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How would you feel about a cashless society?

  • 02-06-2012 12:00pm
    #1
    gaffer91
    Registered Users Posts: 1,307 ✭✭✭


    Reading a few articles a few months ago here and here about moving towards a cashless society.

    The main pro I supposes would be a drastic reduction on crime and corruption, from muggings to bribery.

    The cons, as I see them would be that in the event of a real or perceived imminent banking or equity collapse people often withdraw savings and store them in cash-this option would be no longer available. I also see cash as a form of independence and privacy- I would rather that the bank and/or government did not have the power to see every transaction I make.

    There is also the problem that we still have laws where victimless crimes, specifically the drug trade, are prohibited. Cash allows the average punter to vote with his wallet if he or she so chooses.

    Smaller things would be ease for tipping, giving kids money for birthdays, selling goods to friends and so on. I'm sure there are others that I cannot think of. While minor points they should be taken on board nonetheless.

    In short, I think that cash is freedom, and we should never let our government or banks try to take it away from us. What do you think?


«1

Comments

  • #2
    SupaNova
    Closed Accounts Posts: 788 ✭✭✭SupaNova


    I would be skeptical of the claim that a cashless society would lead to dramatically lower crime and corruption.

    There was a thread on this recently:
    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056477782


  • #3
    Duggys Housemate
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,298 ✭✭✭Duggys Housemate


    Good point on the traceability of cash. That said most things I buy are cashless.

    However cash will never go away. For tipping, small purchases, and for where you want to be untraceable.


  • #4
    gaffer91
    Registered Users Posts: 1,307 ✭✭✭gaffer91


    SupaNova wrote: »
    I would be skeptical of the claim that a cashless society would lead to dramatically lower crime and corruption.

    There was a thread on this recently:
    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056477782

    Did a search but didn't find one, sorry.

    As for crime, realistically there is only so much guns you can buy with guns or diamonds.

    Another point just occurred to me- self control. People with cash tend to spend less. On a personal level for Irish people, carrying only a certain amount of cash on a night out will prevent you from blowing God knows how much when you're drunk. Another thing would be giving money to homeless people or on street charity collections. Again, minor points but worth taking on board.


  • #5
    RoverZT
    Registered Users Posts: 362 ✭✭RoverZT


    Banks here don't seem to want it anymore it seems.

    Only Ulster Bank offer free banking here now, Aib, Boi and the likes are charging per transaction if you don't have a certain amount in your account now.

    That effectively kills a cashless economy.

    No one likes being robbed.

    I loved using laser, but now they are charging me, they can **** off.


  • #6
    Kinski
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,555 ✭✭✭Kinski


    Ireland's heading for a cashless society, anyhow. In that we soon won't have any...:pac:


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  • #7
    usernamegoes
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 901 ✭✭✭usernamegoes


    An interesting electronic currency which solves some of the problems you mention is bitcoin. http://www.weusecoins.com/

    It does not require a third party to administer it so can't collapse. It's psedu-anonymous and is therefore used already for online drugs sales. It has a set number of coins which can't be increased by governments.


  • #8
    eth0
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,635 ✭✭✭eth0


    usernamegoes wrote: »
    An interesting electronic currency which solves some of the problems you mention is bitcoin. http://www.weusecoins.com/

    It does not require a third party to administer it so can't collapse. It's psedu-anonymous and is therefore used already for online drugs sales. It has a set number of coins which can't be increased by governments.

    bitcoin is an interesting concept but there's a few problems with it. not really as secure and anonymous as i'd like it to be

    I suppose something like this solves most of the big brother elements associated with traditional cashless payments. it just needs to be as convenient as cash is now. i suppose you could send bitcoins over bluetooth


  • #9
    usernamegoes
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 901 ✭✭✭usernamegoes


    eth0 wrote: »
    bitcoin is an interesting concept but there's a few problems with it. not really as secure and anonymous as i'd like it to be

    In terms on anonymity it can be anonymous as you can make it. If you need it to be ultra anonymous you can do it but for most purposes it fairly anonymous.

    As for security, there are some issue but mainly just be safe. Don't lose them (like cash, unlike cash though you can back them up), don't let them be stolen etc.
    I suppose something like this solves most of the big brother elements associated with traditional cashless payments. it just needs to be as convenient as cash is now. i suppose you could send bitcoins over bluetooth

    There are many working on making it as easy to use as cash including RFID from your phone etc. Also if you like cash then there's https://www.casascius.com/


  • #10
    gurramok
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,992 ✭✭✭✭gurramok


    Widespread skimming of debit and credit cards in this country over the last few years has severely dented people's confidence in a cashless society. Make this part more secure to give consumers confidence to move from cash.


  • #11
    SupaNova
    Closed Accounts Posts: 788 ✭✭✭SupaNova


    gaffer91 wrote: »
    Another point just occurred to me- self control. People with cash tend to spend less. On a personal level for Irish people, carrying only a certain amount of cash on a night out will prevent you from blowing God knows how much when you're drunk. Another thing would be giving money to homeless people or on street charity collections. Again, minor points but worth taking on board.

    You can put limits on cards, and you could have a card you use just for nights out, top up that card with the maximum you want to spend on a night out, and just bring that card. Its not much of a con.


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  • #12
    Sindri
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,059 ✭✭✭Sindri


    Electronic transactions of money like M-Pesa are where things are going.


  • #13
    Good loser
    Registered Users Posts: 3,212 ✭✭✭Good loser


    gaffer91 wrote: »
    Reading a few articles a few months ago here and here about moving towards a cashless society.

    The main pro I supposes would be a drastic reduction on crime and corruption, from muggings to bribery.

    The cons, as I see them would be that in the event of a real or perceived imminent banking or equity collapse people often withdraw savings and store them in cash-this option would be no longer available. I also see cash as a form of independence and privacy- I would rather that the bank and/or government did not have the power to see every transaction I make.

    There is also the problem that we still have laws where victimless crimes, specifically the drug trade, are prohibited. Cash allows the average punter to vote with his wallet if he or she so chooses.

    Smaller things would be ease for tipping, giving kids money for birthdays, selling goods to friends and so on. I'm sure there are others that I cannot think of. While minor points they should be taken on board nonetheless.

    In short, I think that cash is freedom, and we should never let our government or banks try to take it away from us. What do you think?

    Money is the lubricant that allows transactions/exchanges to occur.

    In the shape of gold and silver etc it has been around since antiquity (the Greeks used an amalgam of the two as well as each on its own).

    Instead of the physical handover transfers are now being done more and more electronically. The larger the transaction the less likely it will be in cash as these are more efficient.

    Below a certain size or level of income there will usually be a large amount of cash activity. The State will always control the currency to prevent frauds. Interesting question.


  • #14
    RMD
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,662 ✭✭✭RMD


    I'm quite pro-legalization when it comes to some drugs but to call the drugs trade a victimless crime is nothing short of pure ignorance. Tell the victims of muggings for drugs it's a victimless crime, tell the families destroyed by their junkie child / sibling it's a victimless crime.

    Many drugs can be used recreationally and without problem by responsible people, I do so myself. But there is also a handful of drugs that ruin the lives of the user, those around them and the general citizen can become a victim when a habit forms.

    [Rant Over]

    I'd hate the notion of a cashless society. I like the simplicity of cash, I like having it on me readily available to use. If the phone lines go down that means card transactions are out of the equation. Plus there's nothing more irritating than that arsehole who decides to pay for their 1 / 2 euro item with their lasercard and make us wait through the whole process. Cash on the otherhand, the transaction is done in 20 seconds.


