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Comment by ddingus | Hacker News Reader

We can fix that, and it is being addressed.

Cash is a great answer to a whole lot of basic commerce, small scale, freedom style, between adults just adulting.

The problem IS businesses refusing cash. The public really does not benefit and we have not shown we are able to avoid abusing electronics.

One day maybe. Right now? Not a chance.

Cash remains necessary and the costs are not crazy enough to warrant all the abuses and risks other payment forms bring to the table.

I do not connect payments to my phone for example. Everyone I know who did has a story to tell about how doing that cost them.

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> The problem IS businesses refusing cash. The public really does not benefit

I benefit quite a lot from not having to use cash. I pay all my bills with credit cards. That means I can do it remotely, taking a few minutes a month, without having to leave my house. Having to pay each bill in person, in cash, would be a huge cost to me in time and effort. And if the companies I'm paying those bills to had to have the personnel and infrastructure to support all or most of their customers paying in person, in cash, the costs of the things I'm actually paying them for would go way up.

Sure, if you're going out for coffee and you'd rather pay with cash, it's a hassle if the coffee shop doesn't accept it. But that just means you go and find another coffee shop that does. That's a very different issue than the issue of cutting off people's access to non-cash methods of payment, which is what the article under discussion is talking about.

Nah, you're just not thinking about it.

Trivial solution: I walk to bank some day once a month, give them cash, give them account numbers, sent. It'd be done in all of ten minutes.

Does it exist where you live? Maybe, maybe not. Hell, if I knew you I'd do it for you, I'd enjoy obfuscating my accounts.

And no-one is saying that literally every transaction has to be done in cash, just that it should be _possible_ to do so.

The idea that cash is this hilariously inconvenient thing is a complete fabrication and I frankly tire of that discussion. You're talking about moving small physical things, it's a solved problem, everything around you right now is a small physical thing.

edit: posters are responding about the businesses that exist in their area. by this token it's "inconvenient" for me to use cash because the japanese place down the road doesn't take it. well no, they're just being dicks, there's no _fundamental_ inconvenience.

I care barely drive to a bank within 10 minutes, which isn't the bank I have an account with. It's only open during my work hours (9-5pm M-F), or I have to go on a Saturday. The wait time to see a clerk alone are often 10 minutes or more. And the clerk can't help me make certain payments that require me to use a web portal or mail a cheque.

> The idea that cash is this hilariously inconvenient thing is a complete fabrication.

That's a strong statement without considering that your experience might not match others'.

>> The idea that cash is this hilariously inconvenient thing is a complete fabrication.

>That's a strong statement without considering that your experience might not match others'.

IMHO, both the original statement and the respond are opinions. It may well be the case that cash is universally not “hilariously inconvenient.” Without some empirical evidence, it is just a shouting match.

In my opinion, cash is actually very convenient to use and encourages reflections on spending habits.

Nah, we're just not talking about the same thing.

He's saying that using cash is inconvenient because no-one uses cash where he is.

I'm saying that it's not because at its' core it's fundamentally just handing over a bit of paper.

It's not a statement about how many people accept cash where I am. I can't easily pay my mortgage with cash directly either. The point is that it's not an insurmountably difficult thing.

There also seems to be this bonkers strawman thing going on whereby loads of people seem to think I'm saying "don't ever make a non-cash transaction" which is bloody stupid. It's like, _a priori obvious_ that it's stupid. I hate this aspect of online discourse - if the thing you think I'm saying logically makes no sense, then I probably am not actually saying that thing.

> He's saying that using cash is inconvenient because no-one uses cash where he is.

No, I'm not. I'm saying using cash is inconvenient for me for things like paying my monthly bills because it would require me to physically go to each individual company I pay bills to and pay them in person. Whereas with a credit card I can pay all my monthly bills in a few minutes from my desk at home. Even if my utility company, for example, would accept cash in payment (as they probably would since most companies offering basic services like that are required by law to accept cash), I wouldn't do it because of the huge increase it would be in time and effort every month. I have better things to do with my time than schlep around all over the place to pay bills in person.

