Hacker News Reader

Comment by LinuxBender | Hacker News Reader

While I do not foresee this being adopted in the US I won't put it past lobbyists to try. Maybe they are already trying? I personally would never go for this. Cash in my pocket can't be "disabled" individually. In fact I am seeing a transition to targeted risks in many places. Amazon destroying small local stores facilitating the ability to disable someone's purchasing capabilities or limiting what one person may buy. As a side note, porch pirates are becoming a real nuisance for local authorities. Network connected cars can be remotely tracked, disabled or bricked. Smart homes that can monitor an individual. Smart phones tracking individuals.

I don't think I could fully embrace the Amish way of life but I suspect my local community mostly farmers and ranchers could implement a barter system if we had to. Some of this already exists. We could be self sufficient for things like food, basic repairs, transportation via horses. I am personally not opposed to giving up some luxuries like internet and online shopping if it came to that. I realize some people born into these things perceive them as absolutely mandatory but I did just fine without them for a big part of my life. In the last several months I have not needed to travel more than 16 miles from home. I suppose I could stock up on e-bike parts and solar panels then fall back to horses. Come to think of it, we could build a local warehouse business that stocks up on things not made locally then sell them locally using cash or maybe even implementing a Craigslist-Style barter system over Lo-Rad.

Am I alone on HN in thinking this way? I know I am not alone in my local community, but I am curious how many on HN have thought about this.

View on HN

>While I do not foresee this being adopted in the US I won't put it past lobbyists to try.

it will. and it would only take a few years of concentrated brainwash from the telescreens for the people who will oppose that to be branded as the enemy.

and unlike the few other principal things powers that be want to take away from us - privacy, freedom of expression, gun ownership, there is no right to bear cash, so they can take it away anytime.

Kind of jarring to see one of those four things you seem to cherish so casually mentioned beside the others...

While there isn’t a risk of cash being banned or anything of the sort, we should cherish it as if it can be.

Cash gives you a level of financial discretion for which the only comparable alternative is gold, but more liquid.

just one? there are at least two that are nearly equally problematic

Don’t play the pronoun game, it makes the conversation hard to follow and reply to. Which one of the four things - privacy, freedom of expression, gun ownership, or right to bear cash - are you finding jarring?

Sorry for being too nebulous, it was the guns.

Interesting observation and a good reminder that what isn't even noteworthy for half the US is shocking for others.

Many people are completely serious that the only way to take to take their guns is quite literally over their dead body.

In my community the folks here have a ratio of firearms to people of about 20:1. Many of them save their brass/steel and reload their own ammo. Most here carry concealed and are not required to have a permit. Same goes for some neighboring states. Permits are only required if traveling into a state that does not honor permit-less carry based on state ID.

As a funny side note this is only place I have lived where it is normal to see people get out of their vehicle with hunting/assault rifles at the gas station sorting/shifting their gear and nobody bats an eye. My bank has a fundraiser poster on the door for a rifle giveaway prize.

Privacy and cash are closely linked. Credit card companies are the experts on consumer spending data.

“A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.” - Frederick Douglass, 1867.

It's still true. Yes, all three are dangerous and open to abuse, but they - with the right protections in place - will provide better outcomes than the alternatives.

If Douglass could've conceived of a world without cash then perhaps he would've mentioned a fourth.

In the US it will be more of an "economic"-oriented change. I already encounter businesses once in a while that don't take cash, and rely entirely on a payment processor like Stripe or even Venmo. It's not a matter of evil vs. not-evil, it's a matter of "this is what was cheapest/easiest for us and why do you care anyway?"

> why do you care anyway?

In some U.S. cities, there are local laws requiring acceptance of cash by all businesses.

Outside tech bubbles, people are using more cash, not less. The Federal Reserve reports that U.S. currency in circulation has been steadily rising for decades, including the recent smartphone decade: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CURRCIR

American cash is hoarded abroad, so I don't think that's very informative.

For the UK [1] (graph on page 2) shows the number of cash transactions made per year. There's a continual decline since 2012: "Since 2017 cash use had been declining by around 15% each year, so 2020 represented an acceleration of this decline ... Nevertheless, cash remained the second most frequently used payment method in the UK in 2020, being used for just under a fifth of the total number of payments made"

"At the same time there were 1.2 million consumers who mainly used cash, choosing this payment method when doing their day-to-day shopping (although the majority still use other payment methods to pay their regular bills). It should be noted that while these people prefer to use cash when paying for things, they are not necessarily unwilling or unable to use other methods of payment. The majority of them have a debit card"

[2] is the same for the USA (page 6). It shows similar cash use as the UK (1 in 5 transactions), plus credit cards used instead of debit cards.

For a much more cashless society, see Denmark [3]. Roughly a third of people don't carry any cash, and half carry less than 100kr ($15).

"There are differences in the use of cash between the youngest and the oldest Danes, but the tendency to move away from cash is seen in all age groups. In particular, senior citizens’ use of cash has declined in recent years: Among the 70 to 79-year-olds, 40 per cent of payments were made in cash in 2017. This figure was almost halved to 22 per cent in 2019.

"By comparison, the share of cash payments in physical trade fell from 9 per cent to 4 per cent among the 15 to 29-year-olds. Young people thus opt out of paying with cash in stores, but it is a change in behaviour among the oldest citizens which has been driving developments since 2017."

(Denmark has a national law requiring staffed businesses to accept cash, with some exceptions.)

[1] https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/sites/default/files/uploads/SUM...

[2] https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2021-findin...

[3] https://www.nationalbanken.dk/en/publications/Documents/2020...

> In some U.S. cities, there are local laws requiring acceptance of cash by all businesses.

What’s a good example?

Cashless stores are generally prohibited in San Francisco, Philadelphia, NYC and the states of NJ and MA.

https://www.dwt.com/blogs/financial-services-law-advisor/201...

