doesn't make any sense when less than 5% of your customers want to use it. Not to mention cash is unhygienic, takes energy and carbon to make, transport, and process, and constantly needs to be replenished.

Let's not impede the future. Instead, let's help it along but make sure it works for everyone.

I believe this would be used to subjugate people in the worst way.

cash is concrete. People can count how much they have. They know how much they spend. They can give it to someone in the middle of nowhere away from computers. If we had cards, all kinds of tracking and tracing would be added. Civil forfeiture could happen while the cash card was in your pocket.

There is just so much society would lose for the business convenience you're asking for.

One intersection of cash-less economies and new technology is the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola. By memorizing the 'dots' of pre-paid cards the people inside were able to still barter and trade goods like they had before with cigarettes.

"“Cash is contraband, but people have got cash,” the former prisoner explained, “but it is not cash like cash in hand. It is untraceable. It is all based on numbers. People pay each other with dots.”"

Economies and mediums of exchange will find a way where they are needed.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/30/prison-econo...

there is a reasonable middle ground between "absolutely every business must accept physical cash" and "physical cash no longer exists".

places that do a lot of cash business will naturally continue to accept cash as long as it exists. several business I patronize only accept cash. it's not some colossal injustice if the fancy coffee shop is plastic-only.

Not many people keep all their money in cash. Most people count their money via their bank balances. If the government is after your money, they can seize your bank account today.

But to be clear, I never once suggested abolishing cash. And I'm not suggesting that now. I'm saying that cash continues to exist, we allow businesses that want to go card-only to do so, but make sure that everyone can easily get a card.

I don't want that future where every transaction can be tracked and you always need a third party to bless it.

Have you noticed that the amount of middlemen is steadily increasing in every area of life?

Once cash is abolished, our oligarchy can finally implement negative interest rates for everyone.

Oh yes I have noticed the "middlemen" given my background and experience as I have formerly been one multiple times since the mid 90s. My efforts are currently undercutting the middlemen and their proliferation as the number of payments companies alone in the last few years has exploded as has fees which are crushing even established brands which have little to no understanding when it comes to payments.

If one did not already know online payments originated and was perfected from adult content consumption just as many technologies were but history shuns the stigma - the stories I have. Worth the watch > en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Men_(film)

Maybe we just go back to trading farm animals? j/k

Who said anything about abolishing cash or requiring the blessing of a third party?

All I said is to have a right to be able to exchange cash for prepaid cards, for places that only accept cards. And to be clear, that should be a right that doesn't require any third-party "blessing".

Obviously, if you can exchange cash for a card, then cash still exists as legal tender.

Ok, businesses go all card-only, saving money on operations and security, on the assumption that everyone either has a card, or can buy a pre-paid one at their local post office. The latter - the cash for card exchange - is a cash flow in one direction, from people to the post. But how does cash flow back to the people again?

Obviously, if businesses refuse to accept cash to save themselves some hassle, they'll also refuse to pay salaries in cash, to save themselves further hassle.

The incentives are there, and it's clear to me that if you simulate it forward a couple cycles, cash will be all but gone - with the remaining few businesses and people using physical money automatically considered suspicious.

Huh? You get cash from the bank, just like you do today. The ATM, 99% of the time.

What businesses pay salaries in cash?

My entire life, I've gotten nearly all my cash from the bank, except for tips when I worked in the service industry.

Again, this isn't about abolishing cash. It's just about enabling businesses to go card-only if they so choose.

What businesses pay salaries in cash today? Hourly workers are sometimes paid cash, but salaried employees are almost exclusively paid via check or direct deposit. Cash enters the system from people making cash withdrawals from banks.

The legislation in the US is that you can't get a payment card at all without strong identity verification first.

This thing you're proposing is an end to transaction privacy.

> It should be illegal for any business to refuse cash payment, full stop.

It should be illegal to not accept into your possession a physical object that people will use violence to get from you? Do you know the fear a shift manager has when having to manage an onsite safe? You've seen the armored trucks rolling around transporting the stuff right?

Businesses don't want to accept cash because its a liability and the burden of a card's surcharge just isn't enough of a pain anymore.

Brick and mortar business are hanging on a thread and they choose to eliminate one of the reasons people go to them? Doesn’t sound very smart to me.

Perhaps the business operators are sufficiently intelligent to do a cost benefit analysis of accepting cash? Perhaps they’re not, and they will go out of business.

I can easily imagine there are some businesses in some areas where the clientele almost always uses electronic forms of payment, where it doesn’t make business sense to deal with the minority using cash.

Depends on the type of business. I'm sure there are lots of businesses where the vast majority of their customers pay with cards.

As if the crime has been generated on purpose so that banks and Orwellian agendas get their way.

What many food trucks do to get around this is to require a credit card to operate the touch screen terminal used to order. They won't even talk to you unless you have a card.

In this way they can avoid people paying in cash by never taking orders that might use cash.

Where are food trucks with touch screen terminals common? I've never seen one in NYC.

NYC passed a law recently that required businesses to accept cash.

Yes... the comment above is describing a way to evade such laws, used by food trucks. But I've never seen such that workaround in action, hence my question.

Minneapolis/St. Paul.

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