> I can't easily pay my mortgage with cash directly either. The point is that it's not an insurmountably difficult thing.

You're shifting your ground. Before you were saying that using cash wasn't inconvenient. Now you're saying it is for some things, like paying your mortgage. Which is exactly my point.

> I'm saying using cash is inconvenient for me for things like paying my monthly bills because it would require me to physically go to each individual company I pay bills to and pay them in person.

We could solve this problem with an a service where you'd be able to pool all the money you intend to spend on bills, and then the service would handle getting the cash to each individual company. :)

That money could even accrue 0.001% monthly interest, while it's waiting to get spent on bills.

Yeah, we could even call this service...a bank. And then we wouldn't be protecting ourselves any more against our assets being frozen by law enforcement without due process. Which was supposed to be the whole point of using cash.

If you're unwilling to read what I'm writing and just want to waffle, go for it.

If I don't have coffee in the cupboard is it inconvenient to drink coffee or is it just that I don't have coffee in the cupboard?

If you're arguing that it's inconvenient, then okay, that's your definition of the word.

I'm really not interested in arguing about definitions of words and neither should you be.

> If you're unwilling to read what I'm writing

Project much?

> it's fundamentally just handing over a bit of paper.

No, it's handing over bits of paper at the particular physical location of the person or entity you are paying. For some transactions, like paying for your food at a restaurant, that's no problem because you're there anyway. For other transactions, like paying monthly bills, it is a problem.

Nah because banks exist and can make digital transactions when you give them cash.

Literally, if you were standing next to me, you can give me 10 quid and I can send someone else that ten quid. You have paid them ten quid using cash, reasonably anonymously in a way that cannot be easily blocked or censored as long as cash exists.

This becomes far, far less convenient or feasible if we only have barter and now you need to find someone that accepts some arbitrary valuable object of a value that isn't exactly the amount you want to send.

No-one is arguing that electronic transactions are not useful, this is a strawman. It makes no logical sense, so perhaps you should consider that I'm not making that argument.

So cash is convenient because you have the option to not use it, and use a digital payment instead? Really?

No, it's convenient because anyone can accept or transfer it without a middleman. It's a physical thing you just give to someone. You can't (reasonably) censor it or block it or sanction it without just disabling the whole currency.

I was just describing the fact that it's not some sort of crazy idea to pay bills using cash. If HN weren't full of 21 year olds we wouldn't even be having this chat, it's like these guys forgot that not even that long ago we just paid each other with envelopes at the end of the week/month.

Like, they're literally saying that you can't do X, where X is something that most of us did less than 50 years ago, and no we didn't spend half of our days running around.

The point is that it’s a huge pain as evidenced by the fact that nobody does it now that there is an alternative..not that it’s literally impossible.

> banks exist and can make digital transactions when you give them cash.

And as soon as I use a bank for this, I am no longer protected against law enforcement preventing me from paying my bills and supporting myself, which was supposed to be the whole point of using cash in the first place. Law enforcement can block banks from making digital transactions on my behalf just as easily as they can freeze my accounts at those same banks.

Ok, so go to me, I'll send the funds.

I feel like people want this centralized vision of money. Just give someone cash to do a transfer.

Why so bureaucracy? What's the point?

> Trivial solution: I walk to bank some day once a month, give them cash, give them account numbers, sent. It'd be done in all of ten minutes.

I've never heard of any bank offering that service.

> no-one is saying that literally every transaction has to be done in cash, just that it should be _possible_ to do so.

Agreed. But it should also be recognized that there are many people who have good reasons to use payment methods other than cash in many situations.

> The idea that cash is this hilariously inconvenient thing is a complete fabrication

No one is claiming that cash is always inconvenient. Just that for many people in many situations, it is.