> though you wouldn't know it from the ubiquitous swiveling iPads at your local coffee shop, cash is the most frequent method of payment in the US – more frequent than electronic, credit, debit, or check payments.

My "why do you care" was rhetorical/sarcastic. It was meant to be analogous to "what do you have to hide?" in the context of privacy discussions. Part of how these things get adopted is that people engage in "outsider-shaming" of the people who resist.

Unpopular change can also be motivated by incentive payments, https://www.dwt.com/blogs/financial-services-law-advisor/201...

> Bills mandating cash acceptance have faced intensive lobbying from the credit card industry as well as more tech-focused retailers. The passage of the New Jersey legislation exemplifies such forces at work. The bill's sponsor specifically criticized a recent Visa initiative that rewarded 50 businesses with $10,000 each for making their operations cashless.

I wouldn't go for it either but this will pushed to the masses as something good and necessary, and most will simply go along with it. For the individual, losing cash and going "digital everything" means losing privacy, autonomy and sovereignty.

Not alone, but not in the majority I suspect.

I touch maybe $100 in actual cash a year. Mostly for like a random garage sale or two. The less I touch the better.

I don’t think I touch any cash at all, but I think society is better when the option is there and used. Also some people have a hard time getting a bank account etc.

So,what happens when the following get ahold of your data:

Health insurance companies start buying your purchasing info and decide to up your premiums due to the amount of alcohol you buy, fast food you purchase, or your grocery shopping habits? Do you eat too much red meat, too many carbs, not enough greens? Is your sugar intake put you at a higher risk for diabetes? How may cigars/cigarettes are you smoking? What about marijuana use, or over the counter drugs?

Home owners insurance: What if your shopping data shows risky patterns or behaviors - do you or spouse buy too many candles, is your home at a greater risk for fire hazard?

Law Enforcement: How much ammo do you purchase? Are you frequently buying guns? Are you an active shooter risk? Are you spending too much at strip clubs? Are you spending too much money in high risk neighborhoods?

Obviously these are all just examples, but don't think for a second that they don't already have most of this data, and can brainstorm many other use cases for it, honestly we are just living on borrow time at the moment before it gets unbearable.

Then you vote to ban insurance discrimination on certain kinds of data. In California, for example, employers are forbidden to ask or use data on candidate salaries in their hiring process. In the US, health insurance companies are forbidden from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions.

A huge amount of middle and upper class people already voluntarily use cashless methods to spend & earn money. A huge amount of businesses are basically online-only and don't really support cash payments. Visa & Mastercard etc already engage in data sharing. Cash is just too inconvenient and will slowly recede over time, if you want to avoid discriminatory outcomes then advocate for legislation directly.

> Cash is just too inconvenient

It might be inconvenient for some things (e.g., online purchases, buying houses or cars), but buying something at the store has worked very well for centuries; it's quick and easy. People on HN can't figure out cash?

Whatever is going on, it's not about convenience.

When I used cash to buy something at the store, I have to take out my wallet, count the appropriate amount of cash, wait for the cashier to give back any change, confirm I got the right amount back.

If I use a credit card, I just insert a piece of plastic into a slot, and we're done. It's more convenient.

Negative side effects of using cash also include having to carry a bulging wallet when I'm constantly trying to minimize the stuff I have to carry.

Side effects of using credit card is that all my transactions are tracked, but the side effect of that side effect is that I know exactly what I'm spending where. And no, I'd rather not do a manual bookkeeping routine, which is what I'd have to do if I used cash.

Yes, there is the side effect that third party entities might also know what my transactions are, but I simply don't care. Maybe there is some far off scenario in the future where it can be used against me, but I view worrying about that remote possibility as premature optimization. I have far greater things to worry about.

I understand the benefits of using cash even if I don't find those benefits valuable for myself personally. But I don't understand how someone can find using cash more convenient than swiping a credit card.

> When I used cash to buy something at the store, I have to take out my wallet, count the appropriate amount of cash, wait for the cashier to give back any change, confirm I got the right amount back. If I use a credit card, I just insert a piece of plastic into a slot, and we're done. It's more convenient.

> If I use a credit card, I just insert a piece of plastic into a slot, and we're done. It's more convenient.

Where do you keep your credit card, in your hand at all times? How long does the cash exchange take? Moments, in my experience.

> there is the side effect that third party entities might also know what my transactions are, but I simply don't care.

What if they use it to control your society and oppress other people?

> Where do you keep your credit card, in your hand at all times? How long does the cash exchange take? Moments, in my experience.

In my ultraslim card wallet, where other than my driver's license, it is the only occupant. Meanwhile my wife, who loves carrying/using cash, has a wallet that is enormous. She carries a purse, so it is less of an issue for her.

Plus these days, especially when I'm not driving, I find myself not even carrying that wallet - just my phone, via which I can pay via Apple Pay. Doesn't cover every single payment scenario, but it does cover enough - and increasingly, more.

> What if they use it to control your society and oppress other people?

See my comment earlier about premature optimization. Maybe I'd feel different if I lived in China or some other authoritarian country, but as it stands today in the United States, I am not worried about this at all, nor in the foreseeable future.

> Meanwhile my wife, who loves carrying/using cash, has a wallet that is enormous.

Why the need for hyperbole? Plenty of people have used cash for generations without enormous wallets; there just isn't that much volume to some cash. It's not that hard to use.

>> What if they use it to control your society and oppress other people?

> as it stands today in the United States, I am not worried about this at all, nor in the foreseeable future.

There might be more going on in the US than you think. Look at what happens to immigrants, Muslims (esp. during the GWOT), people who challenge government authority, political opposition, etc. The prior president actively solicted intelligence on political opposition and repeatedly threatened to jail them. Today, here's an article I just read:

https://www.justsecurity.org/80813/mayorkas-must-rein-in-hom...

