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Comment by kxrm | Hacker News Reader

I live in DC and support this law not just from an accessibility standpoint but also from a privacy standpoint. I am tired of every retail/restaurant establishment building a profile of me.

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The new "meta" seems to be charging you a tax for not using their loyalty card. Items at Tesco are now significantly more expensive if you don't scan a Clubcard. I suppose it is easier to rotate those than bank cards though

> I suppose it is easier to rotate those than bank cards though

When I asked for a Clubcard a few months ago they said they're not giving out any and you have to use the app.

Funny enough just after I asked I found one on the floor; I'm using that one.

I wouldn't go to Tesco if it wasn't for that, because the price differences are just insane. Before you had the points and whatnot but not the strong discounts (IIRC), then I didn't go to Tesco for a few years on account of being in a different country, and now it's a €3 "regular price" and "€1.50 club card price" for half the stuff I buy. wtf?!

I use an image my buddy took of his clubcard barcode with his phone. Sadly, the app prevents you from screenshotting on android. I think most people here just do a google image search.

Handy enough. I get to avoid jacked-up prices, and he gets reward points.

BP garages now do it too but stupidly they give the card out for free at the till so don’t have to register it if you don’t want to. I feel like I’m sticking it to the man every time I can my anonymous BP card

Feel free to use my phone number for these if you’re in the US.

212-867-5309. Replace area code with one near your location.

> He gets calls throughout the week, but "mostly on weekends, mostly from people that are drunk."

I still call 867-5309 once in a while. I'm not sorry.

Can you just type in a phone number? In the US, you can always type in the rickroll phone number as a reward card. If it doesn't work, it's incumbent upon you to set up the profile for that store to keep the system going.

Up until about 10 years ago one local grocery chain required you to enter only the last 4 digits of a phone number. I have no idea who thought that was a good idea.

I hate to ask, but what's the rickroll phone number?

(248)434-5508

I've got three 'cards' for Waitrose as you can get one coffee per card per day and I wanted a few one time. I put the cards in quotes as they are actually images of bar codes on the phone.

They probably can still do it with facial recognition

Great idea for the next ban!

Too bad it takes them decades to act on anything... Almost as if they wait for the next tracking method to be viable

Face mask, fedora, and sunglasses.

This. Masks are a lot more acceptable in public than they were 5 years ago. Given the mass surveillance going around, I'm surprised more people aren't in favour of regular mask wearing in public.

I think there’s too much overlap here between the people concerned about surveillance enough to wear a mask, and the people who don’t want to wear masks because it was the government who told them to do so in the first place.

At least in the US.

As a data point, I hate wearing masks because, and maybe its just me, it's much harder for me to breathe wit a mask on. Makes me really, really out of breath.

Also, if this counts as social media, this is the only one I use, because I don't want to give any information away about myself within my control. So given the option of mask/fedora/sunglasses or nothing, I'd take the former.

If you see someone passed out in a fedora/sunglasses/mask outside, it may be me or someone like me who just got really dizzy because of a lack of oxygen.

On the breathing thing, I am quite tall and have a large lung capacity, I've always wondered if that had anything to do with my mask struggles.

I guess my point is, masks aren't a political thing for everyone, just the loud ones.

Gait recognition can identify you 50 meters away without need for facial recognition.

I bet it can’t

It almost certainly can't if you put a small rock in your shoe.

Today algos can identify people by their walking habits. (cue Ministry of Silly Walks)

And an RF shield for your personal tracking device.

Use Apple Pay. It generates a new CC number (DPAN) for each transaction so they can't track you through that.

Imagine you entering a non-crowded venue and prices on wireless e-Ink tags are changing according to your profile got by face-recognition camera at the front door.

But like serious question, are you tired enough that you'll actually stop using payment cards? Is it worth the inconvenience and losing 2%ish off the top of everything you buy?

If there are any laws we need to pass is that credit card fees should be disclosed on all receipts and optional. Cash buyers should not get penalized for not using a credit card.

