Cashless society...yes or no? Pros or cons?
Today, 80% of all transactions in Sweden are done electronically, or by debit card.
OTOH, countries such as Italy where cash is still preference numero uno. Italians use cash for three-quarters of transactions.
“That is due to the low confidence in the authorities and the banking system,”
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/sweden-leads-cashless-transactions/
So, whatcha think?
and why?
= new reply since forum marked as read
will make it to employees' pockets rather than get 'disappeared' because of shady employer practices. No waitperson I've ever asked has objected to the tip in cash! 
For most millennial I know this is not a problem. I'm one of the few people I work with that gets a paper check. When I go out to eat 40> carry cash 30< used debit cards. I think the economic transition of the information age is simply pushing cash free. The more used to/grew up in the information age the less you see the change. I don't see a problem with the government moving with the information age, but
Fees, hacking, identity thief are a problem! No doubt about it. However they all exist in the cash world too. If we had a responsive government then it would be less of a problem. Our problem is our Government is moving very slow to deal with problems of the information age in the oversight area while other areas of the government plunge feet first in. Hence very low acceptance and paranoia over this, particularly the older you get. I don't like the idea of a cash free world but when I see people at the farmers market with the credit card adapter on their Iphone... I know it is coming. In the real world we lose money to mint a penny, in the electronic world you can carry money to many decimal points. It is coming. I hope my congress moves out of the stone age and addresses the many issues involved as soon as their tubes get unblocked
But to think cashless society is not here already and going to be more and more incorporated seems unlikely. It is so strongly tied to the information age. Frankly they've been able to lock up your bank accounts for ages so the Minority Report is not something to freak out about Most people with any amount of money don't keep it in a mason jar under Funk and Wagnal's porch
My problem is pretty easy to state. Last year Target had a huge hacking of its information. There was almost zero response from our government. There is basically no requirements on private industry on how the store your financial data. It a huge game of trust me on the market right now. It reminds my of the roaring 20s. The stock exchanges were set up as a regulated market to replace old forms of often untrustworthy stock transactions. But in the 20s a larger percentage of the society moved into stocks in the self regulated stock exchanges was by no means good enough. Needless to say the lesson learned in the 30s on regulation of new economics was completely forgotten in the past 10+ years. On top of that you have the new information age where people want to carry money on cards, phones, instant internet transactions, etc. People want it, it is here to stay and it is rather nicer than carrying lumps of worthless paper around. A dollar bill during a crisis has less value than a can of baked beans. Cash and value can be rather relative (see cigarettes and prisons). But it is also almost all without any regulations. Targets penalty for being lazy with their information is/was minimum. It is Rand Paul's world of the idea that if people don't like it they won't shop there, but that philosophy never really works well. Eventually either the government is going to wake up and enter the information age or... so far we spent a lot of money on targeting the hackers by the NSA. It is rather amusing that the biggest hacking of the past few years is the NSA own employee walking off with their data to Russia. You'd think all this would get a big rise on "good" with the economy Republicans, but it is free market keep on sailing with them. To me the complete lack of rules, guidelines, and regulations from our government is the reason I'm weary of the cashless society. Just look at the bitcoin company that disappeared overnight with everyone's "money". Regulations are not a dirty word. If you don't have trust in a currency, economic system etc.. you are in trouble. The world trusts the US economy and has since WWII. We work hard to ruin that trust but so far we are still one of the better games in town. God help us when that's gone and it seems without regulation it has to go, don't it.
My parents are artists. They live in a rain forest, drink and wash with water that falls on their roof, and eat locally grown food.
My dad had a union job somewhat related to his art so he earned a decent retirement.
Everyone in our family who has money got there by accident.
The rest of us are perpetually starving artists, scientists, dreamers, and altruists.
I may die on the streets, and I've been homeless as a young man, but it's still "just money." There's something odd, unnatural, and even distasteful about distilling most everything humans do into a single metric.
My own "hard-wiring" evolved long before there was money. The reality of most human history, going back millions of years if you like, was to live within a community of people who shared, or more dangerously, not sharing, leaving the community, and living entirely alone.
Money as we know it now is a recent invention. Trade measured by diverse metrics and simple sharing are what we, as a social species, are "hard-wired" to do. Money is a recent invention.
Of all the intelligent social species on earth (there are quite a few) only modern urban humans relate almost everything to money. I think that's a failing, not an accomplishment, and one of the root causes of the current mass extinction event.
Nature will restore herself and your money will be worthless. We as humans can hold onto our money and become just as worthless and extinct, or we can let go of our money and live on in some kind of harmony with our own nature and the nature of life on earth.
