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What a CASHLESS society REALLY means
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this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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False dichotomy. Many, even most, of the examples given here could be accomplished in a cashless society (not that I'm actually advocating for one, but this is just factually incorrect).
Grandma slipped me a secret credit chip connected to an illegal bank account in Panama, with $5 in it. You want a soda or something?
How would you accomplish these things without cash?
I'm not sure how you would accomplish a secret credit chip, with or without cash, sorry.
Assuming we're talking about granny slipping her grandchild a few bucks though, what's stopping her? Nobody's proposing a system where under 18s are cut out of the economy. Everybody gets a bank account the moment they learn to crawl. Granny just sends the money to her favourite grandkid of the month.
None of this is hypothetical BTW, before you start trying to come up with scenarios why this doesn't work. This is literally the system in Norway.
Christmas could be accomplished via a spreadsheet too. Just have a big table where the labels on each axis are all the people, and you can enter the values for what gift each gave to the other. Reveal the squares in random order with a timer.
It’s functionally equivalent! It’s how we do Christmas in Norway, so there’s literally no reason it can’t work.
It’s not like kids will be cut out of the Holiday system. We can have special user accounts, maybe with read-only access to the spreadsheet.
It’s functionally isomorphic guys. It’s a proved model and we’re just wasting time holding off the implementation. Norway bro.
Well you can't give someone cash if there is no cash.
Obviously nanna can transfer money to the kids.
The real question is what is the difference?
My kids have an account with an index fund. When I log in there's a qr code you can scan which takes you to a payment gateway.
If the children are young enough, nanna can transfer money to some account the parents control. If the parents are fine, that's fine. However, what if the parents are addicts (drugs, gambling, whatever)? Or what if they are so deep in debt that every cent on their accounts immediately gets turned to whoever the owe to? In that case the kid can't even buy themselves lunch on their own.
I don't think this is a great argument for the prevalence of cash?
What about kids who's nannas don't give them money?
Better to build a society that identifies kids as risk like this rather than prattling on about cash and hoping for the best.
Young children can not create a bank account so they can not get money transferred. In case their parents set up a bank account, the parents will have access to that money and see any transactions.
Now you are probably a good person who would not steal money from your children. However some parents are not good people.
There are also a lot of cases where parents don't want their children to have things they need, like soap or tampons. Doubt much has changed about that from the time I was a child. It would be a lot harder for children to access things like that if no one can slip them some secret money.
Can't nanna slip them a gift card for the grocery store?
That way nanna would need to know that the children are struggling with this. A lot of children wouldn't tell from the shame and since they are doing something 'forbidden'. I know I wouldn't have told my grandma.
I'm not really following you. I thought nanna was secretly giving a kid money so they could buy that stuff. If she didn't know the kid needed a secret Toiletries fund, why would she give cash in secret? She would just transfer the money.
I am sympathetic to what sounds like a tough childhood with shit parents. I just don't think it's a good argument for prevalent use of cash.
I'd rather invest efforts in making sure kids aren't neglected in this way.
If their grandma was anything like mine, she didn't know I wanted a secret stash of money for X or Y, what she knew was that my parents unfairly controlled and removed money from my account, which since they're my parents was legal so she couldn't call the cops or something, and she knew that all she could do was her part to help by slipping me a $20 and saying "don't tell your mother."
Sure, it's not the end of the world, kids get abused all the time worse than that and survive. Still lame though.
Like I said to the other commenter, I am very sympathetic to what sounds like an awful childhood, I just don't think it's much of an argument in support of cash.
What about kids that don't have a grandma like that? Or who's parents discover the Toiletries their kid bought?
Much better to focus on supporting kids being neglected in a general sense rather than relying on the existence of cash.
So since some kids don't have a nice grandma, the ones that do should suffer while we "fix" it? No. Tell you what, you fix it, then we can talk about going cashless. Why should those kids suffer while we work towards a fix, you think we just flip a switch and all of a sudden every parent is a good parent? I hate to be the one to show you what it's like down here outside of your ivory tower but there is no such instant solution, unfortunately we do not have an all powerful benevolent dictator (I guess, /s) who can change things at will, our system is slow.
That's the thing though. No one is talking about going cashless - there's just a general anxiety that because no one uses cash governments will discontinue it.
I'm not arguing that cash should be discontinued, merely that this odd grandma argument isn't really an argument in favour of the use of cash generally.
Well, people are, you maybe not, me definitely not, "important people" maybe not, but people indeed are. Just scroll back through this thread, you'll see em. Maybe they added their comments after you or something.
And imo this odd grandma argument is a good example, because I lived it I guess.
Well one happens while grandma is hugging the kid. It involves perceiving and interacting with a physical object, which uses parts of the brain that are hundreds of millions of years older than the parts you’re using when you see a notification on your phone.
Also there’s the fact of the secrecy, which isn’t there when all transfers are recorded for possible analysis later.
Quite a bit is different actually.
I'm not really hearing a compelling argument sorry.
My parents relationship with my kids runs far deeper than the act of handing over cash.
Creating a QR code and scanning involves the same interaction though.
Yes, I fondly remember growing up smelling QR codes that my grandma handed me before getting on my plane flight, I'll always have the memory of hugging her and scanning the QR code from her phone that she can definitely figure out.
Which of course is a much better memory than a pinch on the cheek and being given $50 in cash for your flight.
I feel like physically affection is only bought with money in your house. Bribe for hugs? I dunno.
Most of these things would be solved with payment apps like Venno or CashApp.
You can also get pre-paid cards to give to homeless people on the street, or use a "garage sale" app that has digital payment options like OfferUp to sell your unwanted crap.
I also wouldn't want the banks to have full control, but I know there are already solutions to most of the problems listed in the image. The only one that seems accurate is the domestic violence one.
Possibly with the exception of the domestic violence example, the examples that directly reference 'cash' make the least sense. Of course you can't give cash to your grandchildren, there's no more cash!
When I was a kid my parents controlled my account and would take money out of it sometimes, sometimes to punish me for this reason or that (staying up late sneaking SNL back when it was good, for instance.) What they didn't control is the cash they didn't see my grandparents slip me on my birthday, and therefore they couldn't steal that. Sure "well they shouldn't have done that in the first place," but they did, or "you shouldn't have disobeyed your parents," ok whatever Mom, but I'm thankful I had my secret stash.
Savvy grandparents transfer BTC to their grandkid’s cold wallet
XMR*