Credit card processing costs in the US are absurd. Interchange fees are around 2% on average vs a cap of 0.3% for credit cards and 0.2% for debit cards in the EU.

But cash handling costs a substantial amount too. We should probably all be paying by debit card and charging extra for cash or credit card.

Should be noted that in most of the EU cashback programmes are also not as big as in the US. Never heard of anyone getting "2% back from everything".

That said, a middleman that takes a smaller fee is still much better for the economy than a middleman that takes in an oversized fee and then magnanimously hands back a chunk of it.

Especially when that middleman is a worldwide oligopoly with far too much power. I try to use local e-payment systems whenever possible.

> Should be noted that in most of the EU cashback programmes are also not as big as in the US. Never heard of anyone getting "2% back from everything".

Which, societally, is a good thing. Credit card rewards programmes are a tax on everyone that disproportionately affects the lowest earners who aren't availing of cashback.

> Should be noted that in most of the EU cashback programmes are also not as big as in the US.

If they charge 100% on everyones transactions then my delux diamond card (sorry you dont qualify) can give me 200% cashback and everyone else can go f' themselves.

Ahh the land of the free

At least in PHX, I’ve been seeing a lot of businesses with a 2-3% surcharge for cards

Huh, I thought that wasn't allowed by the card issuer rules. Isn't that why a lot of places don't take Amex? Because the fees are higher but they can't add a surcharge to cover it?

In New Orleans, I've seen it advertised as "cash discount." So I guess technically its not a fee on card transactions - it's a discount on cash ones.

The rules were changed, I believe in some of the financial legislation passed post-2008.

They were changed in settling a class action lawsuit. But nothing was stopping merchants from offering a cash discount which would have served the same purpose.

Wait, is it common in the US for brick-and-mortar businesses to charge you extra if you pay by card? That doesn't happen in the UK.

We definitely did that in the Netherlands when I worked at a computer store. Credit cards are comparatively rare, and while "2%" doesn't sound much it's a significant fraction of our profit margin.

On a €600 laptop or desktop we'd earn maybe €50 to €75. The €12 is a comparatively large fraction of that. We didn't actually make that much more money from more expensive laptops, so for a €1,000 model we'd typically also earn €50 to €75, and with €20 of that going to Visa... yeah. After factoring in costs for sales, warranty, rant of the store, etc. there is not much left.

On one hand you can say "well, it's only €20", but on the other hand if everyone started paying paying by CC we'd pretty much go bankrupt.

The official Apple store in Vienna adds 2% to the price if using a CC (at least last time I was there). Then again I don't know anybody who even has a CC here - AFAIK they just aren't that common and they aren't even accepted in a lot of places (though that is changing). They also don't work as normal credit cards in the US i.e. you don't really get credit, since it auto-deducts what you owe from your bank account during the next billing period.

Very common, in small, independent shops, though it often seems to be as much about avoiding taxes as avoiding the fee for the credit machine

Interesting. I don't think I've ever seen it here in Britain. Some smaller businesses might insist on a £5 minimum spend if you're not paying cash, but even that has become very rare since the pandemic.

Same here in upstate NY. Mostly smaller businesses like pizza joints and such but pretty much every gas station has been doing this for years.

The only cashless place I’ve seen around here is the major sports stadiums, everyone else seems to greatly prefer cash over cards.

That is for tax evasion purposes.

I am pragmatic about it, in DC, you will be penalized for not using a credit card as most people do use them and therefore businesses have baked in the fees.

However having the option not to is a very important privilege I feel we should protect.

Believe it or not we do have cash first businesses and I make it a point to use cash with them as they will only charge a fee if you use a credit card.

Yes. I try to pay with cash at all local places (mostly for food and the hardware store)

...then don't buy things from those businesses?

We need a stronger reason than "I want that" to force businesses to give us things — otherwise how do we decide whose preferences we should mandate?

