Predicting a Future Free of Dollar Bills 753
An anonymous reader writes with this story about how a cashless society might work and how far-off in the future it is. "...We're not there yet, but a cashless society is not as fanciful as it seems. Recent research suggests that many believe we will stop using notes and coins altogether in the not-too-distant future. New payments technologies are rapidly transforming our lives. Today in the U.S., 66 percent of all point-of-sale transactions are done with plastic, while in the U.K. it's just under half. But while a truly cashless society is some time away yet, there is raft of groundbreaking technologies that will make cash a mere supporting act in the near future."
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you ever want a cashless society? Cash is one option you have. Taking it out removes an option and therefore freedom.
Useless coins (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see the future free from pennies, first.
Class issue here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Last century stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
So you are the reason that a lot of stores have a minimum charge amount for credit / debit charges. The transaction fees charged to merchants are ridiculous and so are ATM fees. Until these fees are reduced, you will never see a truly cashless society. And that doesn't include those that have less trust of banks than they do of governments.
Re:Cash Needs To Go Away (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Class issue here. (Score:3, Insightful)
Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Privacy is more important to me than convenience. I like the idea that I can go into a store and buy something without someone making a recording of it and tying it to me.
2. The issue isn't to make the dollar go away, or even the penny go away. The issue is to fix the inflation.
Re:Cash Needs To Go Away (Score:5, Insightful)
Also needed if you happen to piss of the government and they order your accounts frozen. Then you starve unless you have cash. Or friends. Who are willing to risk "supporting a terrorist".
Predictions vs. reality (Score:5, Insightful)
"Lots of people think it will happen" means about nothing. People are HORRIBLY bad at predicting future trends. More so en-mass.
What people say they want and what they really want (and demonstrate by doing) are pretty much unrelated. So even if people SAY they want cashless, I doubt they'll actually vote that way when the rubber hits the road.
Re:No Paper Money... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most criminals would no longer be able to transact business, as they operate in a cash system.
The biggest criminals run banks... or governments
Bank accounts for the poor (Score:5, Insightful)
Cashless only works if the poor can get bank accounts without having to pay hefty fees if they can even qualify at all.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
TPTB can freeze credit cards, bank accounts, etc on a whim, but can't freeze a wallet full of $20s.
Cashless can't happen, here is why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Naive as hell !
Crappy list of examples, I'm sure there are hundreds of examples: 1) What about if I want to buy your [insert bike or computer or whatever]? 2) Baby sitter? 3) Kid's allowance? 4) Pay some kid kid to mow yard. 5) Underground transactions (illegal stuff)
The importance of cash will continue to decline with transactions with merchants, but it will never remotely approach "cashless".
Re:Canada has the future :) (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone from the U.S. who just recently traveled in Canada, I have to say that I like their current currency system a lot. Using loonies ($1) and "twoonies" ($2) coins is nice as they can actually be used easily to buy useful things, which is the primary reason why (I think) dollar coins haven't really taken off in the U.S.
In Canada, parking meters, soda machines, etc.. take $1 and $2 coins. It beats having to feed a pile of small coins into a meter or machine, or trying to iron out and feed a frayed and mangled $1 USD bill into a soda machine and having it rejected. The coins are also fine for face-to-face transactions; they are not unusual. In contrast, Susan B. Anthony dollars in the U.S. can get you some funny looks and many vendors flat out won't accept them, legal tender or not. You can go buy a beer in Canada with the change in your pocket. The Canadian coins make small daily transactions simple.
In the U.S., getting change is a pain in the ass because you invariably wind up accumulating pennies which are a nuisance. You can't use them for tolls or in machines in most places, and toting around a pile of pennies large enough to actually purchase anything with is ridiculous. So you either start carrying a satchel of pennies around trying to pay exact change, or you toss them in a jar, spend time rolling them, and exchange them at the bank for larger denominations (yay! A trip to the bank just to dispose of pennies!). You can also use services like Coinstar, which takes a cut (yay! A special trip to dispose of pennies AND paying some money to a company taking advantage of the dumb system!). In Canada, prices are merely rounded to the nearest 5 cents. Sometimes it is a few pennies in your favor, sometimes it is a few pennies in their favor. On the whole it is a wash, and you would have to be a really miserly SOB for it to worry you.
