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Comment by 486sx33 | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, outlawing cash transactions really isn’t good for people. I know the cause sounds good here but the method isn’t wonderful.

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I don’t understand why digital financial transactions are so heavily regulated and scrutinized while cash still exists. Governments have even basically soft-killed Monero which is pretty much the only way to get actual cash-like semantics digitally. Yet cash is still given preferential treatment over traditional digital payments.

I understand the rationale behind both camps ie “to prevent personal/tax fraud, money laundering, and cut off funding to terrorists we have to give up privacy” vs “personal privacy extends to transactions and the benefits justify the increased difficulty in fighting crime”. What I don’t understand is the inconsistency between physical and digital payments. Anybody committing crime can just use cash so why even bother with all the annoyances with digital transactions?

IMO we might as well outlaw cash because typical law-abiding citizens already have basically zero financial privacy, but are missing out on all the tax revenue and supposed safety from actually fully tracking transactions. The way I see it, cash right now basically only exists so that small businesses/individuals can cheat on taxes and to keep criminals on the USD.

Cash is grandfathered but (in the US) it's really essential for some old people who don't use tech, homeless people, anti-government survivalists, and "mark of the beast" conspiracy theorists. (A similar constituency is blocking federal IDs and digital IDs.) You wouldn't think that's a powerful bloc but apparently it is.

That is fair and I thought of that “old people might legitimately need it” case too when writing my other comment. But even that might only be the case for another 10-20 years.

I would actually be surprised if homeless people remain cashless for much longer, if a substantial number are even cashless now. I am pretty sure even people without permanent addresses can open bank accounts and almost every homeless person in the US has a smartphone. Any homeless people not being directly handed cash or working under the table/doing low-level crime would probably have no reason to use cash. Over time, they probably will not be directly handed cash as much because I don’t think most people will keep carry cash if their only use for it is to give it to beggars.

The other use cases you mentioned are definitely pro-privacy but clearly those blocks are not influential or powerful enough to get governments to allow for private digital transactions. Time will tell but I think it’s really only old people who’d struggle to adapt that are keeping us on cash.

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with this. The fact that Sweden, Japan, and China went 99% cashless shows that it can be done.

BTW there's a new scam where a homeless person asks for a small donation via EMV but they charge thousands of dollars and then when you chargeback the card issuer asks for your receipt which of course the homeless person didn't give you.

Japan did not, a few things even require it.

Maybe India more than Japan

You generally cannot open a bank account without address. It is trivial for criminals to do with darks. Last time I was between addresses no one would open me an account even with a US passport as it failed kyc with no address.

KYC does fuck all to curb crime and mainly used as a tax dragnet and control mechanism for the mostly honest.

A lot of drugs are cash only. Even marijuana in legal states like Michigan.

It is not just for old people, homeless people, etc. I do not have a credit card or a smartphone and I always pay in cash.

You're a survivalist (whether you admit it or not).

Very simple. 1. Orders of magnitude. Digital transactions can be billions in single transaction. While making large cash transactions in cumbersome and unrealistic. 2. Because they can. Regulating digital transactions is simple. Regulating cash - next to impossible.

Cash still exists since there could be war, massive catastrophe, your bank might have offline hours, there could be internet failure, electricity failure. Cash always works. Getting rid of it is plane stupid and asking for troubles.

I feel like you're forgetting that cash can also be destroyed, whereas an offline wallet with keys engraved into a metal card is a lot more safe.

>> The way I see it, cash right now basically only exists so that small businesses/individuals can cheat on taxes and to keep criminals on the USD.

sigh Cash is the barrier for interest rates going negative for too long. sigh

I use cash for small purchases probably five days a week--lunches, small stuff from the store, sometimes books. I am certainly not cheating on my taxes with by spending cash. I don't see how the vendors are by accepting it, given that most of them will give me a receipt.

Cash transactions are vital under authoritarian regimes that would otherwise have potentially total surveillance and control over financial transactions, or for people who may be unable to open a bank account for whatever reason.

In most developed countries cash is too inconvenient for regular people to bother with it anymore except when they have to - it is just simpler to pay for things digitally or with a card. But even “free” governments already have total surveillance over digital transactions. So as the remaining legitimate uses (and users, since I think most regular people who would be legitimately harmed by going cashless are very very elderly people who would struggle to adapt) for cash die off pretty much the only remaining reason to use cash is to commit crime - the vast majority of which is tax fraud, which effectively harms every citizen who isn’t committing tax fraud.

Basically, eventually cash will basically become the “crime mode” for its respective currency. I don’t see why it makes sense to continue to allow cash at that point. FWIW I do think privacy for transactions is important but I think we should be trying to make digital transactions more private rather than clinging to a mostly obsolete (in 20 years will anyone be unbanked or transacting in places with no internet?) technology.

>Basically, eventually cash will basically become the “crime mode” for its respective currency. I don’t see why it makes sense to continue to allow cash at that point.

Well, it depends on what the government in question defines as criminal activity. Just because something's made illegal doesn't mean it's immoral, wrong or in any way bad. Many regimes have in the past made all kinds of transactions illegal specifically for the sake of their own criminal persecution of targeted minority groups. This is why argument about "only criminal activity" are both idiotic and naive.

People get scammed out of cash just as easily. See "The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger. I never thought I was the kind of person to fall for a scam." https://www.thecut.com/article/amazon-scam-call-ftc-arrest-w...

Discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39382981

Cash is being made more and more inconvenient over time, presumably to push more people towards monitored transactions.

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