>While I do not foresee this being adopted in the US I won't put it past lobbyists to try.
it will. and it would only take a few years of concentrated brainwash from the telescreens for the people who will oppose that to be branded as the enemy.
and unlike the few other principal things powers that be want to take away from us - privacy, freedom of expression, gun ownership, there is no right to bear cash, so they can take it away anytime.
In the US it will be more of an "economic"-oriented change. I already encounter businesses once in a while that don't take cash, and rely entirely on a payment processor like Stripe or even Venmo. It's not a matter of evil vs. not-evil, it's a matter of "this is what was cheapest/easiest for us and why do you care anyway?"
In some U.S. cities, there are local laws requiring acceptance of cash by all businesses.
Outside tech bubbles, people are using more cash, not less. The Federal Reserve reports that U.S. currency in circulation has been steadily rising for decades, including the recent smartphone decade: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CURRCIR
My "why do you care" was rhetorical/sarcastic. It was meant to be analogous to "what do you have to hide?" in the context of privacy discussions. Part of how these things get adopted is that people engage in "outsider-shaming" of the people who resist.
> Bills mandating cash acceptance have faced intensive lobbying from the credit card industry as well as more tech-focused retailers. The passage of the New Jersey legislation exemplifies such forces at work. The bill's sponsor specifically criticized a recent Visa initiative that rewarded 50 businesses with $10,000 each for making their operations cashless.
American cash is hoarded abroad, so I don't think that's very informative.
For the UK [1] (graph on page 2) shows the number of cash transactions made per year. There's a continual decline since 2012: "Since 2017 cash use had been declining by around 15% each year, so 2020 represented an acceleration of this decline ... Nevertheless, cash remained the second most frequently used payment method in the UK in 2020, being used for just under a fifth of the total number of payments made"
"At the same time there were 1.2 million consumers who mainly used cash, choosing this payment method when doing their day-to-day shopping (although the majority still use other payment methods to pay their regular bills). It should be noted that while these people prefer to use cash when paying for things, they are not necessarily unwilling or unable to use other methods of payment. The majority of them have a debit card"
[2] is the same for the USA (page 6). It shows similar cash use as the UK (1 in 5 transactions), plus credit cards used instead of debit cards.
For a much more cashless society, see Denmark [3]. Roughly a third of people don't carry any cash, and half carry less than 100kr ($15).
"There are differences in the use of cash between the youngest and the oldest Danes, but the tendency to move away from cash is seen in all age groups. In particular, senior citizens’ use of cash has declined in recent years: Among the 70 to 79-year-olds, 40 per cent of payments were made in cash in 2017. This figure was almost halved to 22 per cent in 2019.
"By comparison, the share of cash payments in physical trade fell from 9 per cent to 4 per cent among the 15 to 29-year-olds. Young people thus opt out of paying with cash in stores, but it is a change in behaviour among the oldest citizens which has been driving developments since 2017."
(Denmark has a national law requiring staffed businesses to accept cash, with some exceptions.)
> though you wouldn't know it from the ubiquitous swiveling iPads at your local coffee shop, cash is the most frequent method of payment in the US – more frequent than electronic, credit, debit, or check payments.
“A man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.” - Frederick Douglass, 1867.
It's still true. Yes, all three are dangerous and open to abuse, but they - with the right protections in place - will provide better outcomes than the alternatives.
If Douglass could've conceived of a world without cash then perhaps he would've mentioned a fourth.
Don’t play the pronoun game, it makes the conversation hard to follow and reply to. Which one of the four things - privacy, freedom of expression, gun ownership, or right to bear cash - are you finding jarring?
In my community the folks here have a ratio of firearms to people of about 20:1. Many of them save their brass/steel and reload their own ammo. Most here carry concealed and are not required to have a permit. Same goes for some neighboring states. Permits are only required if traveling into a state that does not honor permit-less carry based on state ID.
As a funny side note this is only place I have lived where it is normal to see people get out of their vehicle with hunting/assault rifles at the gas station sorting/shifting their gear and nobody bats an eye. My bank has a fundraiser poster on the door for a rifle giveaway prize.
it will. and it would only take a few years of concentrated brainwash from the telescreens for the people who will oppose that to be branded as the enemy.
and unlike the few other principal things powers that be want to take away from us - privacy, freedom of expression, gun ownership, there is no right to bear cash, so they can take it away anytime.