Even cash breaks down pretty quickly in a hypothetical situation where you have something similar occur that lasts for an extended period. When banks’ systems are impacted, how do I get more cash from my account with them when whatever amount I had when the system went down runs out? I haven’t had a physical passbook for an account in a good 20 years.
One EMP and ** Poof ** It’s all gone
More or less the opening line of Dark Angel, iirc
So is the water supply, food and electricity. I don’t want to think about it.
Me, wanting to abolish currency entirely…
The economy is so fucked i essentially interact with friends and family on a barter system anyway. I bake them cookies and cakes and they let me use their laundry machines.
I live outside of time, outside of currency…
No kings, no presidents, no senators… Just… Coreys.
More like it shows dangers of using only one provider for almost all IT infrastructure.
This
…why not both?
because cash is disgusting
Agreed. While I agree with the privacy and security arguments against cashless payment methods, I’m still for them for the simple fact that as someone who works as a cashier for a living (or some semblance of one anyway), I’m more aware than the average public of just how DISGUSTING cash actually is.
Is the money really filthy or what?
Oh gods yes.
I get so many bills that are dirty, but also you don’t wanna know all the germs that are on a lot of those bills. Another thing I learned from years of working in retail is that people are also disgusting as all hell. Many people don’t bother washing their hands after going to the bathroom, or they’ll hand you nasty sweaty bills they pulled out of their pocket after walking into a store or up to a fuel kiosk during a >80 °F (26 °C) day, or after working a shift in construction or a factory job or even simply just exercising. Some women will pull cash directly out from under their bra, as if I want to accept sweaty boob money. Yes, they could use a wallet. However, many people don’t. Rather, they just shove the cash directly into their pocket or bra and be done with it. Because fuck cashiers, I guess.
Not to mention that the majority of bills out there have at least some trace amount of cocaine or other drugs covering it, though you may not be able to see it.
So, in short, sorry for the ramble but, yes, people are absolutely disgusting and so is their cash.
Retail. has. fucking. ruined me.
/rant lol
Because if everyone used cash, schedule systems, records systems, communication systems around the world, breakdown still.
If there’s a verity of software vendors used in these systems, and financial systems, you don’t get simultaneous global breakdowns any more.
Basically. Using cash won’t prevent this from happening. Using several interoperable software providers and systems will.
Using cash won’t prevent this from happening.
I mean yeah, that’s why I said both, not just cash. I carry some cash on me because you never know. I’d also like to see less monopolization of just about everything because it makes for single points of failure. Diversifying your payment methods by including the potential for cash also helps.
But cash has nothing to do with this.
It’s an entirely unrelated issue.
It could equally be a warning to floss every day for all they’re related.When the payment processor goes down, I can buy my groceries/gas/weed with cash, not by flossing my teeth. I don’t follow the point you’re making. Going fully cashless is a bad idea, and the recent outage didn’t affect every system used. I don’t see how having multiple methods of payment is possibly a bad thing. I’m not advocating for only cash.
The inventory and POS systems also go down. You still can’t by your groceries/gas/weed.
Going cashless is a bad idea. But not because of this.
Going cashless is a bad idea. But not because of this.
It’s pretty clear this incident has highlighted a myriad of very important issues.
It’s likely more productive to discuss the other issues in their own threads - this thread is clearly focused on the cashless problem.
That’s not what I witnessed recently. Payment processors went down but local POS was fine. Inventory didn’t matter with the short duration of the outage. This is one of the reasons going cashless is a bad idea. Far from the only one, but it’s a factor, and I experienced it. Going cashless reduces diversity in payment options and makes the system more vulnerable.
this wasn’t a problem with cashless infrastructure tho, this was a problem with monoculture. if the globe stopped using microsoft for gov and business, and instead threw their tax money towards open development; as in - the people, not microsoft, these kind of global issues wouldn’t exist.
Choice sounds like something people should not be fighting over :)
Because cash doesn’t solve the problem. If the stores themselves rely on computers, and they do, it doesn’t matter what’s in your wallet. (In other words, you need more than just cash to have a reliable alternative. It’s certainly possible to do so.)
Also, some of the big problems were in airports and hospitals where payment was not the serious concern.
Not necessarily one provider but one point of failure. In this case it was the update system that allowed one company to push something to production on other companies systems.
There’s more to it. The mono-culture is one thing, but rolling out the update to millions of computers on the same days sounds like a bad idea.
Fun fact in 2008, with nuclear submarines, the mono-culture was not that bad yet.