  • #15
    Cool Story Bro
    Registered Users Posts: 20 ✭Cool Story Bro


    Bit of an effort lugging around cows to trade...


  • #16
    Gbear
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,775 ✭✭✭✭Gbear


    RMD wrote: »
    I'd hate the notion of a cashless society. I like the simplicity of cash, I like having it on me readily available to use. If the phone lines go down that means card transactions are out of the equation. Plus there's nothing more irritating than that arsehole who decides to pay for their 1 / 2 euro item with their lasercard and make us wait through the whole process. Cash on the otherhand, the transaction is done in 20 seconds.

    They seem like engineering problems rather than intrinsic ones.
    You can always steal cash but some form of credit card would be as safe as technology would allow.

    I think it would also serve to have more control of dole payments. Stop the people on the dole from buying things they don't need like fags and drink.

    Stop people doing nixers if there was no cash in hand payment.
    Make money laundering more difficult.
    Drug trade would be hard if you've got nothing to trade it against - they'd resort to barter maybe?

    Given that it has the capacity to be safer, easier to use and easier to regulate I would think that it's only a matter of how long the technology takes to mature.


  • #17
    eth0
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,635 ✭✭✭eth0


    Gbear wrote: »
    They seem like engineering problems rather than intrinsic ones.
    You can always steal cash but some form of credit card would be as safe as technology would allow.

    I think it would also serve to have more control of dole payments. Stop the people on the dole from buying things they don't need like fags and drink.

    Stop people doing nixers if there was no cash in hand payment.
    Make money laundering more difficult.
    Drug trade would be hard if you've got nothing to trade it against - they'd resort to barter maybe?

    Given that it has the capacity to be safer, easier to use and easier to regulate I would think that it's only a matter of how long the technology takes to mature.

    ah you are after the big brother type of cashless society. that is serious bad news


  • #18
    RMD
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,662 ✭✭✭RMD


    Gbear wrote: »
    I think it would also serve to have more control of dole payments. Stop the people on the dole from buying things they don't need like fags and drink.

    Stop people doing nixers if there was no cash in hand payment.
    Make money laundering more difficult.
    Drug trade would be hard if you've got nothing to trade it against - they'd resort to barter maybe?

    Given that it has the capacity to be safer, easier to use and easier to regulate I would think that it's only a matter of how long the technology takes to mature.

    The last thing I want is regulation. The idea of a big brother society where what I can buy is controlled by my method of payment, cash provides freedom.


  • #19
    gaffer91
    Registered Users Posts: 1,307 ✭✭✭gaffer91


    Good loser wrote: »

    Below a certain size or level of income there will usually be a large amount of cash activity.

    This could well be the case. In fact I hope it is. Would hate for cash to disappear entirely due to the privacy and freedom it gives people.
    RMD wrote: »
    I'm quite pro-legalization when it comes to some drugs but to call the drugs trade a victimless crime is nothing short of pure ignorance. Tell the victims of muggings for drugs it's a victimless crime, tell the families destroyed by their junkie child / sibling it's a victimless crime.

    Many drugs can be used recreationally and without problem by responsible people, I do so myself. But there is also a handful of drugs that ruin the lives of the user, those around them and the general citizen can become a victim when a habit forms.

    [Rant Over]

    The only reason the drug trade is not victimless is because of disastrous government intervention. Taking drugs, even if they harm you personally is in effect victimless.


  • #20
    Gbear
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,775 ✭✭✭✭Gbear


    RMD wrote: »
    The last thing I want is regulation. The idea of a big brother society where what I can buy is controlled by my method of payment, cash provides freedom.

    Regulation was probably the wrong word.

    Essentially, having no cash to hide in a "box under your bed" makes it difficult to evade taxes and also it makes it difficult for criminals to make their money disappear.

    With the right technology - no credit cards and just biometric scanners - it could make theft and identity theft a thing of the past.
    You'd have to frog march someone into a shop to buy stuff for you at knifepoint instead of just stealing their handy bits of paper money.

    Again, how much you keep your privacy is down to the details. Strong laws would be needed to stop the government from having too much power.
    Difficult to implement but not an intrinsic insurmountable problem either.


  • #21
    RMD
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,662 ✭✭✭RMD


    gaffer91 wrote: »
    The only reason the drug trade is not victimless is because of disastrous government intervention. Taking drugs, even if they harm you personally is in effect victimless.

    I'm sorry but please tell me how that logic works? The drug trade has victims because people develop habits which they can't control and must feed, I know this from my own experience. My cousin was a heroin addict till he od'ed 4 years ago, his addiction destroyed the lives of those around him and he was a pure and utter scumbag when it came to trying to feed his habit. His case wasn't just a 1 off either, hang around for Marlborough street / Talbot street / Abbey street / North Earl Street for a space of 10 minutes and you'll see the many other junkies walking around all in the same situation.

    Personal harm I couldn't give a shíte about, that's their own choice. It's when people take habit forming drugs and can't feed it, then it becomes a problem and victims occur. That's the one good thing I can see occurring through a cashless society, it will be much harder to mug people for cash / items that can be easily sold for cash.


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  • #22
    Wibbs
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Gbear wrote: »
    They seem like engineering problems rather than intrinsic ones.
    A problem with engineering solutions is too often they neglect or omit the human nature factor.
    You can always steal cash but some form of credit card would be as safe as technology would allow.
    Riiight, yet credit card fraud is up 62% since '09, even with pin numbers and other security measures. With any security technology the system will adapt and find ways around it. One could argue credit cards make stealing easier. I had 500 quid stolen from my credit card last year. Only showed up on my bill a month later. It had been taken in some small town in the US that I've never been to and have no reason to ever visit. They didn't need to stick a musket in my face and shout "stand and deliver!". Now this is a CC with chip and pin and all that stuff. I reported it and they apologised profusely and immediately credited my account with little pressure from me. When I asked was this a regular thing and how easy was it to do, cue embarrassed silence followed by hurried excuses and no explanation. Plus as computer power gets faster and faster password security gets weaker and weaker.
    I think it would also serve to have more control of dole payments. Stop the people on the dole from buying things they don't need like fags and drink.
    Dodgy enough to start with, but I guarantee that stuff wouldn't stop with people on the dole. Next it would be checks on purchases by everyone else, with no doubt the "it's for your health" excuse. No thanks.
    Stop people doing nixers if there was no cash in hand payment.
    Make money laundering more difficult.
    Drug trade would be hard if you've got nothing to trade it against - they'd resort to barter maybe?
    Unless the entire world went cashless overnight there's one major flaw in your argument. In the absence of local cash, people would just start using other currencies for such transactions. Barter on a small scale, but more like dollars/yen/whatever on a large scale. The former USSR a good example(and there are more), where the dollar was used as a secondary currency. They could even create a second CC system.
    Given that it has the capacity to be safer, easier to use and easier to regulate I would think that it's only a matter of how long the technology takes to mature.
    It's highly debatable if it's safer, easier to regulate up to a point, but that brings it's own civil liberty issues and the technology to bring it fruition would run side by side with the technology to circumvent it. Actually the latter would likely be ahead. It usually is.
    Essentially, having no cash to hide in a "box under your bed" makes it difficult to evade taxes and also it makes it difficult for criminals to make their money disappear.
    If people started a secondary currency market it would arguably make it easier to evade taxes. Making money disappear is even easier. As we speak criminals are making money disappear using the legal banking system and the instant wiring of money again makes it easier to launder money. It's harder in practical terms with cold hard cash.
    Again, how much you keep your privacy is down to the details. Strong laws would be needed to stop the government from having too much power.
    and like turkeys will vote for Christmas... Governments(naturally) tend to seek more power over time, they rarely give it up. The average government of today has more power and regulation over everyday life than they did 50 years ago.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • #23
    plasmaguy
    Registered Users Posts: 1,683 ✭✭✭plasmaguy


    I think a cashless society has some merits as long as it doesn't become a bartering economy.