Canada has cash pretty well figured out. It's not that difficult, U.S.!
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
TPTB can freeze credit cards, bank accounts, etc on a whim, but can't freeze a wallet full of $20s.
Actually, yeah they can. North Korea did just this...to all the money in everyone's wallet...when they decided that the black market had gotten too powerful. They demoted the value of the won [time.com] (their currency) by two orders of magnitude...and gave everyone only a week to change their currency in for the new notes, after which time the old notes would not be worth the paper they were printed on.
Now here's the part where you say "But that's North Korea!" right on the heels of everyone claiming that the reason to go cashless is because we're not really living in a free society...
When the lights go out, we need cash (Score:4, Insightful)
The electrical grid is anything but reliable.
It's simply unacceptable to say, that if the power goes out, then we're screwed and can no longer trade.
We need the ability to trade regardless of operating on or off the grid, and plastic or cashless methods can't do that.
Re:Cashless can't happen, here is why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Credit/Debit works best for large companies where there's little to no haggling, and where the sheer volume of transactions allows that merchant to negotiate good terms with the processor, but they're still at the mercy of the processor as far as account and transaction fees are concerned, and then there's the other issue of security. Target, Neiman Marcus, and PF Changs are all going through that right now, and I don't doubt that it'll get worse as time goes on, and while "pin and chip" cards may help, I expect that someone will figure out how to steal through those too, and the cycle will just continue.
And then there's the personal sale angle. I'm not going to take paypal or have the ability to process credit cards for a yard sale or some crap that I'm selling through the classifieds or craigslist. Given how I'm mainly just trying to recoup something in the process of a sale, adding more hoops or steps will just result in my not bothering to sell junk anymore.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem [monticello.org]
You're still perfectly able to not use cash, but why do you insist that the rest of us follow along?
Re:Cashless can't happen, here is why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I find the idea of being 100% dependent on the finance industry to carry out a 'legitimate' transaction to be at the very least distasteful.
Do we really want to give banks the power of taxation?
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
And there are plenty of other use-cases for people wanting their name decoupled from their deeds.
Not all of them are exactly bad, either.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would you ever want a cashless society? Cash is one option you have. Taking it out removes an option and therefore freedom.
So you can audit and authorize where it goes. I can't audit a guy stealing cash from my wallet.
So someone else can authorize where your money goes? Think man! The only thing you can authorize is the cash in your physical hand. As soon as it's some number in some bank/app/whatever, you are no longer the entity who authorizes the transaction. Your authorization is only an illusion.
Your money at some bank can be easily "deauthorized" by someone else with slightly higher level of access. Maybe the police will cease it. Maybe the tax authority or some debt collector or a judge you never heard of. They don't even need to take it - they just freeze your assets and you are fucked. But don't worry, this never affects the innocent. Just just the innocent never go to jail either....
Bitcoin is great, until some virus steals your wallet - then you have no recourse.
Cash is the only true currency where you remain *most* in control.
PS. Yes, I keep my money at a bank, but at least I know that cashless is not what I want.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Prepaid debit cards, and burner cell phones, are only anonymous if you...oh, pay for them in cash!
Re:Cashless can't happen, here is why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The ONLY thing required for this to happen is secure communications.
That's like saying "the ONLY thing required is world peace".
What admins and engineers have known for a long time, and which people like Snowden provided evidence for is that secure communication is not a given, and highly unlikely to be an option for the masses.
If the government won't let people have a shadow economy they can't monitor or control, expect physical alternatives to take their place. There's plenty of precedence for turning to valuable metals when the currency cannot be trusted. And there are examples of governments banning both gold and silver trade as a kneejerk reaction, but that just moves the market to something else.
Re:Cash Needs To Go Away (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Useless coins (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, can you explain to me the benefits of a $1 coin to the user? Fine, it's more durable; I don't really care, I rarely accidentally destroy $1 bills, so that benefit accrues solely to the mint.