> You're talking about moving small physical things

If I have to go pay my bills in person, I have to move me, not just some pieces of paper. And if I pay my bills electronically while I'm sitting at my desk at home, I don't have to move anything at all.

Sure, if you sit at your desk all month, never visit a high street, and also can't use a postbox, this is an unsolvable problem. Got me.

I'm out yo, physical interactions are better than this GPT-3 shite.

We don't have high streets here. All my adjacent banks are in the middle of a parking lot not near anything else I'd want to interact with during my precious Saturday except maybe the grocery store. Sure that's a bad design and I'd prefer to live near UK high streets but that's beyond my control here.

This has nothing to do with sitting at my desk. Using cash would mean spending my Saturday at one of the least interesting location I can think of.

> if you sit at your desk all month, never visit a high street, and also can't use a postbox

I never said any of those things. And the idea that schlepping around all over the place to pay monthly bills in person is the best way to get physical exercise is laughable.

> physical interactions are better than this GPT-3 shite

IMO your posts read a lot more like GPT-3 than mine.

> If I have to go pay my bills in person, I have to move me, not just some pieces of paper.

Coming soon for this market, "brain in a jar". Upload your consciousness into an Altered Carbon simulation, Source Code time loop or immortal-gaming-AI Daemon.

After gig economy workers unionize and raise delivery fees, hopefully they won't hire a mercenary army to enforce Code of Customer Conduct.

> I've never heard of any bank offering that service.

I'm not a cash person, but this is literally how cash deposits work (in the US). You fill out a deposit slip with your account information, hand the slip and the cash to the teller, and that's about it. If you own checks, your check book probably came with some deposit slips pre-filled with your account information.

Can't you make deposits directly on the ATM? Where I live, the ATM takes your bills, counts them, and directly deposits them in the account you choose.

No need to interact with any of those pesky humans.

Well, yes, but the GP comment was specifically saying that they had "never heard of any bank" offering the service of taking cash and depositing it into a provided account, which is weird because that is very much a standard service that brick-and-mortar banks provide.

Either the other user was uninformed or my sarcasm detector is broken today.

> he GP comment was specifically saying that they had "never heard of any bank" offering the service of taking cash and depositing it into a provided account

No, I said I had never heard of any bank offering the service of taking all the account numbers of all the bills I have to pay and paying them for me out of my bank account.

You can do so online (which I do for many monthly bills). But that doesn't really solve any perceived problems about maintaining anonymity associated with making cash payments buth neither does anything going through a bank.

In Argentina there's a service named "Pago Mis Cuentas" (Pay My Bills). You can add all your services (gas, electricity, cable, internet, taxes, etc).

When there's a new bill for the services you added, it's displayed on a list with checkboxes right beside each one of them. Check the ones you want to pay, click Pay, and you're done. It's linked directly to your bank account. The website was created by a bank consortium.

Is a service like that what you're talking about?

It's not, because this conversation is specifically about how much worse it would be to pay all your bills in cash, while you seem to be talking about a digital payment.

Yes, because of this statement in the parent:

> I said I had never heard of any bank offering the service of taking all the account numbers of all the bills I have to pay and paying them for me out of my bank account.

It sounds like you're talking about taking cash to your bank and depositing it into your own bank account, which of course you can do. The original commenter was talking about taking cash to your bank and somehow very quickly distributing it to everyone you owe money to this month.

> The original commenter was talking about taking cash to your bank and somehow very quickly distributing it to everyone you owe money to this month.

Exactly.

Use auto bill pay?

The original commenter is talking about a solution which would be vulnerable to the exact sort of "digital jail" being referenced in the article. They've added a central authority to their decentralized solution, in the form of the absolute classic way banks are used against people - by freezing accounts and deposits etc.

Nah, because you can just go to any money transmitter. Which is actually just anyone, if we didn't scare people off it by making payments this like, scary bureaucratic taxy AML'y thing.

