
25M Brits would struggle in a cashless society - wjSgoWPm5bWAhXB
https://www.which.co.uk/news/2018/12/25m-brits-would-struggle-in-a-cashless-society/
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sametmax
Another problem is that no society is perfect. And even if it were, it won't
stay that way.

There is a need for a small grey area in any system to stay sane, where people
can workaround the limitations of said system.

Yes, it will be abused, and also used for nefarious purposes. But it's better
than the alternative.

You need people to sometimes be able to do things the state doesn't approve.
You need children to be able to mess around without parent knowing. You need
to be able to go to a gay bar without living a trace. You need to be able to
give cash to a homeless without him being part of the system.

Also if you make it very hard to try new things that are illegal or immoral
now, your society will get stuck and lose a lot of opportunities to evolve.

Yes, it would be better to change the system to make it better first. But it's
a slow and unreliable process, especially if you can't prove that your way is
ok. So having little pocket of experimentation is important, and cash allows
that.

~~~
userbinator
_There is a need for a small grey area in any system to stay sane, where
people can workaround the limitations of said system._

There is a similar analogy to what is happening in the computing world, and
I've heard it called "the insecurity that gives us freedom." I agree.

~~~
marchenko
This comment and its parent are both excellent. I've often heard security and
freedom described as a tradeoff; the idea of a causal relationship is
intriguing.

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jstanley
One of the problems with a cashless society is that the banks aren't required
to give you a bank account.

If none of the banks will give you a bank account, and there's no such thing
as cash... then you're just not allowed to have money. That shouldn't be a
position that it is possible to get into.

~~~
arminiusreturns
A lot of people don't realize that in the US at least, there is a semi-secret
banking blacklist, where banks will just deny you all services. I know because
I managed to get on it, and then managed to get off it, no easy feat. How I
got there is another story, but banks are not a friend of the people, and
moves towards a cashless society give them even more power, something they
already have too much of.

Sidenote: I was in on bitcoin back when you could generate blocks with a
CPU... and came to the conclusion that privacy of transaction was too
fundamental to a good coin and abandoned bitcoin. Given central banks ability
to invent money at scale, I also always thought the 50% attack was something
they would work towards... and so that's the story of how I almost became a
millionaire.

~~~
bhaak
I enjoy the "how I almost became a millionaire because of Bitcoin" stories.
I've read a lot of them online and I know surprisingly many people personally
that have such a story to share.

Those stories tell you a lot about the person in question. How it didn't work
out and how they cope with that "loss".

Yours is the first where someone coped out because not being satisfied with
the kind of privacy Bitcoin provides.

~~~
arminiusreturns
Sometimes having principles and sticking to them puts me in unfavorable
situations like that, but to be honest I still feel the same way about
bitcoin. Because of missing out though I never really got back into the coin
scene, but I do like monero/zcash for their privacy features, but I have a
hard time buying the idea that any coin based off wasting compute cycles and
energy on arbitrary math is going to be a real coin of the future.

A coin that uses all that compute to work on protein folding or other big
problems that also has privacy would be something I would really like to see.

~~~
teddyh
What is your opinion of GNU Taler?

~~~
Avamander
Not who you asked this from, but in my opinion it has a huge problem of any
mistakes being unfixable - either you mistransact or get scammed - taler
provides no way to fix that.

~~~
teddyh
I don’t get it – if you could just take it back whenever, it wouldn’t be
“money”, now would it?

~~~
majewsky
It would be money, but not cash. I can absolutely take back a Paypal
transaction with buyer protection.