Umm, you do realize who pays for dollar bills to be printed, right? The US government, which is funded by your taxes. Dollar bills on average last less than a year in circulation before they are removed and destroyed (due to damage, etc.). Coins last years or even decades in circulation. There's a lot of debate over exactly how much we'd save by switching to coins, but the consensus is it's at least a few hundred million dollars per year. In the giant federal budget, this is barely a drop in the bucket, but it's something...
Re:Some shops already have (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not? I was on a Delta flight the other day and the only way to purchase in-flight cocktails was via credit card. On another flight the same day, the same purchase could only be made in cash. I am not aware of any laws that require businesses to accept a certain form of payment, and why should there be? If a business doesn't accept cash (or credit cards, or chickens, or bitcoin) and their customers prefer that method of payment, it will show up in their bottom line. Why would the government need to intervene in such a transaction?
Re:Bank accounts for the poor (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember when banks made their money by lending out depositors money, and paid the depositors as well, absolutely no fees and they paid cashiers to interact with the public. Back then certain businesses such as banks had a nice steady income and profit, now they expect to make record profits every year and if their profits only increase with inflation they're a failure.
Re:666 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:666 (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely if they are writing cheques, then that is already cashless? Sounds like they've beaten the rest of us to it...
Re:Cash Needs To Go Away (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you ever want a cashless society?
So you can audit and authorize where it goes. I can't audit a guy stealing cash from my wallet.
Audit all you like, you still might not get it back. Hell, they can't even stop most large-scale internet scams when you would think it easy to audit the trail.
A mugger could take at most about $50 from me (its equivalent - I am in the UK in fact, and in a rural area where muggings are almost unheard of). However a plastic card scam might lift about three orders of magnitude more than that.
Re:Cashless can't happen, here is why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
How is your suggestion even in the same universe as "more convenient than cash"?
Re:666 (Score:2, Insightful)
The moment cash was eliminated, you could kiss your precious freedom goodbye. That is not a joke, and it is not a fantasy.
Yes, I went totally cashless about ten years ago, and still lament the loss of my freedom.
If there is anything worse than having an itemized statement of all my purchases, and paying it off every month, then getting cash back, I don't know what is, unless it is....
The nightmare scenario of automatically paying your bills. Jesus, that's awful.
Some times I wonder if the doomsday preppers haven't taken over Slashdot these days. We've always had a strong streak of libertarianism, but half the comments these days read like they are posted from a bunker in Idaho. The second, fakey one, because we don't want the Guvmint finding the real one by tracking our phone. Back to the rabbit holes everyone!
Re:Going back to cash (Score:5, Insightful)
And no, the cash is accounted for n withdrawal, it has not "disappeared".
I think you missed my point. Suppose you take $60 out from an ATM to cover miscellaneous cash expenses for a week (or two or whatever). That number is immediately deducted from your balances, so if you look at your checking account to decide what you have to spend for future purposes, the cash is "invisible." Moreover, if you want to track individual cash transactions, you would need to enter and itemize them manually, which frankly most people can't be bothered with unless they do a lot of cash transactions or use large amounts of cash.
So, if you use financial software, cash becomes this untraceable invisible part of your financial total (like credit cards used to be), while every other transaction will automatically update and modify your net worth. I'm NOT saying you CAN'T keep track of cash... I'm saying for people who don't use it very much, it's more difficult, and people don't bother.
The cluster of odd bills in my wallet has become sort of like the "change jar" that people throw their coins into. You don't quite know how much is there, because you don't need it or use it very often,, but it's probably less than $100, and if you ever need some, you can probably dig out a couple quarters as necessary.
That younger people cannot maintain a balance in their heads is no reason to dispose of cash in society for those who can.
I know that this is what TFA is about, but I never argued in my post to get rid of cash. I don't think that would be good at all. My post was simply responding to others who said that cash was easier to track in your wallet -- for previous generations, yeah, today... not so much.
Re:666 (Score:5, Insightful)