I have online banking on my phone, if you wanna give me cash to send it to someone, no problem, why not.

I use autopay for all of my monthly bills.

> this is literally how cash deposits work (in the US)

I wasn't talking about cash deposits. I was talking about paying bills. I can't go to my bank and give them the account numbers of all my bills and have the bank pay them for me. If I wanted to pay each bill in cash, I would have to schlep to each individual company I pay bills to and pay them.

There’s nothing that makes it inherently impossible to put bills this way in cash, though.

For example, in Japan, you can pay bills by taking them to the local konbini - which is probably no more than a couple minutes walk away - then handing them the bills. They scan barcodes, take your cash, stamp the bills, give you your change. Done. No need for ID or a bank account.

The reason that people can’t easily pay bills in cash in the US is not because it can’t be done.

I'm in the US and have had checking accounts in three credit unions and five banks and they all offered this service. They don't send cash if that's what you have in mind, but they do send checks. They'll send a check to anyone given a name and address, and if I provide an account number, for many businesses they'll also receive a billing amount and pay it each month automatically.

Every bank has been doing this since for at least 30 years. Companies register. It is simple and easy.

Telephone banking used this before internet banking.

Ooooh, I understand now, and I do apologize for misreading your comment.

Banks do offer bill pay services, you just set it up and they mail a check every month. To your point, I don't think there's a way to get your bank to send the recipient cash every month, but I feel like that's a moot point since your cash is already in the banking system at that point.

>No one is claiming that cash is always inconvenient. Just that for many people in many situations, it is.

So don't use it. Non issue right?

Otherwise, dealing with the public comes with some costs. The benefit is being able to do business and turn a profit.

Picking and choosing is an abuse of the public.

Just because a business has to accept cash, does not mean every transaction must be cash.

> I benefit quite a lot from not having to use cash.

And you lose nothing by having more options, including cash. Nobody said you need to pay only with cash.

there's a huge difference between not having to use cash and having not to use cash

Refusing cash is not the same as being able to not use a card.

The shop refusing cash is not accepting legal tender for all debts public and private.

I raised that issue and my local shop does now take cash.

If we can fix "that" (government seizing your cash), why can't we fix a similar with cashless? Maybe the government hasn't technically seized it if they just make it inaccessible, but the effect is the same.

> I do not connect payments to my phone for example. Everyone I know who did has a story to tell about how doing that cost them.

I do this and all my friends have done this, and I haven’t heard any costing stories. I guess you could be in some kind of high risk group or area for digital theft (Russia?), but I’m curious what specific things have happened to all your friends.

Care to address how civil forfeiture is being addressed?

This 2015 post suggests that in 2014, civil forfeiture exceeded burglary.

> Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually... Then by 2014, that number had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year, .... According to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses. This means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals. https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/north_...

I'd love to see evidence that the tide is turning, hopefully you have some.

>The problem IS businesses refusing cash.

They legally cannot, at least not in the USA, and I doubt in most countries. Thanks to the legal tender laws, businesses cannot legally refuse the legal tender, especially in its cash form. Once a deal is made and cash is offered, service must be rendered or it is considered stolen. A fun way to exploit this (before coin machines) was to go to tow truck lots, offer pennies, and then report grand theft auto to the local sheriff when they refused.

Cash is only legal tender for debts. I can run a business that refuses cash as long as services or products are not rendered before payment. I can say that if you want to eat at my restaurant, you need to use credit or debit cards only.

Do patrons pay after eating?

Debt

If they pay prior, not debt.

And yeah, there are times I would not choose your establishment and recommend others avoid it as well.

Being able to use cash is a basic thing I value highly. I realize we disagree, and we get to do that too.

No worries, but just know while you do you, I'm doing me.

Wish it were different.

What businesses don’t accept cash? Everywhere I go does. In fact it is illegal for them not to do so.

"We can fix that"

You sure about that? Currently Chicago's mayor is trying to bring it back.

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