If we give the tools of oppression to government, and they start using them, how will you stop them? What will stop them?

I’ve been using Apple Pay (with my Watch), for over a year.

Sometimes, I forget my wallet at home (not good, if I’m driving), but still have no problem buying something for hundreds of dollars.

I often have no cash on me; which can be a problem, from time to time.

When I use cash to pay my mechanic for something quick, they give me a discount and round to the nearest $10.

If I use a credit card, we have to go for a walk to the back office and wait for an old and creaky point-of-sale machine to navigate a slow network connection.

> When I use cash to pay my mechanic for something quick, they give me a discount and round to the nearest $10.

And then they pocket the money and never give you a receipt, right? You do know what that's called? =)

> When I used cash to buy something at the store, I have to take out my wallet, count the appropriate amount of cash, wait for the cashier to give back any change, confirm I got the right amount back. > If I use a credit card, I just insert a piece of plastic into a slot, and we're done. It's more convenient.

You're comparing the worst-case of cash to best-case of a credit card.

For a single transaction, is it even possible to make a transaction with a credit card when: - The chip/card reader fails? - The network connection is down? - There's a power outage?

It's not just inconvenient; in some cases, the transaction is impossible.

Let's extend this to monthly time lost over a day or a month. Here's what I lose with credit cards strictly from a convenience perspective and with common edge and use cases: - For daily budgeting, I have to mentally keep of my credit card transactions; or go into an app. That's time wasted. - I have to review each purchase on a daily and monthly basis, to make sure I'm not hit with fraudulent charges. It's not enough to get notified by SMS or app. - We have to consolidate our monthly expenses, to make sure we're not going over our monthly budget. - If there's a fraudulent charge, I now have to contact the credit card and dispute the charges. - If the credit card helpfully decides to up the limit, I have to cheerfully tell them to decrease it; in order to minimize the damage.

In the case of a stolen wallet with cash, what I lose is what I withdrew. There's a very simple and hard ceiling to the loss.

There is one group for which cashless is far more convenient: Big-company merchants and businesses.

Cashless-only is terrible for everyone else.

> For a single transaction, is it even possible to make a transaction with a credit card when: - The chip/card reader fails? - The network connection is down? - There's a power outage?

I use cards for 99% of my payments. For me, this simply hasn't been an issue in actual reality. In fact, I've had far more issues getting cash into and out of the handful of ATMs in my area that work with my credit union.

I keep about $100 in each car and $1000 in my house in case I find I desperately need cash. The car money comes in handy sometimes if there's a cash discount for gas or I drive someplace and realize I've forgotten my wallet.

Why would a gas station offer discount for cash for any reason other than to avoid it going through the books and hence avoid obligations like paying tax or their staff a proper wage?

To save on the credit card fees. Gas stations are one of the few businesses which are allowed to offer cash discounts in their merchant agreements.

Interesting! Any idea why that is?

Because the margins on gas are tiny.

The gas stations would have never had any credit card uptake without it and people have to buy gas and are extremely price sensitive so would have continued shopping at cash only gas stations.

Unlike say a clothing store where the convenience of credit overcomes the price sensitivity, you can defer the purchase and the merchant has higher margins.

A lot of places do this, whether it is "allowed" or not. But my understanding is that after much push and pull between merchants and processors, most processors do allow it.

Card payment processors charge the merchant some premium. Usually their contract with the merchant prevents passing the fee along to the customer. A cash discount could be a way to get more customers to pay in cash, which avoids the credit card company's cut. This is probably violating the terms of the merchant/card company contract, but I dunno, hard to resent the merchant here given the power imbalance between them and the card processors.

How would using cash would be an effective way of denying the gas station's staff a proper wage? I suspect most gas station staff is hourly, rather than... I dunno, tipped or commission.

Cash could certainly be a way of avoiding some taxes.

> For a single transaction, is it even possible to make a transaction with a credit card when: - The chip/card reader fails? - The network connection is down? - There's a power outage?

Imprint machines still exist, and maybe half of my cards still have raised numbers. If all else fails, the merchant may be willing to write down name, phone number, and amount and either ask the customer to come by later to make it right (and call if not) or write the card number down to run the charge later and call to confirm, etc. There's ways to get network redundancy and power redundancy, if it's of value to the merchant.

Sometimes the merchant doesn't have the right change for cash (or would prefer not to take a large bill), or may not be able to open the register if power is unavailable (usually there's a key, but it might not be onsite).

You don't need to review charges on a daily basis, monthly is sufficent to keep your rights (at least in the US)

There's also such a thing as offline transactions, for when the internet is down. As I understand it, most POS terminals do support that.

Power outages are indeed an issue, especially when the business is in a small town or rural community with a flakier power grid.

Where I work, when the power is out, we rely on cash or writing down the customer's name and amount they owe, and add that to their account when the power's back.

>For a single transaction, is it even possible to make a transaction with a credit card when: - The chip/card reader fails? - The network connection is down? - There's a power outage?

In the power outage situation, the merchant won't be able to handle any transactions and they may not be able to legally open their doors even if they could. I don't think I've ever encountered the other two scenarios ever. I would imagine that CC payment systems have resiliency for a network failure and most businesses have at least two card/chip reader terminals for transactions.

So I’ve worked retail during a power outage, granted it was roughly 15 years ago, at a Blockbuster. We used a pen and paper list of transactions (literally a cash register) along with necessary info (membership number, movie purchased or rented) and entered them by hand when power came back.

> I don't think I've ever encountered the other two scenarios ever.

Chip readers fail to read all the time; One failure, reinsert, try again.

Connection from the reader to CC service outages also occur.

I run into this a few times a year.

I’ve also had to change my credit card number a few times due to number theft (self-service gas station).

So many points of failure and headaches.

I still use my credit card a lot to build and maintain my credit history; convenience in physical stores isn’t one of them.