    Something that overcomes the age old problem of inflation would be the greatest invention known to man. That is make everyone rich but also encourage them to spend sensibly and also not to use up scarce resources.

    Restricting the money supply which is probably sensible in helping to avoid inflation, can also cause hardship for a lot of people.

    It is an interesting area though to speculate in, what a moneyless society would be like.


  • #24
    C14N
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,656 ✭✭✭C14N


    Duggys Housemate wrote: »
    However cash will never go away. For tipping, small purchases, and for where you want to be untraceable.

    Not necessarily. I for one am pro-cashless society and I think problems like this are quite easy to solve. One way to do it would be to have two cards, one like the current Laser card for large transactions and one top up card which would basically replace cash and wouldn't require a pin code or any security, just a quick scan. I think that would actually be faster than cash, I have often found myself feelingly like I'm holding people behind me up when getting change out for small transactions or gathering change up to try and shove into the wallet after the transaction.

    I think most of the mainstream world will someday switch to cashless transactions entirely, even if not in my life.


  • #25
    Alun
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,487 ✭✭✭✭Alun


    C14N wrote: »
    One way to do it would be to have two cards, one like the current Laser card for large transactions and one top up card which would basically replace cash and wouldn't require a pin code or any security, just a quick scan.
    Such things already exist and you don't need two separate cards. In the Netherlands they have a facility called Chipknip that's integrated on to the same card.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipknip


  • #26
    gaffer91
    Registered Users Posts: 1,307 ✭✭✭gaffer91


    RMD wrote: »
    I'm sorry but please tell me how that logic works? The drug trade has victims because people develop habits which they can't control and must feed, I know this from my own experience. My cousin was a heroin addict till he od'ed 4 years ago, his addiction destroyed the lives of those around him and he was a pure and utter scumbag when it came to trying to feed his habit. His case wasn't just a 1 off either, hang around for Marlborough street / Talbot street / Abbey street / North Earl Street for a space of 10 minutes and you'll see the many other junkies walking around all in the same situation.

    Most of the harm from heroin, basically everything besides it's addictiveness AFAIK, is due to what it is cut with. It is only cut with harmful substances because it is illegal and criminals are trying to make more money.
    RMD wrote: »

    Personal harm I couldn't give a shíte about, that's their own choice. It's when people take habit forming drugs and can't feed it, then it becomes a problem and victims occur. That's the one good thing I can see occurring through a cashless society, it will be much harder to mug people for cash / items that can be easily sold for cash.

    I'm sorry to say it but your cousin unfortunately falls under the personal harm category. That is not blaming him for what happened but I would not class him as a victim.

    Correct about the mugging but I think concerns about freedom and privacy trump it.
    C14N wrote: »
    Not necessarily. I for one am pro-cashless society and I think problems like this are quite easy to solve.

    Why so?


  • #27
    opti0nal
    Closed Accounts Posts: 892 ✭✭✭opti0nal


    Gbear wrote: »
    .

    Again, how much you keep your privacy is down to the details. Strong laws would be needed to stop the government from having too much power.
    Difficult to implement but not an intrinsic insurmountable problem either.
    But the laws are formulated and implemented by the government....


  • #28
    Wibbs
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    gaffer91 wrote: »
    Why so?
    Indeed, given the various issues I outlined above, never mind the human nature factor that is so often left out of such Great Plans(tm). I can't see it being practical for a while anyway and like I said it would nearly be a requirement that this be rolled out worldwide.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • #29
    plasmaguy
    Registered Users Posts: 1,683 ✭✭✭plasmaguy


    Well armed bank robberies, tiger kidnapping and so on would become a thing of the past in a cashless society, I would imagine.

    Certainly the carrying around of physical cash makes all types or robberies from your old pensioner to your corner shop or pub right up to your large bank, very attractive targets for criminals.

    But that said, they would still look for the pin number off someone.


  • #30
    hyperborean
    Closed Accounts Posts: 655 ✭✭✭hyperborean


    The cashless society is a pipe dream, and not very well thought out...

    The reduction of use is fine and dandy, efficient even but there are too many barriers to complete removel of physical legal tender. Power outages for one.


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  • #31
    opti0nal
    Closed Accounts Posts: 892 ✭✭✭opti0nal


    hyperborean wrote: »
    The reduction of use is fine and dandy, efficient even but there are too many barriers to complete removel of physical legal tender. Power outages for one.
    When I tried to top-up my Rail Smart Card today, it was 'cash-only' as the machines had lost their connection to the bank.

    So, add 'comms failure' to the list of disadvantages.


  • #32
    Gbear
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,775 ✭✭✭✭Gbear


    Wibbs wrote: »
    Riiight, yet credit card fraud is up 62% since '09, even with pin numbers and other security measures. With any security technology the system will adapt and find ways around it. One could argue credit cards make stealing easier. I had 500 quid stolen from my credit card last year. Only showed up on my bill a month later. It had been taken in some small town in the US that I've never been to and have no reason to ever visit. They didn't need to stick a musket in my face and shout "stand and deliver!". Now this is a CC with chip and pin and all that stuff. I reported it and they apologised profusely and immediately credited my account with little pressure from me. When I asked was this a regular thing and how easy was it to do, cue embarrassed silence followed by hurried excuses and no explanation. Plus as computer power gets faster and faster password security gets weaker and weaker.

    In practice, we're in a mostly cash free society anyway, if you think about it.
    How many people actually keep large amounts of cash around?
    As it is, most people take cash out only when they need it. When they don't, it only exists digitally.

    What's the difference in security between what we have now and a completely cashless society? It's sitting in my account waiting for people to hack in and steal it as we speak. How will allowing me to skip the step of taking money out of the wall altogether make it less safe?

    No system's perfect but because it's more convenient it's probably the way we're heading regardless.

    Wibbs wrote: »
    Dodgy enough to start with, but I guarantee that stuff wouldn't stop with people on the dole. Next it would be checks on purchases by everyone else, with no doubt the "it's for your health" excuse. No thanks.

    There's a difference between spending your own money or the governments money.
    It's not actually really all that relevant here. I shouldn't have brought it up.
    Wibbs wrote: »
    Unless the entire world went cashless overnight there's one major flaw in your argument. In the absence of local cash, people would just start using other currencies for such transactions. Barter on a small scale, but more like dollars/yen/whatever on a large scale. The former USSR a good example(and there are more), where the dollar was used as a secondary currency. They could even create a second CC system.

    An interesting point.
    Again, a practical difficulty, but it doesn't really matter when determining what form of money is better in principal.
    First we decide if it's a good idea, then we can determine how best to implement it.:)
    Wibbs wrote: »
    It's highly debatable if it's safer, easier to regulate up to a point, but that brings it's own civil liberty issues and the technology to bring it fruition would run side by side with the technology to circumvent it. Actually the latter would likely be ahead. It usually is.
    See above point.
    Wibbs wrote: »
    If people started a secondary currency market it would arguably make it easier to evade taxes. Making money disappear is even easier. As we speak criminals are making money disappear using the legal banking system and the instant wiring of money again makes it easier to launder money. It's harder in practical terms with cold hard cash.