~~~
teddyh
And, just like money is a layer built on top of cash, I assume that one could
build a third-party escrow service on top of GNU Taler which has this “buyer
protection” feature, with the added bonus of not one actor having a monopoly
on it – whereas if Paypal stops liking you, you are out of luck.

~~~
Avamander
There are other alternatives to Paypal as well. This feature should be built
into the currency instead of just forcing everyone to reinvent the wheel for
__zero __benefit.

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crazygringo
I would _love_ to see a cashless society because carrying around dirty bills
and heavy coins is just a nuisance, and adds real overhead for stores as
well...

... _BUT_ , for privacy and the unbanked, I suspect this _necessarily_ needs
to go along with credit-card-compatible "cash cards" that would have to be:

1) Anonymous (e.g. buy a card for $1 from any drugstore, swap them with
friends, buy in bulk and give away, whatever -- don't need to show an ID)

2) Secure and robust (value stored on-card without the ability for the
government to deactivate etc., or for transactions to be cancelled after-the-
fact)

3) All ATM's and banks required by law to support transferring any reasonable
value (e.g. <$10K) from one card to another anonymously (so if I need to pay
you, the two of us can walk into any bank). Ideally be able to do this at any
convenience store, etc.

For whatever reason, I rarely see the idea of anonymous cash cards discussed
in these types of conversations.

~~~
joncp
> For whatever reason, I rarely see the idea of anonymous cash cards discussed
> in these types of conversations.

Because it's really really hard to prevent forgery. Maybe impossible.

~~~
Nextgrid
It's impossible to prevent forgery just like physical cash, but it's
definitely a lot harder to crack a properly designed cryptosystem than make a
counterfeit note.

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sbacic
I've recently visited London for the first time. What really stunned me was
the huge number of homeless people. They were practically everywhere.

And they all relied on cash donations. I wonder what will happen to these
people as society becomes more and more cashless? What effect will it have on
crime?

~~~
jdietrich
Begging is a controversial issue in the UK. Our welfare system is far from
perfect (and it has been substantially denuded by the current Conservative
government) but there are relatively few people who need to beg to survive -
primarily non-UK nationals with no recourse to public funds.

The consensus view among charities who work with the homeless is that a) most
beggars aren't rough sleepers, b) most rough sleepers don't beg and c) begging
primarily serves to fund drug addictions. Though by no means universal, many
people in the sector are of the opinion that giving to beggars has a net
negative effect by helping to perpetuate addiction. Begging certainly isn't a
sustainable solution to the factors that cause homelessness - mental illness,
addiction, economic insecurity and a lack of social housing. It is entirely
plausible that the diminution of begging by a move to cashlessness could see
an increase in acquisitive crime.

~~~
xg15
That may be true - but on the other hand, losing access to money doesn't seem
to be helping them either. Like, even if the opinions are true, the fraction
of people that beg to buy actual food or try to improve their situation
wouldn't be able to do that anymore either.

I can't imagine that this move would be particularly helpful for people _with_
addiction either. Their addiction won't go away, but they'd probably find
other ways to fund it, which might involve entering into really unfortunate
power dynamics.

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cascom
The implications of a cashless society on privacy are terrifying

~~~
awakeasleep
The implications on life for the poor are terrifying!

Businesses would love to be able to exclude people too poor to use their
services from society- It's a real ugly situation. Like a decentralized
apartheid based on financial status.

Without the government stepping in and trying to prevent this discrimination,
there is no one to stand up for these human being's lives

~~~
IshKebab
I don't see what any of that has to do with using cash vs using a prepaid
debit card.

Are you thinking about credit checks to stop poor people getting phone
contracts? Because that already happens and cash existing hasn't stopped it.

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matco11
It seems to me that a cashless society can have many advantages - when
everything works well. Yet, cashless societies would be pretty disastrous in
case of natural disasters, acts of war, acts of terrorist, industrial
accidents, and any other circumstances that would take out electricity and/or
telecommunications. To me that seems a good reason to kill the case for going
cashless nationwide.

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esotericn
Britain is not Britain in this regard.

London has a ton of places that don't accept cash already.

Go to smaller towns in the North and you'll hit minimum charges to use a card
or broken machines.