There's a whole field of study and endeavor called "politics" which is concerned with this very question! Check it out!

Without State intervention there's nothing stopping businesses colluding to all go cashless. Or... all together do something else that's bad for us. Or monopolizing.

The strong enough reason is "it's better for the people."

It's easy how we decide whose preferences we mandate - we mandate people's preferences, and businesses find ways to make money within those constraints. There's no issue making profit like this, so I'm not sure where the concern is. Profits slightly dented for a second? Oh well.

Right, no one is rejecting the notion of regulation.

But personal preferences are a bad way to choose regulation — businesses can aggregate preferences much better than the state can.

It isn't about preference. It's well understood that refusing cash payments has an outsized impact on both the impoverished and underrepresented classes.

One easy way to keep the homeless from coming in to make purchases is to refuse cash payments.

The government's job isn't to cater to business preferences it is to look out for the well-being of the people.

> The government's job isn't to cater to business preferences it is to look out for the well-being of the people.

Businesses are also run by people. Everything is people. The difference here is the government wants to impose cost on businesses to solve problems it should be solving. It could solve them by issuing every homeless person with a credit card that gets topped up by X a month. It would rather just write a rule, take the credit, and have someone else pay all the costs.

> The difference here is the government wants to impose cost on businesses to solve problems it should be solving.

Handling cash has been an accepted cost of business for over a century, but now it’s somehow an undue burden to continue doing so? Hogwash.

> It could solve them by issuing every homeless person with a credit card that gets topped up by X a month.

That sounds like a solution in search of a problem. Good luck at getting something like that implemented in the US.

> Handling cash has been an accepted cost of business for over a century, but now it’s somehow an undue burden to continue doing so? Hogwash.

Handling cash is a big cost. You have to store it, get it moved in and out, stop people stealing it, be insured against people stealing it, count it, make sure you have change available, etc etc. Yes people did it, and cash used to get stolen more.

More importantly, this isn't about the cost of cash. It's the mandatory of adding this cost in to businesses that don't want to pay all that money to handle money.

> That sounds like a solution in search of a problem.

It's a solution to a very specific problem: cashless shops.

> It's a solution to a very specific problem: cashless shops.

Why should the government be responsible for building out an incredible infrastructure project so that some businesses don't have to worry about handling cash? Cash is not a new concept, we've been using it since the inception of the nation. Suddenly some businesses find a way to save a buck by not handling it, but this also happens to segregate a portion of Americans, but oh well that's not their fault, if the government doesn't like businesses doing segregation, the government can just become a bank? And issues cards?

Nah. In the USA if you want to do business you need to manage and handle cash. That's a perfectly reasonable expectation. Cost of doing business.

You also have to track your revenue and file taxes. That's perfectly reasonable as well, right? Or should the government be responsible for auditing every single company and managing their finances to determine how much tax is owed? I mean it would save the company money, right?

> Why should the government be responsible for building out an incredible infrastructure project so that some businesses don't have to worry about handling cash?

Your post is pretty poor tone-wise, but I'll address this. It's the exact opposite of what you're saying. If the government wants something, it should pay for it. Business is not imposing anything on the government. Business pays the government money it earns, and the government decides how much, and how long to lock the owner in a box for if they don't pay enough. Why should businesses be financially responsible for things the government is paid to solve?

I was replicating your tone, because the question seems silly: businesses have to do what governments say because governments aren't businesses, they're representations of the people's will and protectors of the people's wellbeing.

Businesses are profit generating algorithms with singular purpose. They have no other concerns. Without governments, businesses would seek profit through horrifying means.

These stereotypes are far too simple. Governments are the things that declare wars and send people to their deaths. They can strangle their own populations to death via socialism, or kill races through genocides. They aren't just protectors of the people's wellbeing.

Humans make up businesses and governments. Governments can overreach very easily, as they have all the power. It is totally valid to point out when a government misuses that power against businesses, because businesses are just people, and people in governments shouldn't abuse other people with bad policies.