    The example was more about how there'd be a very obvious paper trail of junkies buying heroin off you and so forth but I take your point.



    With the difficulties mentioned a "perfect" cashless system - one with infinite security and convenience, is unlikely. But I suspect we'll continue towards that kind of system and eventually be as near to cashless as makes no difference. Some convenience will be sacrificed for acceptable security.


  • #33
    femur61
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,588 ✭✭✭femur61


    I notiecd in Paris a few years ago someone in McDonalds paying for a burger and chips with card and someone buying milk in a small shop using a card. Thought strange but unusual. Apparantly, not so an Austrian friend says nobody uses cash on the continent. He is semie retired here and all his bank transactions here and his home country are via internet,phone or card.


  • #34
    stefanovich
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,490 ✭✭✭stefanovich


    C14N wrote: »
    Duggys Housemate wrote: »
    However cash will never go away. For tipping, small purchases, and for where you want to be untraceable.

    Not necessarily. I for one am pro-cashless society and I think problems like this are quite easy to solve. One way to do it would be to have two cards, one like the current Laser card for large transactions and one top up card which would basically replace cash and wouldn't require a pin code or any security, just a quick scan. I think that would actually be faster than cash, I have often found myself feelingly like I'm holding people behind me up when getting change out for small transactions or gathering change up to try and shove into the wallet after the transaction.

    I think most of the mainstream world will someday switch to cashless transactions entirely, even if not in my life.
    New BOI Visa debit cards have an RFID chip which allows purchases up to 15 euro by just touching the card against a sensor. No pin needed.


  • #35
    hyperborean
    Closed Accounts Posts: 655 ✭✭✭hyperborean


    stefanovich wrote: »
    New BOI Visa debit cards have an RFID chip which allows purchases up to 15 euro by just touching the card against a sensor. No pin needed.
    great idea, wonder when the infrastructure will be in place for this to work....


  • #36
    donegal_road
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,281 ✭✭✭donegal_road


    what will the army do if Ireland becomes cashless?


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  • #37
    sarkozy
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,476 ✭✭✭sarkozy


    Cash or money is a 'universal exchange commodity'. Money has a long history, but simply, it came to be because it simplified things a lot. Instead of every single trade taking place on an ad hoc basis between, say, a farmer exchanging a sheep for two goats one day, and two goats for a wheelbarrow the next - the going 'price' - it meant people could exchange things much more easily and establish more commonly understood 'prices'.

    So, money is, theoretically a goat or a sheep or a wheelbarrow, but the power complex (be it a state or a local community) has established this money or cash as the commonly understood commodity for exchanging all kinds of things.

    And this made all kinds of things possible.

    I'm very much in favour of alternative money systems because it's clear from this and previous global crises that the debt-based money system we toil under isn't working.

    This links to the observation that money collapses certain various forms of 'value' into one - like regular commodities. One is the value of work gone into it - with all monies, someone had to work to make it by mining metals, etc. Another value is its use value - money is useful because it more smoothly facilitates trade between people (a wheelbarrow is useful to people in different ways, too, e.g. for transporting garden rubbish that's hard to carry, or drunken people who are hard to carry). Finally the exchange value is the value that is agreed between two people in a specific time and place and at which they will trade it for something else.

    Will we move to a cashless society? I'd like to see the money system change towards something more 'voucher' based. But I'd also like to see 'money' exist alongside other forms of exchange (like various gift economies or barter systems) and even to experiment in parallel money systems. There are lots of interesting experiments happening, in Ireland as some have mentioned. Some Feasta books explain some of these in detail.


  • #38
    C14N
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,656 ✭✭✭C14N


    gaffer91 wrote: »
    Why so?

    C14N wrote: »
    One way to do it would be to have two cards, one like the current Laser card for large transactions and one top up card which would basically replace cash and wouldn't require a pin code or any security, just a quick scan. I think that would actually be faster than cash, I have often found myself feelingly like I'm holding people behind me up when getting change out for small transactions or gathering change up to try and shove into the wallet after the transaction.

    As others have pointed out there are already some systems in place that solve this problem even better than the way I suggested.
    hyperborean wrote: »
    The reduction of use is fine and dandy, efficient even but there are too many barriers to complete removel of physical legal tender. Power outages for one.


    Do power outages not prevent most transactions now anyway since cash registers won't work and therefore won't be able to keep track of accounts?


  • #39
    sweeney1971
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 191 ✭✭sweeney1971


    Read the Bible. The start of the 'Mark of the Beast'


  • #40
    Fromthetrees
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,846 ✭✭✭Fromthetrees


    I think a completely cashless society is an absolutely crazy idea. It's just simply not taking really basic factors into account about the practicality of all of it.


    A couple of really basic 'real world' examples,

    When I'm in the car and there is the fela selling the paper on the road, I role down the window, hand him 2 euro, take the paper and drive off basically without even having to stop the car fully, couldn't be any easier.

    Farmers markets and market stalls are getting more and more common (and rightly so), is the lady who knits woolly hats in her spare time and tries to flog a few on a Saturday morning expected to invest in electronic chip and pin technology, same goes for the man trying to sell a few apples, it just doesn't make sense.


    With weather getting more and more unpredictable around the world then we would be literally at the mercy of it at all times, a 24 hour power failure could literally cause chaos as people suddenly realise they have no way to feed themselves or even fill their car with petrol, it would be madness.


    We will always need a tangible currency of some kind and if the government decided to abandon it then I can guarantee you one would rise up in it's place (whether it be deemed legal or not).

    I can only speak for myself but I am simply not afraid of getting mugged in person, maybe if I was a 90 year old woman I might be, but I'm just simply not.
    I am afraid that anyone on the planet with the wherewithal could 'hack' my debit card or my electronic banking details though.


    Privacy and trust are the main reasons that we cannot move completely towards a cashless society. I (like many people) simply don't trust banks or corporations. What's to stop banks raising their transaction fees every year, the answer is nothing in a cashless society.The digital world is meant to supplement the physical world, not replace it.


    Google 'paypal freeze'.


  • #41
    Gbear
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,775 ✭✭✭✭Gbear


    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    When I'm in the car and there is the fela selling the paper on the road, I role down the window, hand him 2 euro, take the paper and drive off basically without even having to stop the car fully, couldn't be any easier.

    He has a little wireless dongle. You swipe your card against it (or even better, a chip embedded in your finger). Transaction complete.
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    Farmers markets and market stalls are getting more and more common (and rightly so), is the lady who knits woolly hats in her spare time and tries to flog a few on a Saturday morning expected to invest in electronic chip and pin technology, same goes for the man trying to sell a few apples, it just doesn't make sense.

    'Invest' in the dongle mentioned above that costs a tenner?
    Besides. I don't think anyone said stop using money tomorrow.
    There'll likely be stragglers but given that we're already in a mostly cashless society and convenience is king, by stages, we will approach closer and closer to a cashless society.

    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    With weather getting more and more unpredictable around the world then we would be literally at the mercy of it at all times, a 24 hour power failure could literally cause chaos as people suddenly realise they have no way to feed themselves or even fill their car with petrol, it would be madness.

    Jaysus that's a terrible point. Weather getting more and more unpredictable? Really?

    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    We will always need a tangible currency of some kind and if the government decided to abandon it then I can guarantee you one would rise up in it's place (whether it be deemed legal or not).

