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Comment by davidhbolton | Hacker News Reader

Other reasons to keep cash. 1. Self discipline. Plastic (debit or credit) lets you spend more than you should. Cash doesn't. 2. Privacy. Do you really want every transaction to be observed by the Government? "We think you are spending too much on alcohol. Reduce it and increase spending on greens by at least £5 a week". Don't think it will happen? Remember Nudgers gotta nudge. Also I wonder just how big the black economy is. 3. Where do you keep the rainy day fund? I don't think anyone is developing an electronic mattress.

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> Plastic (debit or credit) lets you spend more than you should.

I think this differs from person to person. Cash for me requires more self-discipline, because I don't automatically get a log of where the money has gone and so in some ways it just disappears without me having an idea where

(Sure, my bank statement can't tell me what I bought at a given shop, but knowing I spent €X at a shop is a good memory jog)

1. That's suggesting you don't have any self discipline in reality... 2. Yeah why not, I withdrew cash to pay three months rent once, I had to fill out a huge anti money laundering form saying what the PURPOSE of my cash withdrawal was in writing. 3. In the electronic account named rainy day fund, thats automatically populated from my income monthly, because I do lack self discipline...

> 1. Self discipline. Plastic (debit or credit) lets you spend more than you should. Cash doesn't.

Never understood this idea. If you have a wad of cash and you're bad at tracking your spending, don't you just go through all of the cash and are doubly fucked?

> Privacy. Do you really want every transaction to be observed by the Government? "We think you are spending too much on alcohol. Reduce it and increase spending on greens by at least £5 a week". Don't think it will happen?

Don't you have real present-day problems to worry about, like the Tories destroying the NHS?

> 3. Where do you keep the rainy day fund? I don't think anyone is developing an electronic mattress.

In bank accounts. Do UK banks not have insurance? In the USA you seriously do not want to leave large amounts cash lying around where it can be untraceably stolen, consumed by fire, or otherwise lost to acts of nature or humans.

>> 1. Self discipline. Plastic (debit or credit) lets you spend more than you should. Cash doesn't.

> Never understood this idea. If you have a wad of cash and you're bad at tracking your spending, don't you just go through all of the cash and are doubly fucked?

A wad of cash is tangible in a way that a number in an account is not. If the wad is thick, you're in good shape. If the wad is thin, it's time to slow down your spending. And when the wad is gone, you're forced to stop even if you didn't want to.

re: 1. With cash, the worst case is that you spend all your money. With a CC, the worst case is that you spend all your money AND max out your CC limit. So instead of having a net worth of $0 (until your next paycheck), you have a net worth of -$10,000. Then every month your debt grows by $200 due to interest.

Odd example - Britain has a huge alcohol abuse problem and staging interventions on alcoholics who are spiraling the plughole is probably the most politically acceptable application of financial surveillance one could think of.

We already have the ability to block gambling transactions, it's not a huge jump to block alcohol ones if the card owner desires it.

One issue with doing this is that blocking gambling is usually done by the merchant classification. Betting shops are easy to categorise and identify from their merchant category.

Alcohol can be bought from a supermarket, or corner shop, or off-licence. Other than dedicated off-licences, the merchant classification wouldn't be enough to let you block gambling transactions.

To do this effectively, you'd need support in the EMV spec to allow the card to tell the terminal it is unable to pay for goods in a given "category", and have a standardized list of goods categories, and let the POS system send a list of categories to the card before it tries to authorize the transaction.

Otherwise I don't see how you could "delve into" the purchase deeper than seeing it's in a supermarket, and not knowing if it's for alcohol or other items.

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