I've been reading through this thread and trying to figure out what the disconnect between you and everyone else, I think it's probably your poor experience with chip readers. I had the same deal, it was frustrating, and not as convenient as cash. It made me resistant to the tap system because I felt I really did not need more faulty bullshit. Now for whatever reason I have a card that has a chip and the tap, and crucially, most of the places have systems where the tap consistently works (except one that is faulty and uses the chip read and reminds me how little I liked that). It's like always having exact change but faster.

Anyway, not trying to change your mind (pay with checks and bottle caps for all I care), but you seemed suspicious in some of your responses and I thought it might be helpful to share that perspective. I would also be suspicious if it sounded like people were recommending something that I personally knew to be a consistent frustration.

Others have already acknowledged independently that each of my edge cases have happened to them in some respect.

So I’m not sure why you think it’s suspicion or a disconnect of myself versus everyone else (it’s not).

I’ve just consolidated the edgecases for a topic that frequently comes up again and again: That is, cash is a pain; electronic/credit-only is great.

I bought from a computer store during a localized power outage about 15 years ago (not the great blackout of 2003). I paid cash, the clerk hand-wrote a receipt on a pre-printed form, and presumably they kept a second copy of the receipt to input electronically when the power eventually came back.

> In the power outage situation, the merchant won't be able to handle any transactions

They can handle cash transactions just fine, that's the beauty of cash. It is entirely self-contained.

Having lived in areas where power goes out often, that's the norm. Cash only while there is no power.

Even here, California, every so often various local convenience stores become cash-only for the day whenever their network connection is down.

For a cash transaction is it even possible if the store does not have matching change on hand?

That is actually a common annoyance here in Germany, where bakeries will complain or even refuse a sale if you try to pay with a "too large" bill, e.g. 20 for 4.50.

> For a single transaction, is it even possible to make a transaction with a credit card when: - The chip/card reader fails? - The network connection is down? - There's a power outage?

yep. for all three, they write down your cc number

Hold on... did you just describe "not having exact change" as the *worst-case* scenario for paying with cash?

First off, not having exact change is the typical scenario, not an outlier.

Second, there are much worse cases. Getting mugged outside the store, for one. The store not being able to make change, for another.

Regardless, the scenarios described by parent were the typical, most common scenarios.

I already mentioned this in the following if you read the rest: > In the case of a stolen wallet with cash, what I lose is what I withdrew. There's a very simple and hard ceiling to the loss.

I was responding to the very narrow use-case of already being at the register and starting to pay, in order to keep the objections relevant.

As you widen the scope to all the negative possibilities and edge-cases, credit cards and electronic payment has more negatives; and I say this as someone who almost exclusively does transactions with credit cards because it's indeed convenient 99% of the time.

But that 1% is what can get a person in real trouble, if they find themselves cashless.

A fairer comparison with swiping a credit card would be if you used the wallet like a credit card: just give it to the cashier, let them take out what is required and give it back to you.

A large portion of the folks I know in their 20s in NYC don't even carry cash anymore unless there's a specific need for it on a given day (taking a class that's taught by an individual who takes cash, for example). Why worry about a bunch of pieces of paper or round metal discs when everything is a tap of your watch or phone away? I don't even use my metrocard anymore since the subway started using tap to pay.

I’m over 50. I can figure out cash. But I hate cash. I hate carrying it around. I hate having to go to an ATM to get more. I hate counting cash and getting change. I hate that there isn’t a digital record of what I purchased and when. I’ve avoided using cash for more years than I can remember. Bring on the cashless society.

> hate

Such intensity!

Sorry, how about "passionately despise"?

I’m not an expert in this area and this is based mostly upon memory. But I’m of an age where I remember the introduction of ATMs into my communities. Cash used to be cheaper, even if you took it out of a different bank’s machine. Nowadays, I pay more than $5 on any withdrawal from a machine that isn’t affiliated with my bank. I live in a small city with around 200,000 people. I’m only aware of seven machines in my city that are affiliated with my bank.

So, if I decide to get cash, I have to decide in advance. Or I’m at risk of paying 5% to get my own $100 out of my bank. Or, I can pay with a card for $0 for unlimited transactions.

When I look at that cost attached to cash, I’m reminded of research about how spending digital doesn’t impact people the same way as spending cash. At the risk of sounding conspiratorial, do you think this might be a marketing campaign?

Obviously I don’t know, but if I knew people spent more on cards than with cash, and if consumer debt made me rich, I’d do everything I could to convince people to use cards.

Edit - I think this is the first time I’ve ever gone on a “when I was young, things were cheaper and better” rant. Aging beats the alternative but that’s the only good thing about it. :)

> I’m at risk of paying 5% to get my own $100 out of my bank. Or, I can pay with a card for $0 for unlimited transactions.

But isn't that actually pretty comparable? You don't see the few percent extra you're paying with the credit card because it gets hidden in the price. It's probably not all that different than what you're paying to get cash from an out-of-network ATM (I just get cash back at POS).

To be fair, usually the cash buyer also gets screwed into paying for the convenience of everyone else using credit cards. For a while that was actually written into the merchant agreement, to favor credit card usage and ensure hefty profits for Visa & MC.

This analysis ignores the cost to the merchant of handling cash.

I don't know how high it is. I've seen various numbers thrown around but it's hard to tell what's accurate and what's not. What is clear, however, is that the cost is non-zero.

I can give you a bit of data that is roughly thirty years old. When I was a youngster, I had a job at Subway. I was freakishly nerdy and good at math, so I ended up doing cash most of my shifts. If it went well, it took me twenty minutes. Most of my coworkers spent double that time.

If we split the difference (30 minutes) and factor in my big hourly wage ($7 an hour), it’s at around $3.50 a business day per location. That’s not huge money, but still works out to close to $1,300 a year for one location. Multiple that by a few million and it’s a serious cost.