    There'll probably always be a small amount of backup hard currency but in all likelyhood, we'll get to a point (and probably in the next 20 years I think) where we'll almost never use it.

    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    I can only speak for myself but I am simply not afraid of getting mugged in person, maybe if I was a 90 year old woman I might be, but I'm just simply not.
    I am afraid that anyone on the planet with the wherewithal could 'hack' my debit card or my electronic banking details though.
    But they can already do that.
    What would change if you replaced the act of going to the ATM now and again, with just leaving money in your account all the time?
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    Privacy and trust are the main reasons that we cannot move completely towards a cashless society. I (like many people) simply don't trust banks or corporations. What's to stop banks raising their transaction fees every year, the answer is nothing in a cashless society.The digital world is meant to supplement the physical world, not replace it.

    Again, the banks already control all your money. They already have transaction fees at some ATMs.

    This red herring keeps coming up again and again.
    We're already in the situation described. Seemingly, we like it too much to go back.
    How many people store all their cash under their bed? They are the ones who aren't beholden to banks and power cuts and whatever else.


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  • #42
    Fromthetrees
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,846 ✭✭✭Fromthetrees


    Gbear]He has a little wireless dongle. You swipe your card against it (or even better, a chip embedded in your finger). Transaction complete.

    The bit about having a 'chip embedded' in my finger kinda makes my head explode, I think it's a crazy way to go. How is this in anyway necessary?
    Like I said, the current way I buy my paper cannot in any way be quicker or easier, I don't even stop the car fully, it takes about 3 seconds.
    I just have the attitude if it ain't broke, don't fix.
    'Invest' in the dongle mentioned above that costs a tenner?
    Besides. I don't think anyone said stop using money tomorrow.
    There'll likely be stragglers but given that we're already in a mostly cashless society and convenience is king, by stages, we will approach closer and closer to a cashless society.

    I agree we will use less and less cash in the future but never (in my opinion) to the extent of a cashless society.
    Too many people deal in mainly cash for them to accept it for one.

    Jaysus that's a terrible point. Weather getting more and more unpredictable? Really?

    It's actually by far the most serious point. If we rely exclusively on electronic equipment to pay for goods and services and there is a, lets say 72 hour power blackout, how is the whole of society going to function?

    What about a flood that damages the electronic equipment necessary for a shop to function whereas in a cash society they may have been able to open as soon as the flood has reseeded?

    There'll probably always be a small amount of backup hard currency but in all likelyhood, we'll get to a point (and probably in the next 20 years I think) where we'll almost never use it.

    I just don't know, I like going down to the post office and paying my bills in cash (and I suspect I'm not the only one).
    Personally, I think the direct debit is the greatest curse to my financial mental health, stupid X company taking vast sums of money out of my account without telling me (I accept this is just a personal gripe).
    But they can already do that.
    What would change if you replaced the act of going to the ATM now and again, with just leaving money in your account all the time?

    Common sense would tell me that the more presence you have online (with correct details ;)) both financial and personal the more vulnerable you are to being compromised in any way.
    Again, the banks already control all your money. They already have transaction fees at some ATMs.

    Did you google 'paypal freeze'? It's pretty scary.
    In a non cashless society I know I have enough to get me by if someone, anyone 'decides' to freeze my bank/ financial account.
    This red herring keeps coming up again and again.
    We're already in the situation described. Seemingly, we like it too much to go back.
    How many people store all their cash under their bed? They are the ones who aren't beholden to banks and power cuts and whatever else.

    I think you'd be surprised by the amount of people that keep a sizeable amount of cash in a 'safe place'. I'd almost say most old people do it and with distrust of banks at an all time high more and more people are doing it now.

    Again, what's to stop banks raising their transaction fees every year, the answer is nothing in a cashless society.


  • #43
    sweeney1971
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 191 ✭✭sweeney1971


    The Mark of the Beast. Revelation 13:16-18


  • #44
    Gbear
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,775 ✭✭✭✭Gbear


    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    The bit about having a 'chip embedded' in my finger kinda makes my head explode, I think it's a crazy way to go. How is this in anyway necessary?
    Like I said, the current way I buy my paper cannot in any way be quicker or easier, I don't even stop the car fully, it takes about 3 seconds.
    I just have the attitude if it ain't broke, don't fix.

    Convenience isn't necessary - it's nice.
    Never having to worry about cash and having a chip in your finger would be really really convenient.
    If you needed to buy anything all you need to have is your finger and it only takes a second.
    Whether getting the paper off yer man at the side of the road (incidentally, papers will probably disappear within 20 years) is quicker with the swipe of a finger or if you happen to have the exact change handy isn't really relevant.

    If in general it's quicker to use the chip in your finger then most things will switch to that system if possible.
    If it's faster to use the chip for 9/10 things you're better off having more convenience 9 times out of 10 and a little less convenience the 1/10.
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    I agree we will use less and less cash in the future but never (in my opinion) to the extent of a cashless society.
    Too many people deal in mainly cash for them to accept it for one.

    Now they do but things change - for example; cheques are getting rarer. Some businesses I know have stopped accepting them from alot of their debtors.
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    It's actually by far the most serious point. If we rely exclusively on electronic equipment to pay for goods and services and there is a, lets say 72 hour power blackout, how is the whole of society going to function?

    What about a flood that damages the electronic equipment necessary for a shop to function whereas in a cash society they may have been able to open as soon as the flood has reseeded?

    Again you seem to be assuming that we'll advance only in the technology for the details of cashless society.
    For example, cheap minaturised power storage would solve the power cut problem.
    Again, if power cuts were still too much of a problem then until that problem was solved, we wouldn't adopt that aspect.
    And failing all technology, a bit of backup hard currency could be kept.
    People could buy special backup money that could only be used in the event of emergency.
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    Common sense would tell me that the more presence you have online (with correct details ;)) both financial and personal the more vulnerable you are to being compromised in any way.

    Maybe, but me not taking money out of my ATM to buy things wouldn't really have much affect on that.
    In practice, if I went cashless it would be the same as having money in my account and not using it from a security point of view.
    If someone can steal money from your account then it's only ever safe when you happen to take it out.

    So if you got a paycheck and the same day took it out of a bank as cash or only ever received payment in cash then you'd be safe from people robbing your bank account.
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    Did you google 'paypal freeze'? It's pretty scary.
    In a non cashless society I know I have enough to get me by if someone, anyone 'decides' to freeze my bank/ financial account.

    Do you? If at all times you've got a huge amount of cash lying about then yes, but if like me and most people, you generally keep all your cash in the bank most of the time then it wouldn't make much of a difference.
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    I think you'd be surprised by the amount of people that keep a sizeable amount of cash in a 'safe place'. I'd almost say most old people do it and with distrust of banks at an all time high more and more people are doing it now.
    Perhaps. I don't have any actual numbers though so I don't really know. Do you? I would like to see statistics on how many people prefer to keep money "under the mattress".
    I suspect it's pretty small, certainly in the western world.
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    Again, what's to stop banks raising their transaction fees every year, the answer is nothing in a cashless society.
    What's to stop them doing it in a non-cashless society?
    You could not have a bank account and thus be protected.

    Again, I think the situations that would arise resulting in less privacy and more control to the banks has actually already passed. It happened whenever nearly everyone started giving their money to banks for safe keeping.


  • #45
    Gbear
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,775 ✭✭✭✭Gbear


    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    No, I don't want a chip embedded in my finger, it's just a crazy road I don't want to go down, technology is suppose to supplement our lives, not become apart of us. I think it's convenient to have choice, pay with your cash or card.
    Embedding chips in the human body has many other consequences that go far beyond wanting a cashless society.
    Cybernetics is the future, probably.

