I mean, it kinds seems inevitable to me. Books has become e-books. Cash is becoming digital transfers. China has done it. The west is mostly doing card-swipes. One day, that transition will be complete, and cash would be phased out.
What happens then? Think like the power outage in Spain recently. Some people had cash. But in 20-40 years. There might not even be any cash in existence. What then?
What if, instead of a few hours, its a few days? Or weeks?
I guess riots break out all around the world?
(Seriously, has none of the politicians ever thought about this? Where are the backups? Are we just going full “YOLO” on the reliance on the power grid?)
What then?
Yeah it’ll just be over.
Meaning, people would try to barter, which is really bad because it forces extremely bad trades, because it’s so hard to establish a good value for things.
We 100% rely on consistently working electricity and network connectivity for digital currency to work.
Which is why we should never get 100% rid of cash, even if we transition to mostly cashless, people should keep an emergency stash of hard currency. The same way people should keep an emergency food and water supply, in case of power outages like the one in spain. We can secure our infrastructure against many things, but not 100% secure against everything. Keeping a few bottles of clean water, a little bit of essentially never perishing food and a little cash and a few candles really isn’t too much to ask.
For some reason it’s become commonplace to think that barter is what preceded and/or would replace cash if we ever lost cash.
Anthropologist David Graeber has written a more compelling account of history with examples in a variety of societies showing that debt and ledgers are what came before cash and I’m thinking a system based off of them would probably be strong contender for a future without cash.
A cashless society means your overlords will have COMPLETE control of your lives. Of course the oligarchs will have secret avenues of cash for themselves.
secret avenues of cash for themselves.
Gold treasure.
In that case we have to rely on Elons white power.
The power isn’t infinite, but it’s enough.
Unironically, yes. If the “internet” were to disappear tomorrow civilized society would no longer exist. Too much had been built on an unstable jenga tower of technology. We put a lot of faith in the status quo existing despite the fact that little evidence suggests it will
Especially with so much being built on top of AWS, even ICANN in some ways (although I’m sure that there are loads of backup DNS records to fall back on)
If society collapses, what good would physical cash be other than toilet paper?
It won’t ever go 100% cashless. There’s too many coins and paper money floating around.
The existing currency pool is not the reason. Paper money has a pretty short durable life, and coins don’t have enough value to operate society on. It’s actually a fairly big task for a government to maintain the currency supply.
Fortunately this would never happen, for the reason you listed. Cash is king and always will be.
Why do you think everything will become completely cash-less?
The less people use physical cash, the less it gets produced. Eventually governments/mints will say “hey, you aren’t using this much anymore, so we’ll stop recognising it”, or something along those lines.
That will never happen. Cash is useful for laundering money, and governments are full of people working for criminals that need to launder money.
I hope you’re right.
I know its not the same thing, but we’ve completely done away with the barter system. Way back in the days of yore people would be swapping things for things, and then money came along and they were like “whaaaat you want to take my stuff in exchange for a few little discs?” And now it’s totally normal.
We have not completely done away with the barter system. It is just less visible.
I worked on a farm for a while that grew vegetables, and bartered some of those vegetables for other products from neighboring businesses. We got a pallet of apples in exchange for squashes from a local orchard, and seconds frozen pizzas in exchange for veg for pizza toppings from a local restaurant. We even bartered labor. There was someone who came in every week and spent a few hours cleaning and organizing the tomato cooler in exchange for some tomatoes that were on their way out.
In each case it was mutually beneficial for all parties to exchange in kind without using cash.
So while bartering is not common, it still exists.
I’ve been at some festivals where the bartering system was alive and well! People would trade beer for camping chairs or a volleyball for some duct tape. Good times :)
Cash will always exist. Even though I pay cashless 99% of the time, there’s always that little 1% when having a bit of cash on you is useful. It just means any cash on me will last a long time before I even get around to spend it.
And why would there be riots? Spain had zero riots, people were calm from what I’ve seen.
Okay so. Say. There is 2 weeks without power, sudden and unannounced, unpredicted power outage. How will you get food and stuff?
So if people can’t get essential stuff, there would be fear, and with fear, riots are likely to happen. Doesn’t matter how “civilized” or “developed” a country is, everyone has their breaking point.
In that scenario most of the food has gone bad anyway and is stuck in distribution centres as the shops can’t send orders up through the supply chain.
Also, without power most places couldn’t take cash. Tills are computers that do all the maths so the 16 year old serving you doesn’t have to they also track inventory going out.
The cash that there is is stuck in banks because the banks have no way of knowing what money is yours as we haven’t had bank books for like 20 years already.
Werd the banks in my state are still required to have bank books specifically for this reason.
Presumably even there though they check the details from your book against the computer system, to not only check that the book is accurate and that the branch has enough cash on hand to fulfil your request? The computer system that has had no power for a week.
They are there as a backup, for if the bank loses power or Internet. Normally they just use the computer system.
So you have to use them every time you use the bank, I’m assuming this also means that these accounts don’t allow you to do any kind of internet or telephone banking.
They are there as a backup, for if the bank loses power or Internet
I feel like you aren’t actually reading my comments?
This is silly. Absolute worst case, we go back to bartering for goods and services. There will never be a need to panic.
