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Comment by jameshart | Hacker News Reader

> one power outage away from food riots

Tell us more about this scenario. You’re positing a situation where due to an inability to accept cashless payments, supermarkets refuse to sell food to people for an extended period, leading to mass unrest? In the UK?

The UK power grid is remarkably resilient. To the extent that a half hour long power outage in London over 20 years ago is considered notable enough to deserve a Wikipedia article [1]

An extended power outage affecting access to payment capabilities across a large region would be an emergency but it wouldn’t collapse civilization. There’s little reason to suspect people would not find some way to transact while power is restored.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_London_blackout

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My local supermarket, in London, had an internet outage yesterday, and couldn't take card payments. Their cash machine was out of action too. They had staff outside telling everyone as they came in; some carried on in, many went elsewhere. Most people don't carry enough to cash to do meaningful grocery shopping these days.

Did a food riot start?

Did this question have a point? It did not.

To draw attention to the motte and Bailey nature of this argument.

The Bailey: ‘cashless payment is fragile and a single outage would lead to riots in the streets’

The Motte: ‘internet and power outages happen and are annoying’

Evidence for the easily defended motte position does not defend the outrageous Bailey.

As suspected, no point. (nothing was validated or invalidated)

An instance of one outage not causing a food riot is pretty clear evidence against the proposition that digital payment systems are one outage away from food riots.

Thankfully not. But imagine if power was out for several days or weeks, which will happen in the future as natural disasters get worse.

No, but there was a reasonably priced French red wine riot.

How about you tell me more about how ""The UK power grid is remarkably resilient"?

Because those are not the facts I am looking at. We just made it through a winter where the UK government put a 30% probability on rolling brownouts due to gas instability and put additional blackout emergency plans into place for the first time since the 1970s "Winter of Discontent".

Something having a 30% chance of failing for a short period over 50+ years seems very reliable to me.

How many rolling brownouts did you experience?

None whatsoever.

I've also been riding my motorcycle without a helmet for 50 years, and never had a problem with that yet.

It happened in Puerto Rico after the 2017 hurricane.[1] 11 months without power. Fortunately the climate there is good.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/us/puerto-rico-shortages-...

The impact to cashless payment infrastructure ranked how high on the list of problems there?

My understanding is that that situation happened in the past and not in a future in which Puerto Rico has an actual “cashless society,” is that not true?

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