    Heard an interesting question asked today.
    When do you suppose the first perfectly healthy person will replace an organ or a limb with a synthetic one?

    Handy to see in UV or have a wider, sharper field of vision.

    Anyway, you can still be stuck with your archaic card while the rest of us carry on with chipped payment.:pac:
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    I find cash absurdly easy, fast and convenient to use 9 out of 10 times

    Cheques have been replaced by electronic payment, essentially the same
    method though.

    Having to carry around cash and count it out very simply isn't quicker then a small finger movement.
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    People buying 'backup hard currency' in case of an emergency seems quite unrealistic given that it would be an emergency.
    It'd be like a spare tire or something. You have some in case of emergency before the emergency happens.
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    The whole concept just seems unworkable regardless of technological advancement, we're still human and having hard tangible currency for general purposes seems the only way small transactions work properly in all situations all of the time.
    We're talking about people being able to eat here and not having poor reception on a tv (and make no exception, that's what we're talking about).

    I've just explained a perfectly plausible mechanism for small scale transactions. There's probably millions of other ways you could do it.

    Almost nothing humans make works perfectly - TV's, surgery, democracy, birth control.
    Do we abandon living in houses because they might burn down or collapse in an earthquake?
    No. It doesn't need to be 100% secure or 100% efficient - it only needs to be an improvement on balance.

    So far I've seen nothing to suggest that it would be any less secure given how reliant we already are on the power not failing or the possibility that someone could steal money from our bank account.
    We're already past the point where technology is embedded in how we trade. From a security point of view to be logically consistent if you oppose cashlessness, you should also be opposed to the way banking and trade is done now.

    Fromthetrees wrote: »

    I know a lot of what you're saying is based on technological advances in the future but that doesn't change human problems occurring, Communism to some looks great on paper.

    What human problems? I'm not sure I've actually seen anything so far in this thread other than technological problems or citing problems that we already have around cashlessness that don't seem to bother us enough to stop using it.
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    When your details are all over the internet it is far easier for you to be robbed in general, if I walk down the road with 10,000 euro then only the people who pass on the way to where I'm going can steal that cash, online your open to anyone with an internet connection technically, just to repeat, you're far less likely to be compromised.

    But nearly no one does that. Who walks around with 10 grand? Drug dealers?
    We already face these problems but they don't seem to be important enough to turn people away from keeping their money with banks.
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    In a cashless society the banks and whoever owns/controls them has absolute power without question over everything (thus being able to hike up transaction fees without repercussion), in a cash/electronic cash society everyone has the power. Today (if you choose) you can live your life without a bank account, without debt, without an 'embedded chip', without cards/devices/electronics/gadgets, without a car, ID ect., all you need is an accepted physically currency which I think is an innate tenet of our freedom, it makes us human.

    You can do so, but virtually nobody does. This is the point I keep coming back to. We do not live in a society broadly independent from electronic banking - it's already deeply embedded because it's really handy to not have to go to the shops and instead have them deliver your groceries to your door, or buying an obscure album that you couldn't hope to find otherwise via amazon or something.

    I don't really think cashlessness would be imposed.
    I think it'll get to a point where there's almost no cash in circulation any more and it stops being worth the hassle to print it.

    The overriding sense I get here is one of technophobia.


  • #46
    Fromthetrees
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,846 ✭✭✭Fromthetrees


    Gbear;]Convenience isn't necessary - it's nice.
    Never having to worry about cash and having a chip in your finger would be really really convenient.
    If you needed to buy anything all you need to have is your finger and it only takes a second.
    Whether getting the paper off yer man at the side of the road (incidentally, papers will probably disappear within 20 years) is quicker with the swipe of a finger or if you happen to have the exact change handy isn't really relevant.

    No, I don't want a chip embedded in my finger, it's just a crazy road I don't want to go down, technology is suppose to supplement our lives, not become apart of us. I think it's convenient to have choice, pay with your cash or card.
    Embedding chips in the human body has many other consequences that go far beyond wanting a cashless society.
    If in general it's quicker to use the chip in your finger then most things will switch to that system if possible.
    If it's faster to use the chip for 9/10 things you're better off having more convenience 9 times out of 10 and a little less convenience the 1/10.



    Now they do but things change - for example; cheques are getting rarer. Some businesses I know have stopped accepting them from alot of their debtors.

    I find cash absurdly easy, fast and convenient to use 9 out of 10 times

    Cheques have been replaced by electronic payment, essentially the same
    method though.
    Again you seem to be assuming that we'll advance only in the technology for the details of cashless society.
    For example, cheap minaturised power storage would solve the power cut problem.
    Again, if power cuts were still too much of a problem then until that problem was solved, we wouldn't adopt that aspect.
    And failing all technology, a bit of backup hard currency could be kept.
    People could buy special backup money that could only be used in the event of emergency.

    People buying 'backup hard currency' in case of an emergency seems quite unrealistic given that it would be an emergency.

    The whole concept just seems unworkable regardless of technological advancement, we're still human and having hard tangible currency for general purposes seems the only way small transactions work properly in all situations all of the time.
    We're talking about people being able to eat here, not having poor reception on a tv (and make no exception, that's what we're talking about).

    I know a lot of what you're saying is based on technological advances in the future but that doesn't change human problems occurring, Communism to some looks great on paper.
    Maybe, but me not taking money out of my ATM to buy things wouldn't really have much affect on that.
    In practice, if I went cashless it would be the same as having money in my account and not using it from a security point of view.
    If someone can steal money from your account then it's only ever safe when you happen to take it out.

    So if you got a paycheck and the same day took it out of a bank as cash or only ever received payment in cash then you'd be safe from people robbing your bank account.

    When your details are all over the internet it is far easier for you to be robbed in general, if I walk down the road with 10,000 euro then only the people who pass on the way to where I'm going can steal that cash, online your open to anyone with an internet connection technically, just to repeat, you're far less likely to be compromised.
    Do you? If at all times you've got a huge amount of cash lying about then yes, but if like me and most people, you generally keep all your cash in the bank most of the time then it wouldn't make much of a difference.


    Perhaps. I don't have any actual numbers though so I don't really know. Do you? I would like to see statistics on how many people prefer to keep money "under the mattress".
    I suspect it's pretty small, certainly in the western world.

    What's to stop them doing it in a non-cashless society?
    You could not have a bank account and thus be protected.

    Again, I think the situations that would arise resulting in less privacy and more control to the banks has actually already passed. It happened whenever nearly everyone started giving their money to banks for safe keeping.

    In a cashless society the banks and whoever owns/controls them has absolute power without question over everything (thus being able to hike up transaction fees without repercussion), in a cash/electronic cash society everyone has the power. Today (if you choose) you can live your life without a bank account, without debt, without an 'embedded chip', without cards/devices/electronics/gadgets, without a car, ID ect., all you need is an accepted physically currency which I think is an innate tenet of our freedom, it makes us human.


  • #47
    C14N
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,656 ✭✭✭C14N


    Sorry in advance for these walls of text but most of the problems brought up by Fromthetrees are actually very solvable.
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    When I'm in the car and there is the fela selling the paper on the road, I role down the window, hand him 2 euro, take the paper and drive off basically without even having to stop the car fully, couldn't be any easier.

    Okay kind of an obscure example for a niche audience but lets go with it.