I mean there might be reason to panic and a fallback on the barter system, both.
The existence of cash is probably the least of one’s problems in that scenario. How is food going to be delivered to stores without working gas pumps? How will stores open their electronic doors or process payments without a cash register?
If this is something you are worried about, store enough non-perishable (eg canned) food in your home so you don’t starve in that scenario.
how will we get gas without working gas pumps
Gas stations are required to have generators where I am for this exact scenario.
How will stores open their electronic doors
These are legally required to be openable by hand without power in the United States.
How will stores process payment
Hence the reason why cash still exists.
But yes, I believe everyone should have a week or so worth of clean water and easily cooked non-perishables in the case of an emergency. Although I’m more worried about natural disasters rather than some random power loss.
It’s called a natural disaster and we get along just fine. If the entire planet loses power, there’s nothing to be done, but even if an entire US state loses power, gas generators come online and trucks haul fuel in from long distances. It doesn’t take long for a grocery store or bank to open up with cash withdrawals again.
2 weeks without power
How will you get food and stuff?
You go there where it is, and ask. If they trust you enough to pay it later, ok. Otherwise you beg. And beg more.
Problem is that shops are now faceless corporations who have no idea who you are. It’ll be fine if it was the village grocer’s staffed by the guy you went to school with who was in the year above you, but when nobody knows everyone in an individualistic society, it’s hard to establish trust.
So, You are society today. Your chance to turn it into a different society is now.
Treat people as worthy persons. Start building trustful relationships. Make sure they do not want to see you hungry and suffering and begging.
Start with one.
As if money would be people’s biggest concern of the power went out everywhere for two weeks.
even if you have cash, what you gonna use it for when tax registers are electronic ? nobody is going to sell anything
fun fact, businesses operate without power by using battery operated calculators and inventory pads.
every minute a business isn’t in operation is a cost to the business.
I worked at Super Walmart decades ago. power went out for the whole town. the main HV lines collapsed after a tornado.
mgmt marked all the ice cream down 80% and we were still checking customers out on generators.
reduce risk, increase profits, mitigate losses. the only bad opportunity is the one you ignore.
by god we sold almost every tub of ice cream in an hour.
this is kinda hilarious lol okey understood
People will adjust. What happened on Portugal and Spain was caused by excessive centralization of the power grid, not by digitization. If somehow we can’t keep the centralized grid running anymore, we will break it down, and bear the extra costs for that.
Also, the sequence of a catastrophe is almost never a riot. Where do people get the idea of riots? People just go and do the right thing.
Seriously, has none of the politicians ever thought about this?
The technicians did.
Where are the backups?
You mean generators? Lots of people have those.
Are we just going full “YOLO” on the reliance on the power grid?
I would understand this question if you lived in 1925, but by 2025 you should know the answer already. Are you so blind about everything that needs electricity that you think disaster would come from the lack of money?
Technically in countries with fiscal memory devices you can’t buy anything from store that have no power today becaue of taxes.
look at sweden…hands out papers telling you to have cash for week…but doesnt accept cash anywhere. we all can learn from the dumb nations.
no cash means government controls who you can give money to. beggers,homeless ppl, panhandlers… are all doomed. if you cant get a phone, you cant have money. if you dont have a home or money you cant sign a phonecontract and so on…
cashless societies are nothing but a nasty techbro dream.
beggers,homeless ppl, panhandlers… are all doomed
In China, they have Wechat Wallet that people can give money to homeless people. Even homeless people have phones.
cashless societies are nothing but a nasty techbro dream.
It is nasty and dystopian, I agree. But its not really a fantasy anymore, its real, the dystopian future is on the horizon. Soon, it’d be too late to stop the dystopia.
At first, mass surveillance cameras is only in China, but then even supposed “democracies” like the UK have millions of cameras. Then China became mostly cashless, that will also eventually happen to western countries.
The dystopia is coming. You can’t stop it.
heard that china pandler story too often by now. durinf sleep ppl tend to dream but reality will come they will wake up. maybe we are a cashless world by then…i wont stop it…but reality will. in a world of nations fighting each other digital money cant work.
I visited Australia last year. There were surveillance cameras just about everywhere. Even on rural highways to catch speeders
Cash will change to a digital form or disappear, I don’t agree with the people claiming it wont’t.
Scandinavia is so close already, recieving cash is considered bothersome. No one uses it for anything anymore. Well… Besides drugs.
Both electricity and the internet is critical infrastructure. Any downtime of either is really serious. It is however not rocket science to solve the biggest issues in regards to payments. As long as people can show their identity we can agree on tiny loans for stuff. Or just having the government bail out all verified purchases after the fact.
100$ per person isn’t that much money. Any bigger purchases can be handled with invoices.
So I am more worried about heating in the winter and access to water and sanitation.
This is bullshit. Everywhere I was in Scandinavia, you could buy with cash. If one shop didn’t take cash, you just went across the street to the other that did. Even in small towns north of the Artic Circle.
Even Scandinavia isn’t stupid enough to become 100% cashless
Oh, I must have explained wrong.
Yes, everywhere is legally required to accept it still. But the usage is really low, and there has been talks of removing the requirements of accepting cash.
Cigarettes and other things of value will become cash again.
Luckily, there are Nuka-Cola bottle caps…