Great comment.

Thanks for the insight! I imagine there must be other costs, such as secure storage and transportation of cash? Also a bank might impose handling fees? (The latter in particular is pure guesswork on my part.)

I agree with what you’re saying but just wanted to interject with a weird bit of Canadianism. I’ve never found a good way to describe this to non Canadians so if this doesn’t make sense, it’s me.

(This is very pedantic.)

When I pay with a card, I actually have a couple of options. We use the terms ‘debit’ and ‘credit’. I can pull out a credit card and pay for something with someone else’s money. Or pull out a debit card and pay with my own. Debit comes directly out of my bank account and they’re physically different cards, with different chips, PIN numbers etc.

The experiences are identical for me, but dramatically different for poor merchants. The cards are almost identical, but if I use my credit card the merchant gets toasted. If I use my debit card, they’re only lightly browned.

So, long story short but you’re right. It’s the same. I don’t notice because merchants have to pass on the cost.

Thanks friend - this was interesting.

> Nowadays, I pay more than $5 on any withdrawal from a machine that isn’t affiliated with my bank.

That's borderline criminal. Look for a better bank, there's no reason to be hit with such fees.

I have accounts at four banks and none of them charge me fees for getting cash out of a different banks ATM. The ATM will show a default message that it is charging a fee, but it never actually gets charged.

I believe there is some limit to how many withdrawals a month they'll do for free, but I've never reached it (and I mostly use cash for privacy).

Hey friend! Thanks for writing such a friendly, helpful reply.

You’re 100% right that I need a new bank. I spent more than an hour on the phone this morning with them and by the end, cryptocurrency was looking pretty good…

I’m going to do an experiment and actually take cash out of some different banks’ machines then check my account and see how much I actually paid. That’s a neat idea - if I don’t actually get charged the fees, that completely changes the game.

Thanks again - I enjoyed that a lot!!

> People on HN can't figure out cash?

> Whatever is going on, it's not about convenience.

Why not? I’ve worked in jobs in my life where I dealt with cash, had to count a register down to the last coin, check receipts, do cash runs to a bank and give the correct change. I even received cash tips.

I choose not to use cash because it would require me to go out of my way to an ATM and use it, then keep track of the amount of cash I have on me and make subsequent trips to the ATM as necessary. I could, and I used to do that, but it’s not something I did because I enjoyed my trips to the ATM. I did it so I could get a medium of exchange for my daily necessities, and now I don’t do that.

You don't usually have to make an extra "trip to the ATM" to get cash, you can combine it with shopping or other errands. In Germany many supermarket chains now even have a "withdraw cash for free when you pay with your card" service, which is very convenient. And "keeping track of the amount of cash you have" is simply looking into your wallet when buying something and seeing that you only have one or two small-ish bills left in there.

I agree though that cash handling is more of a hassle for the ones accepting cash than for the ones paying with it, and that's probably one of the drivers in getting rid of it...

> smallish bills

That works in Germany but not in the US. Euro bills are easy to distinguish by color and size and start at 5. With dollars you have a stack of greenish paper, many of which are $1 bills. Manageable, but definitely more inconvenient than Euros.

> In Germany many supermarket chains now even have a "withdraw cash for free when you pay with your card" service, which is very convenient.

They do this in lots of other countries too (UK, AU, NZ to name a few).

Doesn’t work for me anymore as I shop online, including groceries.

You also have to carry a large wallet capable of carrying cash. The last decade maybe longer I’ve used a small front pocket wallet that only holds cards. It’s more comfortable, and harder to steal.

I quit carrying a wallet several years ago and have never looked back. I just carry my driver's license, debit/credit card, and any cash I have in a pocket. It works well for me.

The English name for that is "cash back"

We have that here too, it’s called cash back, and it doesn’t make cash more appealing.

I pay for almost all of my expenses with a credit card though, which does not give me the option to withdraw cash, so yes I would have to go out of my way still. It does however give me 5% back at the grocery store in points redeemable for cash at the end of the statement period, so for every $100 I’m spending I’m getting $5 back at the end of the month. Neat for things I was going to buy anyway, like food.

This also has the added benefit of never having to give out my debit card # to anyone. I would much rather deal with CC fraud than debit card fraud.

These threads on HN always trend the same way unfortunately :( Someone living in a market that has largely lived through the transition from cash to cashless commenting on how much more convenient it is to not have to carry cash around. People who’ve not lived that experience telling them they’re wrong.

I’m with you. Australia had been on this trajectory for a while and it accelerated in the early days of the pandemic. It’s incredibly convenient to _never_ have to plan ahead with how much cash I need to have, how much I need to withdrawal from the bank/while at the supermarket, if I need to make a special trip to either because I’m short for whatever my plans are later. I can leave my house with just my iPhone or Garmin watch and I know I’m covered for whatever my plans are. Even if that ends up being an evening of unexpected plans. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve needed to have cash on me at this point.

People that haven’t experienced it seem unconvinced. Those that have don’t need convincing.

In Canada, I haven't paid for anything in cash since I first got a debit card 10+ years ago.

Cashless seems more important to benefit merchants than buyers

> I’ve worked in jobs in my life where I dealt with cash, had to count a register down to the last coin, check receipts, do cash runs to a bank and give the correct change. I even received cash tips.

I'm talking about customers, not merchants. It's interesting how enthusiastically some on HN push cashlessness, as if they have some vested interest. Why is it so important.

> it would require me to go out of my way to an ATM

Or stop when you pass one for a couple minutes. Which saves some time paying credit card bills and dealing with fraud alerts, etc.

In the last decade in the UK my family have lost their wallets/purses twice and credit card fraud once. I got my credit card fraud taken care off but was out of pocket for the cash in wallet/purse.