    How would swiping a quick magnetic card off a small device to pay the €2 be any slower? I take the bus a lot (something that uses cash traditionally) and I can say without a shadow of doubt that the people who use Leapcard or Buss pass are much faster than the ones using change. Also, you assume you have exactly €2 on hand at all times, not everyone does. Some people have to count out their change and some need to get change back, both of which are much slower than a quick scan. Others still have no change on them at all for whatever reason.

    Farmers markets and market stalls are getting more and more common (and rightly so), is the lady who knits woolly hats in her spare time and tries to flog a few on a Saturday morning expected to invest in electronic chip and pin technology, same goes for the man trying to sell a few apples, it just doesn't make sense.

    You could honestly sell these for a few Euro or even in the longterm have it integrated into a smartphone. You might say an old lady won't have a smartphone but they will some day. This isn't going to happen overnight.

    With weather getting more and more unpredictable around the world then we would be literally at the mercy of it at all times, a 24 hour power failure could literally cause chaos as people suddenly realise they have no way to feed themselves or even fill their car with petrol, it would be madness.

    Okay this is a really unusual one. I assume you mean some kind of nationwide blackout, not just the localised power outages we have now that are usually sorted in a few hours and this would be unprecedented. Now I'm not sure what sort of disaster would have to happen to cause this but you can be sure it would result in serious consequences even now.

    If all power went out across the country for a full day, you can be sure shops wouldn't be opening anyway, business would come to a halt. No supermarket (or really any shop I could think of) would operate without its
    • CCTV
    • infrared scanners
    • electrical doors
    • heating
    • cash registers
    • refrigerators
    • plenty of other things

    A cashless society would barely change that. And honestly, I think most people have enough food in the house to ration themselves for one day.

    I would honestly say to leave this argument alone because there is no history of something like this happening with the present infrastructure in place.



    I can only speak for myself but I am simply not afraid of getting mugged in person, maybe if I was a 90 year old woman I might be, but I'm just simply not.
    I am afraid that anyone on the planet with the wherewithal could 'hack' my debit card or my electronic banking details though.

    That is a sort of unjustified fear and if you really think that, you just won't ever be able to keep any substantial amount of money in a bank account. Say what you want about "hacking" into accounts and stealing money, there are ways of making up for that. If I withdrew all of my current account and savings, I'm pretty liable to having that stolen. I've been burgled before and had my cash stolen and I'm sure far more people can say that than can say all their money disappeared overnight from their account.

    What's to stop banks raising their transaction fees every year, the answer is nothing in a cashless society.

    What's to stop them now? Banks have 99% of the world's money already. What's to stop them charging you every time you withdraw your cash or just imposing annual fees for the fun? Nothing really other than the fact that another bank can just do it for free and everyone will flock to that bank, as well as maybe consumer protection laws.

    The digital world is meant to supplement the physical world, not replace it.

    I no longer read newspapers, I get news online.
    I no longer send letters, I use email.
    I have seriously reduced how much I text message, I use Facebook.
    I don't go to travel agents, I book holidays online.
    I don't watch much TV, I watch Youtube.
    I'm not having this discussion in a pub, I'm doing it on boards.ie
    I don't have an Encyclopaedia, I have Google.

    I'm sure I could go on for hours. What I'm saying is that in many cases, technology HAS replaced physical things and it will keep doing it. There's nothing wrong with that. Your statement seems to be conservationism for the sake of it.


    Google 'paypal freeze'.

    Paypal is just one private company who act as a middleman in small online transactions. They aren't a bank and people don't rely on them to nearly the same extent.
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    The bit about having a 'chip embedded' in my finger kinda makes my head explode, I think it's a crazy way to go. How is this in anyway necessary?

    It isn't. Honestly it will probably never happen, it was just an imaginary scenario but really it wouldn't be in any way harmful. It's more likely that a cashless society would be done by card or using smartphones for the forseeable future.

    Like I said, the current way I buy my paper cannot in any way be quicker or easier, I don't even stop the car fully, it takes about 3 seconds.

    Yes it can, see my post above. For lots of people, it does not take 3 seconds.

    I just have the attitude if it ain't broke, don't fix.

    This is a dangerous attitude that impedes any progress from happening at all. Brace yourself for another list.

    Horses weren't broke, we still made engines.
    Boats weren't broke, yet airplanes are the standard now for international travel.
    Going to a bank to get out money worked for years, but some bright spark still came up with ATMs.
    People loved silent movies in black and white but someone changed that.
    Telegraph did the job, and landlines after that but mobile phones dominate today.

    Basically if everyone took this attitude, we would still be hunter gatherers who never bothered with agriculture because hunting and gathering had been fine up until now.


    Too many people deal in mainly cash for them to accept it for one.

    As Gbear pointed out, lots of people once dealt in cheques, yet they've nearly gone the way of the dodo. Countless other things (see previous list) were done "the old way" for a long time before the new one became standard.


    It's actually by far the most serious point. If we rely exclusively on electronic equipment to pay for goods and services and there is a, lets say 72 hour power blackout, how is the whole of society going to function?

    Wow, now it's up to 72 hours. Just to repeat the main point, there is no reason to believe that would happen and it would cause so many problems if it happened even now that the "cashless society" part would make a negligible difference.

    I just don't know, I like going down to the post office and paying my bills in cash (and I suspect I'm not the only one).
    Personally, I think the direct debit is the greatest curse to my financial mental health, stupid X company taking vast sums of money out of my account without telling me (I accept this is just a personal gripe).

    You're probably not the only one but that opinion will become much less popular very soon. Going paperless is becoming very popular for paying bills, I know because my own mother is an accountant for a company who prints up physical bills for companies to send off and she genuinely might be out of a job in a few years due to the fact that fewer and fewer companies are looking for this service.

    Common sense would tell me that the more presence you have online (with correct details ;)) both financial and personal the more vulnerable you are to being compromised in any way.

    What does this have to do with a cashless society? :confused: You don't suddenly have to start putting all your details online or even use the internet at all.


    In a non cashless society I know I have enough to get me by if someone, anyone 'decides' to freeze my bank/ financial account.

    If your money is stored on a top up card, how is that any different? And unless you are going around with literally hundreds or maybe thousands, you won't last too long anyway without needing to withdraw (since you said you pay bills and such in cash, not to mention things like food and fuel).

    I think you'd be surprised by the amount of people that keep a sizeable amount of cash in a 'safe place'. I'd almost say most old people do it and with distrust of banks at an all time high more and more people are doing it now.

    Do you have any official figures on this? If not then it's a moot point. Either way, this is a foolish thing to do. Even if you don't trust the banks, its far safer there than in your own house.

    Again, what's to stop banks raising their transaction fees every year, the answer is nothing in a cashless society.

    see previous post
    Fromthetrees wrote: »
    No, I don't want a chip embedded in my finger, it's just a crazy road I don't want to go down, technology is suppose to supplement our lives, not become apart of us.

    This is just fear talking. It doesn't even make sense. If I have to get a prosthetic limb or a metallic hip, isn't that "technology becoming a part" of me? Especially if it's one of those new prosthetic limbs that you can control with your brain.

    I think it's convenient to have choice, pay with your cash or card.


    Ignoring the "embedded chips" thing, how is it convenient to have this choice?

    Cheques have been replaced by electronic payment, essentially the same
    method though.

    Exactly, and you could easily make cashless payments essentially the same method as ones using cash.

    People buying 'backup hard currency' in case of an emergency seems quite unrealistic given that it would be an emergency.

    Wat.:confused: This is like saying "people buying fire extinguishers for an emergency seems unrealistic given that it would be an emergency".