As you say, however the measure of a successful business is simply profit, while the measure of a good government is far more nuanced but usually something along the lines of "how well the people in the nation are faring."

Therefore, it makes sense that we order our society such that businesses are subservient to governments, and governments priorities are first and foremost the needs of people, regardless of any additional cost to businesses.

There is, it's called starting your own business. And the only thing stopping that is... state intervention.

That might solve it for the one business “you” start. It doesn’t address the collusion of everyone else, does it?

Yeah, I wonder if the card processors have considered kickbacks to go cashless.

I wonder if security vans, safe vendors, permanent dye vendors, business insurance vendors have considered kickbacks to ban cashless.

I specifically do avoid any business that is cashless. I appreciate any business that puts a sign up claiming to be cashless so that I can specifically avoid doing business with them.

I used to have that position, but here in Sweden the cashless have won and there is nobody who even cares to uphold the law. The same could happen elsewhere.

It is pretty much only the civil defence authority that encourages use of cash, because they are aware of the incessant hacking attacks that could disrupt the system at any moment. Cash has become less convenient for consumers: businesses refusing to take cash made it even more so.

Finn here. I haven’t used cash since Covid, it’s all card-based.

I do carry emergency cash with me, but it’s been in my wallet for 2 years now.

I visited Sweden and Denmark recently, and only coming home did I realise I didn't use any cash so don't have any for my "leftover cash and coins from places abroad I've travelled to" collection.

There is an element of injustice, the poor and immigrants may not have the same access to banks and credit as others do.

Perhaps we should fix that? I mean, if you can't get banking services, how exactly are you participate in the modern economy? Is it a good idea forcing homeless to deal with cash, when they are the most vulnerable population to drug abuse? How can they safely save to prepare some solution for their situation?

So many questions, with "how will you buy your coffee" very low in the order of priority. Electronic money remittance should be seen as a basic human right.

Seems like neither side really cares about these people, but they make a useful rhetorical prop.

No reason can't we have both cash and full free access to electronic payments.

They have access to alternate options for where they shop.

Have you seriously tried that "alternate option" you offer?

Unironically, those that rage against "The Cashless Society" also rage against "the poor and immigrants".

You would be incorrectly generalizing. I believe cash is a pillar of a stable society, and I also believe that the way most Western nations treat their homeless and poor is varying degrees of bad and disgusting.

Ideally you decide by voting. It’s either that or you decide things by who has the most money / power / guns.

Right — we could decide whether each transaction should take place by voting on it. But that would be really inefficient! So instead, we generally let people trade with each other as long as it doesn't intrude on others.

Not sure whether Sweetgreen choosing to go cashless is an example of "decide things by who has the most money / power / guns."?

> we could decide whether each transaction should take place by voting on it. But that would be really inefficient!

I think that "everyone else votes on whether I get to buy lunch" had more issues than just being inefficient.

It is an example of who has the most power. If you don't have a different service that does the same for you, you'll have to suck it up or live without the service.

This becomes a big issue as soon as all services in a specific niche do 'the thing', be it refusing cash or stuff like removing headphone jacks.

At that point, what are you gonna do? Stop using products from that niche altogether?

The options are stop using them, provide them for yourself, or use the government to force others to provide it for you. Only the first two are remotely reasonable to people without entitlement issues.

With the example of smartphones not having headphone jacks - speaking from personal experience, life is harder without a smartphone. I was smartphone free for a year and ended up having to get one to use an app for a specific government service. And providing a smartphone for myself... I lack the technical knowhow to design one, and I don't think I have enough cash or connections to get one custom built.

Ironically enough, I'd be okay with government regulations mandating a headphone jack in phones.

Even assuming otherwise ideal conditions, choosing between two (mostly similar) political parties doesn't contain enough expressive power. Choosing goods in markets does. It's a computation problem as much as anything else.

How about "This note is a legal tender at its face value for all debts public and private"?

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