Should we move to a cashless society?

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  • Cash or no cash - where do you stand?

    Cash is at risk of disappearing without action from regulators and the government, according to a major report published earlier this week.

    The system which underpins the use of notes and coins was at risk of falling apart, the Access to Cash Review concluded.

    Millions of people would be lost without cash, it said, but there is a clear trend towards digital payments.

    Although it seems like it's inevitable that we are moving to a cashless society with contactless payments on the rise, I'm not so sure its a great idea. What if the computers are switched off, or get hacked?

    There was a incident in India last year, when the central bank, I think it was, shut down all the cash machines for a few weeks depriving millions of people access to their money, but if we were to move to a fully digitised money system, one hack into financial systems could collapse the whole system in one go.

    My view is we should not abolish physical money whether it be coins or notes any time soon.

  • I know from personal experience that the costs for accepting cards is very high for the small retailer/business, as they don't have a big enough volume to get cheaper rates, and they are not allowed to pass processing costs onto the consumer. To balance this, banks charge a hefty fee when you bank cash into a business account.

    Yes, it's heading that way and it would be good for evidence against criminal acts and tax evasion that all transactions could be recorded and monitored, but that applies equally to non-criminals. Like most things, it depends how secure everything is, and how easily some government body with an axe to grind could access it.

    There are advantages and disadvantages with a cashless system, but currently the systems are not robust enough or secure enough.

    Mark Twain — 'Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.'

  • I already find myself carrying very little if any cash around with me so it probably wouldn't make much difference to me, but I can appreciate that there are people who prefer to have cash and pay with cash rather than electronically.

  • Cash is still king.

    It’s the finance company’s pushing for the slice of cake. Credit controls the population, want and greed drive the population, shoving 10 grand in cash over the counter feels very different to sliding a card over.

  • shoving 10 grand in cash over the counter

    I wish. :D

    I still carry cash even though I mostly pay by card. Comes from a period when I had very little money and there was always the chance that the card would fail and I didn't want the embarassment of not being able to pay.

  • Cash is still king.

    It’s the finance company’s pushing for the slice of cake. Credit controls the population, want and greed drive the population, shoving 10 grand in cash over the counter feels very different to sliding a card over.

    Yes, that is a good point.

    I was purely coming at it from tech point of view, but debt is another major factor in this too.

    Many people don't view cards like they do cash and act very differently.

  • No one here has grasped the true implications of cashless.

    If you dont like a bank, you can go in, withdraw all your money, and pay it into another bank. or, you can keep your money in a tin uder the bed

    The government doesnt like that. It means thers money flaoting around they have no track or control over, an off grid economy.

    The banks dont like it, because they have to pay interest to entice you not to walk away with your stash. This is bad, because it means the banks, by the process of creating interest payments, increase the amount of currency and thus create inflation and debt.

    If we were cashless, you are forced to store your stash on a banks computer, you cant put it in your pocket and wal kaway with it. This means :

    -the banks no longer have to pay you to keep your money, Instead, you will have to pay the to store your balance. This the banks like, cos they stil make money but without creating inflation. Instead of inflation, you get poorer.

    -the government likes it because it means it controls all the money, There is no black economy, because theres no cash. Every transaction will be recorded, every transaction can be traced.

    In the 2012 Greek collapse, the Govt closed the banks and limited the amount of money you could take out the cashpoint. Then they stole 10% of every commercial bank balance to prop the economy up. ('gave them a haircut'). They couldnt do that to all those people witha wodge of notes in a tin under the bed.

    With no cash, they have absolute control. And thats what its all its about, nothing else.

  • I'm fully aware of the implications. With physical cash in your pocket, you control what you do with this, with electronic money, you cede that control to others...

    I was talking about hacking in my OP, but it could just as easily be governments that switches off the machines depriving everyone of the ability to spend their own money, or the companies that run the networks or run the software that powers the networks.

  • I'm fully aware of the implications. With physical cash in your pocket, you control what you do with this, with electronic money, you cede that control to others...

    I was talking about hacking in my OP, but it could just as easily be governments that switches off the machines depriving everyone of the ability to spend their own money, or the companies that run the networks or run the software that powers the networks.

    absolutely. I was a silver stacker, i picked my moment a while ago, sold all the silver (Mainly Brittanias, 1oz bars and 250g bars) and doubled my investment over the last 5 years. You need a stash tho, i have a tin full of gold soveriegns. When the next collapse comes (prediction the next Milankovitch Winter, 2024) gold will spike again.

  • I'm not sure that gold will bounce back now if a currency collapse happens. It's lost the link to currency and I don't think its value is what it used to be.

    I think the new currency of the future will be something like water...

    oh it will, throught out history, people always revert to gold and silver as the currency of choice in dire times, because it never loses its value - its money, as opposed to fiat currency. That is the essential difference between money and currency - money is a store of value, currency isnt.

    Come the apocalypse the only things with value will be

    Food

    Water

    Guns

    Ammunition

    Fuel for warmth

    gold, silver and jewels for trading

    fuel for transport.


    How you gonna buy food with your bitcoins when the power is down and the net is gone? And wjhos gonna want you worthless paper money? Since paper money was invented ther has been more than 5000 fiat currencies inthe world, every single ones has collapsed to nothing. Every single one. Gold on the other hand, that gold bracelet on your wifes wrist may well be the same gold that was a ring on a Pharoes finger. Gold never goes away, gold is never destroyed, gold always holds its value.

  • Up until 1923 all coins were sterling silver. I used to collect old 4 pence coins because as all coins were silver, a groat (4 pence) had about a shillings worth of silver in them. After 1923 they were only 50% silver, and in 1949 they stopped putting silver into coins and they became fiat coins. See the point is, to make more coins you need more gold or silver, that means somone has to labour to mine it out the ground, and the government has to take tax money to buy it. So, fromthe goverments point of view, its a clever scam to dilute the coins down with base metals , so in fact you arent giving somone one shillings worth of silver in a shilling coin. So the valuable metal content of coins was debased until we have the worthless currency we have now.

    A £1 coin contains about 0.5p worth of base metal. A banknote is worthless, as it doesnt represent an amount of gold in a bank vault (which is what they used to do) And as more and more of these worthless, non precious metal coins and valueless scraps of paper are made, the less and less each one is actually worth. Theres a simple law in economics - prices increase to take up the excess in currency. EI, if you make more coins (or banknotes) then prices rise because you have more currency chasing the same goods. You have 'expanded' the economy by creating inflation. Not good. In 1972, the conenction between banknotes and gold, the Gold Standard, was broken, at that point gold and silver had no further role as everyday money.

    So what happened after 1972 to all the gold and silver that used to have to be in the bank vaults that orginally formed the coins and backed the bank notes?

    Simple. In 1972, the Bank of England, a private company, stole it all. They took it ,and used it to buy Government bonds to sell at a profit.. That gold and silver belonged to our ancestors. It shoudl have been returned to the people.

    • Staff Notice

    The UK Treasury has reprieved 1p and 2p coins, saying they will continue to be used "for years to come".

    The copper coins were theoretically under threat when Chancellor Philip Hammond consulted on the current mix of coins and banknotes in circulation.

    The chancellor has now said he wants people to "have a choice" over how they spend their money.

    So, copper coins are to stay, but the article goes on to say that this is linked to the vulnerable and it's to ensure that people always have access to cash. As you cannot buy anything with a penny and probably not with 2p either, I don't see the link here.

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