    The whole concept just seems unworkable regardless of technological advancement, we're still human and having hard tangible currency for general purposes seems the only way small transactions work properly in all situations all of the time.

    It absolutely does not seem unworkable, all the reasons you have given for it not working are really just down to your personal tastes and mistrust of banks with money.

    How does our humanity have any solid link to tangible currency?

    And small transactions are already being taken care of by electronic means (as a few other posters have pointed out).

    We're talking about people being able to eat here, not having poor reception on a tv (and make no exception, that's what we're talking about).

    No we aren't. Apart from your unrealistic total blackout scenario, there is nothing about electronic payment that stops people from eating. I know this because the majority of my food is paid for electronically without a hitch and that's using today's primitive technology.

    I know a lot of what you're saying is based on technological advances in the future but that doesn't change human problems occurring, Communism to some looks great on paper.

    :confused: What exactly are these human problems?

    When your details are all over the internet it is far easier for you to be robbed in general, if I walk down the road with 10,000 euro then only the people who pass on the way to where I'm going can steal that cash, online your open to anyone with an internet connection technically, just to repeat, you're far less likely to be compromised.

    No, this just isn't true in any way. Walking around with lots of cash is dangerous and you are far more likely to lose it. I walked through Dublin today and I must have passed a few hundred people. A good portion could have mugged me if they had a knife. I could safely say that NONE could just hack in and steal money from my bank account. I think you might have been watching too many movies and TV shows because you seem to think that any teenager good with computers can walk into a stranger's bank account and empty it. Bank account's being compromised are extremely rare if not unheard of entirely. Getting mugged or burgled isn't. Why do you think the bank has the army transporting it's cash if just stealing it online is so easy?


    In a cashless society the banks and whoever owns/controls them has absolute power without question over everything (thus being able to hike up transaction fees without repercussion), in a cash/electronic cash society everyone has the power.

    No, they do not. The banks control practically all of the money in the western world. Everyone can't just take all their money back tomorrow, it doesn't work that way. Only a very small proportion of the money that exists is in cash form. Most working people keep most of their money in banks, the money belonging to businesses, the wealthy and the country is almost entirely in banks. You completely underestimate the amount of money in possession of banks at the moment. Cash is not the thing that prevents them from trying to take over the world.

    Today (if you choose) you can live your life without a bank account, without debt, without an 'embedded chip', without cards/devices/electronics/gadgets, without a car, ID ect.

    You technically could, but I can't say I've heard of a soul who does and I would be surprised if such a person existed in this country. If someone lived like that they would be the modern day equivalent of John the Baptist and they would probably live off the land too.


  • #48
    gaffer91
    Registered Users Posts: 1,307 ✭✭✭gaffer91


    I have stated earlier that there is a multitude of small reasons where it is handy to have cash around, when you're playing a small game of poker with your pals or giving a kid communion money or whatever.

    However the real question question I want to ask the pro-cashless posters is what about illegal transactions? Are you so naive that you believe every illicit transaction is immoral? Take for instance, cigarettes. There is a booming black market for cigarettes in this country. This is obviously because of the crazy taxes successive governments have placed on them. Is it really a crime for, let's say, a 70 year old man from the inner city to just buy them off a smuggler on Moore street for half the retail price? The man could be genuinely addicted to nicotine and would be unable for the life of him to stop smoking, but he doesn't have the money to fund his habit anymore. Cash gives him the opportunity to opt out of the government's stupidity.

    The same reasoning could apply for cash with the war on drugs. What I am saying in effect is that cash gives you freedom. I'm sure some sanctimonious poster will be along later to berate me for breaking the law. But some laws are just unfair and stupid and cash gives you a way around them.


  • #49
    Gbear
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,775 ✭✭✭✭Gbear


    gaffer91 wrote: »
    I have stated earlier that there is a multitude of small reasons where it is handy to have cash around, when you're playing a small game of poker with your pals or giving a kid communion money or whatever.

    None of which are beyond technology like my little chip-in-finger analogy.

    Everyone could have little dongles with a scanner in them. It links to your bank account. It doesn't matter if it's stolen because what'll they do? Put money into your account against your will?
    And with the finger thing you'd have easy money. It could be made so that it doesn't work when you're asleep, or between certain times, or whatever.

    Again this seems like more of a lack of imagination than an intrinsic fault.

    gaffer91 wrote: »
    However the real question question I want to ask the pro-cashless posters is what about illegal transactions? Are you so naive that you believe every illicit transaction is immoral? Take for instance, cigarettes. There is a booming black market for cigarettes in this country. This is obviously because of the crazy taxes successive governments have placed on them. Is it really a crime for, let's say, a 70 year old man from the inner city to just buy them off a smuggler on Moore street for half the retail price? The man could be genuinely addicted to nicotine and would be unable for the life of him to stop smoking, but he doesn't have the money to fund his habt anymore. Cash gives him the opportunity to opt out of the government's stupidity.

    The same reasoning could apply for cash with the war on drugs. What I am saying in effect is that cash gives you freedom. I'm sure some sanctimonious poster will be along later to berate me for breaking the law. But some laws are just unfair and stupid and cash gives you a way around them.

    Saying that having cash makes it easier to break the law is a really awful argument. I'm sorry if you have such disdain for the law but I think it's fairly important. If there's a problem with the law you can break it, or you can push towards having it overturned.

    I'm a firm believer in natural equilibria. **** laws will eventually get overturned.
    In the same vein, things that are inefficient will get replaced. See the massive list C14N mentioned above for examples.
    Having to print, coin, manage, transport, count, store and actually use cash takes time, effort and money. There will always be a natural tendency to reduce those costs and cashlessness is an obvious way to do it.

    Incidentally, and in a similar way that C14N mentioned about his relative in accounting, I work with clients, generally not hugely versed in computers, that have to work on implementing our business management system.
    There is always reticence towards more efficiency, less paperwork and trying to reduce costs using technology. I don't think it's self-serving and a case where they feel their jobs are being threatened (although that is the case occasionally) but rather a fear of change and technophobia.

    I think that's what we're seeing in this debate as well.


  • #50
    gaffer91
    Registered Users Posts: 1,307 ✭✭✭gaffer91


    Gbear wrote: »


    Saying that having cash makes it easier to break the law is a really awful argument.

    Why? Many laws are unfair and it is completely justified to break them.
    Gbear wrote: »

    I'm sorry if you have such disdain for the law but I think it's fairly important. If there's a problem with the law you can break it, or you can push towards having it overturned.

    I'm a firm believer in natural equilibria. **** laws will eventually get overturned.

    The only thing I have disdain for is unfairness and stupidity. I don't see why you have so much faith in banks and governments to the point where you are willing to give them complete access to your financial matters. How often do they have our best interests at heart?

    Assuming a far right government landed into power in 20 years and decides to seize, for instance, Irish Muslim's assets-would it not be important to have cash in this instance? Or if a strict conservative party decided to give alcohol prohibition another go? Highly unlikely I know but you see what I'm getting at. Do you not see the freedom and privacy cash gives you?

    I agree that cash might be inefficient but I also believe cash has a vital role to play in a Republic.


  • #51
    Run_to_da_hills
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,009 ✭✭✭✭Run_to_da_hills


    sweeney1971 wrote: »
    The Mark of the Beast. Revelation 13:16-18

    The very fact that 13.56 mhz RFID / NFC smart cards etc all share the same wireless hardware systems, scanners etc as Verichip / Positive ID should alone ring alarm bells.


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