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Comment by nerdawson | Hacker News Reader

> Around 10 million people, or one in five adults, would struggle to manage in a society without cash, a report from the Royal Society of Arts commissioned by cash machine network Link found.

A study commissioned by a cash machine operator finds people really need cash machines.

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> Royal Society of Arts

I really want to know what their interest is here... high-arts certainly don't depend on cash-tips the way that seedier types of artistic expression do...

Art sales and donations are used for money laundering and tax evasion. That's why the quality of art has no relation to its price anymore.

Modern art streamlined this business (since it can be mass produced quickly) and NFTs streamline this even further.

Yet FinCEN allows artists to just make paintings as they please, and their trade is unregulated. Shocking!

> Modern art streamlined this business

Not a fan of po-mo then, I take it?

I'm a fan of some, but it's a subjective thing, isn't it? Don't you think that maybe perhaps some of the "auction prices" and "appraisals" are a bit more "objective"? Can nobody on this website think outside the box?

Here are the first two sentence from their Wikipedia article[1]:

>The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), also known as the Royal Society of Arts, is a London-based organisation committed to finding practical solutions to social challenges.

>Founded in 1754 by William Shipley as the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, it was granted a Royal Charter in 1847, and the right to use the term "Royal" in its name by King Edward VII in 1908

So they have a focus beyond the arts and the "royal" in their name seems to purely be a historical quirk of the British Monarchy and not any real connection to the government. It sounds mostly like a think tank that would put out exactly this type of report.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society_of_Arts

Artists are more likely to deal with cash because a lot of the way they operate is way more similar to (or often, idenitical to) the local handyman or emergency plumber or marketstall holder than the concept of 'artist' pushed on us through the media (although that isn't necessarily a myth, just very much not the norm and a sort of absolutely minute spin-off of the whole industry).

They also do a lot of negotiating and haggling. Art as a business can get quite complicated financially even at low levels of income so we end up back at the whole thing about how at a basic level budgetting is easy if you physically have the money in front of you

> A study commissioned by a cash machine operator finds people really need cash machines.

The more people on our side, the better? I mean surely you don't want to solely be beholden to a piece of plastic that can at any time be disabled, either intentionally, or because of an electrical or internet outage.

My comment was poking fun at an obvious conflict of interest which harms the credibility of any claims made. It's an article written around a questionable study. Credit to them for stating that right at the very top I guess.

To answer your question though, I think cash still has a place. I value my privacy and wouldn't like cash to lose all utility. With that said, I do appreciate the convenience of being able to pay for more or less everything from my phone. It used to be frustrating when you'd run out of change to pay for parking, or had to stop at a cash machine to pay for a taxi. The only time I can think of over the past few months that I've actually used cash was for a particular takeaway that doesn't accept cards.

What you're suggesting is quite dangerous. You shouldn't accept any source just because it agrees with your opinion. If its a poor source, it should be disregarded. Don't fall for confirmation bias.

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