Win for cashless. (I’m not anti-cash but I certainly favour using cashless options wherever possible. Safer, plus you get loyalty points and in the UK there is no cash discount price so if you aren’t getting loyalty points on your card you are throwing money away / paying a premium for the privacy of cash)

> I'm talking about customers, not merchants. It's interesting how enthusiastically some on HN push cashlessness, as if they have some vested interest. Why is it so important.

It’s not important to me, but I did take exception to your rhetoric:

1. That people on HN can’t figure out cash.

2. That it can’t just be about convenience. (This also just sounds conspiratorial.)

I have no vested interest in telling people not to use cash because I don’t spend my time telling people not to use cash. I no longer work in jobs where I have to handle it either, but what you have up there is an explanation as to why one person out in meatspace would just go cashless, and I don’t think I’m the exception here.

Apple Pay (and it’s related services) is just such a massive QoL improvement for those who choose to adopt it that for most that try it (I know at least one person that doesn’t like it), it does not take much convincing. I recently had the strange experience of my own mother thanking me for setting her phone up to use Apple Pay for her cards when previously she was against it (doesn’t trust new technology, thinks it’s spying on her, probably wouldn’t have the phone if I didn’t buy it and put her on my plan).

My experience mirrors yours. It's interesting to me that the details you give about being very familiar with cash handling seem to just get ignored. At one point in my life I would regularly have two or three hundred dollars in cash on my person at all times, would pay rent in cash, repeated things like 'cash is king'. Now, I haven't touched cash consistently in years. I tap a card to pay for things. It is much more convenient, no coins, no worries that I've exposed money on my person to some one who will act on that knowledge.

I dunno. Feels like an electric kettle. I didn't forget how to boil water on the stove but pressing a button is more convenient and now I cannot forget to turn a heating element off.

> a massive QoL improvement

There's no argument or reason here, just an emotional outlet. I start to think there is no reason ...

> I did take exception to your rhetoric

This is really intense!

> People on HN can't figure out cash?

> Whatever is going on, it's not about convenience.

I feel like using the phase "figure out" and then saying it's not about convenience is directly contradictory. I can't think of any way where handing someone my plastic index card, swiping it through a machine, and returning it is ever less convenient than shuffling through cash, counting it, handing It over, having the other person count it, calculate change, count change, and hand over various paper bills and coins that I don't want to be carrying.

But it's just not that hard to use cash, no matter how long you make the sentence. I've asked a few people: what interest do people have in pushing so hard against it? Does everyone here work for Stripe?

Cards have existed long before stripe. Convenience isn't about "hard" vs "not hard". It's "more convenient" vs "less convenient". And as I just laid out, the only scenario I can think that cash is more convenient is when power/internet is not available.

I carry some cash, but the only times I ever use it is for tipping and vending machines.

Look at the intensity and exaggeration in the comments on this forum. People feel very strongly about it and push hard!

Cash sucks. I pretty much stopped using it in the late 2000s. Then, I moved to NYC in 2010, and at that time, it was common for places to be cash only or add surcharges to card payments. I had to re-adapt to cash-based living, and I was not a fan. Finding a bank that did ATM fee refunds helped a lot, but it was still much more of a pain than simply using plastic.

It is absolutely convenience. It is most of the reason people continue to willingly hand over their privacy and autonomy.

And, the key bit is ensuring it's a short term equation, so people don't evaluate the long term risk or implications.

People just never consider that they might be in a future situation where their convenience choices could be used against them in a troubling way. And they just plain don't care (as evident in the comments here) about those it impacts negatively now

How is paying $14.53 at the register "quick and easy" with cash?

Do you just shove a $20 to the cashier and go "keep the change"? Or do you start to dig around for that elusive 5c coin from the bottom of your wallet?

In not-US I can just shove my watch/phone/card at the reader and it's done. Exact change, no fuss.

> How is paying $14.53 at the register "quick and easy" with cash?

Try it - it takes a minute. Really! I've never seen so many people become suddenly incompetent.

Why would I spend a minute when I can do it in under 5 seconds?

There are many reasons discussed here, but the point is that cash is mindlessly easy to use, as it has been for generations.

Change is inconvenient, yes. Both for the store (keeping a stock of coins etc.) and for customers. Even more so in the US, which optimizes for pre-tax 9.99, so 10+whatever after tax. Also "cashback" on credit cards but rarely discount for cash (I have only seen that at restaurants).

> Whatever is going on, it's not about convenience.

Someone might very well kill me for my cash.

Or, possibly, threaten to kill me for my cash, and actually kill me so I couldn't identify them later.

If they see I don't have cash, the odds of that might well go down. Worth a shot.

I trust the physical impossibility of tracking cash over the hypothetical enforcement of legislation any day.

Why risk it?

How many employers have used data on candidate salaries in violation of the law in California? How would we ever know?

There are many benefits of using cash: it's very secure, as long as I'm sensible. It's anonymous. It costs those that I do business with less to maintain (Visa charges 2%. 2 percent! of revenue!). People who I tip like me more because I tip in cash. Businesses I do business with like me more because I give them cash. Not to mention, I can do business with anyone I want if I deal with cash -- not so with electronic services.

Look to the case of Germany for why cash is so important.

Once you give your data away no regulation can keep it safe, it is already compromised the second it is given.

I'm not too worried. I live in California, and our regulators would block most of what you suggest. They already do for insurance -- they block insurance companies from a lot of data that they consider discriminatory.

The moment a politician was affected by this data collection in a negative way, it would probably become illegal.

Hell, it's illegally nationally to share someone's video rental history because a politician got screwed out of being a Supreme Court justice when their video rental history was released.

Your purchase history is being sold to companies outside California jurisdiction. Aside from video rentals, all of your consumer data is fair game for middlemen to peddle amongst themselves and build a profile about you. They lobby to keep it that way.

As odd as it sounds. The ones that seek safety and protection from authority would actually enjoy your suggestion and actively.