~~~
IshKebab
Admittedly I've not lived in London for 5 years or so, but I never went to
single place that wouldn't accept cash. Name one.

~~~
mrec
I suppose parts of TfL might be an example - you can't pay cash on a bus.
Other than than, I haven't encountered one either, though I'm worried that
they're getting closer. Probably past time to be thinking about an escape plan
anyway.

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timthorn
The Raspberry Pi store in Cambridge is the first place I've come across that
is cashless. It struck me that for a Foundation that is trying to promote
computing to children, they're exactly one of the main demographics that won't
have access to cashless payments.

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-
store/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-store/)

(Digressing, but I was also saddened that their tills are tablet EPOS systems
and not home-brew with a Pi at their heart)

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codedokode
Before talking about cashless society they should allow anonymous bank cards
and anonymous cryptocurrencies. Otherwise it is an Orwellian surveillance
state. The government doesn't want better and convenient payment system, they
just want to be able to see all transactions between citizens and to be able
arrest their money. Today you agree to the cashless society, tomorrow you are
assigned a social rating.

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908087
A cashless society would be a wet dream come true for intelligence agencies,
Facebook/Google and other mass surveillance proponents or beneficiaries.

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mymythisisthis
You need to keep things off the books sometimes. Try saving up for a
significant other's gift, if you can't keep a few things hidden.

~~~
mschuetz
The concept of not having your own private bank account that isn't shared with
your significant other or anyone else baffles me.

~~~
frosted-flakes
Why? It baffles me that a husband and wife don't trust each other enough to
pool their resources.

~~~
Wildgoose
Ditto. We each have our own JOINT account. We can use each other's accounts
(including the associated credit cards) but it's easier to manage if we
(generally) don't.

After all, if you are married you are jointly and separately liable for all
assets and debts so why doesn't your banking arrangements reflect that fact?

~~~
hocuspocus
> After all, if you are married you are jointly and separately liable for all
> assets and debts so why doesn't your banking arrangements reflect that fact?

In countries with matrimonial property regimes, that isn't necessarily the
case.

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DeonPenny
Cashless society shouldn't be a thing in a democracy. It requires too many
hurdles and money. It's inherently prejudiced to many poor people.

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2038AD
Unless there were a state (consumer) bank, the implication of a cashless
society is that it ought to be a illegal for people not to use private banks.
In my mind this effectively make banks an extension of the state apparatus
without the sort of accountability that would be expected.

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neilwilson
If the state doesn’t issue cash then other items will become cash - as it did
in Somalia.

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Hates_
This goes alongside the campaign on protecting cash as a payment option:
[https://campaigns.which.co.uk/freedom-to-
pay/](https://campaigns.which.co.uk/freedom-to-pay/)

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tonyedgecombe
If 25 million are dependent on cash then we won’t be going cashless any time
soon.

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iamgopal
How we/society/constitution stopping government from just create arbitrary
number on some server to create money out of the blue ?

~~~
firmgently
Banks do it under fractional reserve banking.

"Lord Adair Turner, formerly the UK's chief financial regulator, said "Banks
do not, as too many textbooks still suggest, take deposits of existing money
from savers and lend it out to borrowers: they create credit and money ex
nihilo* – extending a loan to the borrower and simultaneously crediting the
borrower’s money account"." [0]

* hilarious use of Latin to make 'out of nothing' sound authoritative

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-
reserve_banking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking)

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purple-again
This reads very strongly like someone made a conclusion and then looked for
every detail they could they thought might support that theory, some much
weaker than others.

These types of articles are only useful if your looking for a starting point
to get a conversation going on a topic. They are not good for supporting your
conclusion one way or the other once you have analyzed the topic.

------
sandov
Given the current technological landscape, we are not ready for a cashless
society. People don't have the knowledge nor the equipment required to make it
a good system. Avoiding this cashless thing seems like the correct move, until
we have good social infrastructure (in my opinion, not likely to happen before
2060). We need what Richard Stallman calls digital extraction:

>Projects with the goal of digital inclusion are making a big assumption. They
are assuming that participating in a digital society is good, but that's not
necessarily true. Being in a digital society can be good or bad, depending on
whether that digital society is just or unjust. There are many ways in which
our freedom is being attacked by digital technology. Digital technology can
make things worse, and it will, unless we fight to prevent it.

>Therefore, if we have an unjust digital society, we should cancel these
projects for digital inclusion and launch projects for digital extraction. We
have to extract people from digital society if it doesn't respect their
freedom, or we have to make it respect their freedom.

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-digital-
society.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-digital-society.en.html)