If you ask why, they'll say it's for the 'greater good' . They actually want it to happen. As it forms a new social hierarchy of obidence which may, one day, outrank the social hiarchy of evil capitalism.

In fact, they'll go as far as discrediting and attacking you for even suggesting what you said. As that's against the greater good (saving environment, war efforts, meat is bad, etc) and ironically, attacking demonstrates true obedience.

Right I’m not worried about any of this.

I guess if I did more illegal activities maybe I would care?

You would start to care when they pass new laws that criminalize past behaviors that were once legal.

Not sure where you are, but at least in the US you can’t be prosecuted for things that happened before the law was passed.

You definitely can be persecuted and put on watch list. You could be visited to ensure your compliance. You can be intimidated and coerced. And the US government sure as heck has a long record of such tactics.

Texas is pushing the borders on that with its abortion laws.

If abortion suddenly stops being federally legal, every Texan who has an abortion after the current law will be prosecuted for it

I don't think cash is the answer to these issues, unless you are ONLY using cash.

The way you're describing it is a system which is specifically geared to looking at individual purchases rather than more general behavior, which is how I suspect the models these companies use now, and will use in the future work.

There is so much data about us in the world (unless you actively try to hide your behavior, which also leaves a different kind of fingerprint) that the behaviors you describe, or risk you present, is discoverable through other means.

But looking at each of the examples you give

* Health Insurance - uuhhh.... well, I don't live in America, the rest of the developed world has pretty much got this figured out. But..where you live, how much you make, how often you change jobs, all these kinds of metrics feed into the rudimentary understanding of health. Also, don't health insurance companies ask if you smoke?

* Home Insurance - I think the above applies to all insurance. If you buy more candles, are you really more of a risk? Or if you have other risky behaviors? Candles could definitely be a false positive. It doesn't matter if I have thousands of candles, a careless person with 1 candle could be more dangerous.

* Law Enforcement - I think this one shows the flaw in your thinking. If I'm buying "too much ammo", is that because I'm using so much at a shooting range? Doesn't an a risky shooter (like someone about to pull of a mass shooting...again...an American thing...the rest of the world have figured this part out...) only use like 100 more bullets in their shooting? How much time is that at a shooting range.

So yes, these are just examples, and like you said, most of this data is already available without having your purchase information.

Now, I'm also cautious about where my purchase info goes, or as cautious as I can be, but this is the world we live in. I don't think we can put the genie back into the bottle, but I think it's important we don't just burry our heads in the sand and not understand how much information is available about us.

This sounds so bizarre to those of us in countries with universal healthcare, tight gun control, and much less authoritarianism.

There is no mechanism, since the passage of the affordable care act, for health insurers to raise premiums on individuals. Plans have a set price, which is the same for everyone within a specific jurisdiction.

> Health insurance companies start buying your purchasing info and decide to up your premiums due to the amount of alcohol you buy …

I always find this argument funny because you’re mad that insurance companies are more accurately pricing your risk. Like isn’t as insurance company with perfect information the ideal? Would you be happy if an insurance company saw your yoga class, Soylent, and no bills from bars or smoke shops and charged you way less?

Like how dare these evil corporations charge me accurately for my activities that negatively affect my health that I have been up to now paying less than my real risk profile would afford.

An insurance company with perfect information would actually be useless. The point of insurance is to spread risk; perfect information means no spreading of risk.

How do you buy your guns and ammo?

Well from what I just read in the article this isn’t a government effort or lobbyist-led so much as a progressing collective decision made by members of UK society.

Personally I don’t deal with cash anymore, and not because I would refuse to accept it, but because I just use Apple Pay or card instead and it makes it easier to manage my finances. Even the physical cards are barely used anymore, I have an Apple leather wallet that can hold three cards on the back of my phone but I only carry two: my license and the CC I use to dine out.

you are an acceptable level of threat and if you were not you would know about it

Too late. The list of places that do not accept cash is growing. It's a common restriction at food trucks for example. Maintaining a Square reader is just so much easier than a cash box and a trip to the bank, plus the security concerns.

It's too bad. I actually prefer cash. But I understand where merchants are coming from.

The list of places I'm willing to solicit is shrinking, since I only do business with people who accept cash as an option, even if I don't happen to be paying with cash at the time.

Merchants are free to make their choices, as are consumers. The problems really start when the government steps in and removes your freedom at the point of a gun.

> While I do not foresee this being adopted in the US I won't put it past lobbyists to try.

The article isn’t actually talking about a government policy FWIW. It’s basically falling demand for ATMs and bank branches leading to less of them. Less bank branches means some stores don’t want cash because it’s more of a hassle when there isn’t a bank branch around the corner.

There definitely are reasons for governments to want less cash and to force people to have more easily controlled money. But that’s not what this is talking about, it’s just people having less access to cash because of businesses taking decisions with government not being involved at all in those decisions.

>I don't think I could fully embrace the Amish way of life but I suspect my local community mostly farmers and ranchers could implement a barter system if we had to.

Funny thing, bartering is still subject to taxes from the IRS[0]

0. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420

bartering income, that's funny I always perceived bartering as an equal trade of no net difference. But that may be a perceptual thing, the value to the individual is equal but perhaps not on the open market of whatever the corresponding price tag differences are on the two goods?

>Both parties must report as income the value of the goods and services received in the exchange. [0]

My understanding of it is the good/service you receive is considered income at the fair market value, regardless of what you traded for it. I suppose if you gave a good/service away to "purchase" something as a business expense, you could deduct the value of your good/service on your taxes. But IANACPA

0. https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/four-things-you-should-know-if-...

Any purchase is definitionally an equal exchange of value. It is still income.

So the income tax is essentially a ~30% transaction fee. Imagine a world without that deadweight loss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss#Deadweight_los...

Costs are deducted though, so it is only 30% of the profits.

Technically everything is a cost, though, right?

These things are precisely defined in accounting terms though. Whatever you bartered away had a cost basis, and whatever you got in exchange has a fair market value. The difference is income.

What if you live in a closed bartering community of abstract economic business entities and everything is a cost basis for something else?

Yeah it’s inefficient, but that “deadweight loss” gives you the common infrastructure required for a modern society (roads, police, fire, et al)

In the US nearly all of your examples of what we get in return are funded by sales and property taxes

Specifically, roughly 70% of the federal budget is spent on the military, social security, medicare, and medicaid.

Not to mention a gigantic military budget including all the alphabet agencies... all funded by that inefficiency.

Perhaps there is a way to pay for these things besides taxes? Unthinkable!

Not if you don't tell them about it.

I'm actually surprised no one has mentioned crypto as an alternative. This is one of the (very) few use cases where it might make sense if implemented properly.

The article is about the accessibility of digital money, particularly for the elderly. Not the privacy and sovereignty aspects that are most important to crypto enthusiasts. Crypto would be a humongous step back in accessibility.

The vast majority of comments in this post, including the one I replied to, are about privacy and control rather than accessibility.

Yeah, I get that. But I don't think people are actually reading the article and in the push for their concerns--which are relatively ideological and theoretical--they risk railroading the millions of people who are struggling with the digital transition. The crypto world loves to concern troll about the unbanked, yet can't seem to hold an article's worth of space for people suffering consequences of tech trends right now.

Crypto can be legislated too.

Not alone, thanks for the nice post. Recently my area was very flooded, all govt resources were diverted to the larger population areas including our local volunteer firefighters etc. to an extent that they even locked their doors and were uncontactable. People remember that it was the same “last time” as well. The bigger the problem the more we’re on our own. Food, logistics, shelter, welfare checks, clean up was all handled by people stepping up. No power or phone or internet for 5 days. We’re putting together plans for all that you say but also for ad hoc radio coverage. It’s worth mentioning that there’s a nontrivial amount of 5g causes vaccine people or whatever other ‘evil’ group and other social outcasts as you should expect from being in the middle of nowhere but it didn’t matter except that some welfare checks were done at the front gate haha

It was interesting in that people wanted to help but didn’t know how but once centralised organisation stepped up, say, someone with 10 lasagnes could drop them off and have them distributed. Or say a restaurant 70kms away can just rock up with 100 meals.

It feels good to be able to apply job skills on the fly in a real way to help real people, excuse me for thinking that though.

>Recently my area was very flooded, all govt resources were diverted to the larger population areas including our local volunteer firefighters etc. to an extent that they even locked their doors and were uncontactable.

Fraser Valley?

That episode made me realize just how little we can depend on the government in a real disaster. If a little bit of rain generates such a clusterfuck, what will the Big One do to us?

It would be smart for me to neither confirm nor deny but I will say no.

The way I see it the government has its own concerns and they may not align with mine. Can’t necessarily be angry that they’d want to maximise helped people. Not telling us and locking the doors though not so good. The other side of that is events like US disaster Katrina where there is too many people and too much paperwork that people become helpless wards of the state. That’s what makes a disaster a disaster, a failure of normal expectations? How would an individual even begin to feed 100000 people you know? There’s a certain helpless at scale.

The army did eventually show up, “the government” eventually got the power and phones up again etc. the sun did eventually appear again.

A skilled individual can produce excess, that excess can be shared with others, zooming out, family then community then state then country. But as we zoom out we have to rely on abstractions and quantisations. At the level I’m talking about though it was possible to say “if you’re on this map your one of us, the rest doesn’t matter” we could then ignore the rest. Much like the government ignored us?

What I’m trying to get across is a certain inspiration from being abandoned by government, big one or little one, show a little passion and violently execute an average plan!

Marcus Aurelius says something about being self reliant so that you can help society, not so that you can show off but so that you’re not a burden but that’s beyond my pay grade.

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done so with a smile on his face he got to it.

The appeal to a simpler past is in effect a slowing down of the pace of life.

With those extra minutes and extra space, people come up with ways to speed up life.

It seems we are much better at creating complex solutions, over maintaining them.

> As a side note, porch pirates are becoming a real nuisance for local authorities.

Wonder how every other country manages to get by... oh wait, our postal services don't just leave parcels to be stolen and our mailboxes unlocked.

Porch pirates only exist because some parts of the US still operate on the assumption of "community trust" like the early colonists, the early Internet with BGP, SMTP or the phone networks with SS7 and caller ID. Everyone else grew up, time for parcel delivery to follow.

My house is unlocked, my packages left on the open and hey, no theft. A high trust society has its benefits.

Barter systems are unstable and tend to exist under threat of violence and/or social distance between trading parties.

Such a society could only be one in which everybody was an inch away from everybody else’s throat; but nonetheless hovering there, poised to strike but never actually striking, forever. True, barter does sometimes occur between people who do not consider each other strangers, but they’re usually people who might as well be strangers—that is, who feel no sense of mutual responsibility or trust, or the desire to develop ongoing relations. The Pukhtun of Northern Pakistan, for instance, are famous for their open-handed hospitality. Barter is what you do with those to whom you are not bound by ties of hospitality (or kinship, or much of anything else)

Eh, I reckon it'd default to debt systems. Jeb gives Jed a sack of potatoes, Jed owes Jeb. That's far more consequential and desirable at a highly localized scale. Lots of social dynamics to breed in civility, credibility and ultimately give rise to a more cohesive community. This shit where we narrate some fair and precise value is... Surprisingly nebulous...

The more frequent solution is to adopt some sort of credit system. When much of Europe “reverted to barter” after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and then again after the Carolingian Empire likewise fell apart, this seems to be what happened. People continued keeping accounts in the old imperial currency, even if they were no longer using coins.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com