It’s interesting to note the UK went with a Windows XP variant and not Windows Vista, which is marketed as the more reliable OS. The USA never made the same calculations: The American Navy runs on Linux.
Navy: “we use Arch btw”
No wonder those Navy touchscreen controls killed people…
I personally have never had good luck with Linux touchscreens…
sounds like they rather spend that RND on pocket lining over contributing to software dev.
Totally. My petrol station allowed me to pay in seashells while everyone else were just standing around complaining, was kinda nice
I…
I have so many questions
Sand dollars?
No, that is not correct. Global outage shows the dangers of centralized systems would be a better headline. Monero Worked all day throughout the entire outage with no problems.
Monero isn’t bad but I don’t think it is great for easily buying things. At the end of the day trying to use two different currencies is hard. Also Monero gets a bad name because it is used primarily for illegal transactions. It is simply two complex and has no accountability
The fact that it’s used for crime means that it actually does what it’s supposed to do and keeping people private. Shoes are also used by bank robbers and we don’t ban shoes. Monero is a tool the same as a hammer or a shoe or a car or a gun.
… And if the systems you actually interact with go down, you can get fucked as well.
If you want to buy food with Monero and the payment processor for the local shop doesn’t work, even if it’s a local machine sitting in the back office, you still can’t buy anything.
A local machine sitting in the back office, acting as a payment processor, is much easier to access and fix than the Visa Network.
Not for you. And certainly not for the staff working in the shop.
Currently, you’re bartering with copious amounts of copium.
Define “worked” in this context. You mean their own infrastructure didn’t crash? You certainly didn’t pop down to the store and buying anything useful with Monero 😂
Not that day I didn’t, but I have bought Domino’s several times this month, and I bought my groceries at the beginning of the month.
So do you use some kind of payment app that does a conversion or do you have to manually convert from Monero to fiat currency?
Most retailers don’t accept crypto at the point of purchase so I’m curious as to how this would be convenient enough to use regularly.
There are businesses that specifically sell gift cards to retailers for Monero and when possible I search out and purchase from retailers who accept Monero. Https://monerica.com and https://xmrbazaar.com help with that.
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My point was more that using Monero as an example is probably not the best way to cryptobrah an illustrative point.
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Because you can’t just go and buy real world goods at will as with cash. If there’s ever a Carrington Event, your Monero is worthless in an emergency.
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Lol. How is your crypto gonna work without global peers and internet, friend?
Even central currencies can work if you can make offline and peer to peer payments.
Not easy to pull off cryptographically, though.
Does Taler do this?
True, but do you really expect them to let you use a central bank digital currency peer-to-peer and not have some way of revoking your access to it? If so, you’re absolutely nuts, LOL.
That is not correct, either. The outage even took out decentralized platforms.
Which decentralized platforms did it take out?
One of the biggest rules in IT is always have a backup.
A cashless society has no backup.
The backup with a crypto, such as Monero or Bitcoin, would be to print out a paper wallet and then load the money onto it. LOL.
- take “this”… 2… 3…
- profit
Then don’t get rid of cash. We can do both you know
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Campaigners say the chaos caused by the global IT outage last week underlines the risk of moving towards a cashless society.
Supermarkets, banks, pubs, cafes, train stations and airports were all hit by the failure of Microsoft systems on Friday, leaving many unable to accept electronic payments.
The Payment Choice Alliance (PCA), which campaigns against the move towards a cashless society, lists 23 firms and groups, at least some of whose outlets take only credit or debit cards.
Cash payments increased for the first time in a decade last year, according to UK Finance, which represents banks.
The GMB Union said the outage reinforced what it had been saying for years: that “cash is a vital part of how our communities operate”.
In March, McDonald’s, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Gregg’s suffered problems with their payment systems.
The original article contains 416 words, the summary contains 135 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
A cashless society is so stupid beyond words. In order to create one you must also create a full surveillance society to protect it, and even that would be ineffective to stop it from being hacked.
Just to be clear we are a mostly cashless society and the majority of currency is not physically in existence around the world and somehow it manages to be protected by and large.
The difference is that if someone decides to freeze your cashless bank account they can by a mouse click and you’re destitute. Whereas if that happens in a cash-based society they have to come and get it from you.
Good thing jobs pay in cash, oh wait, only shady jobs do that.
well that is sorta my point. I keep some cash on hand but the majority of my money gets auto deposited and debited from there when I pay bills. If someone steals the majority of my money and I have somelike 1 to 10 percent its not a much better situation than them stealing all of my available funds. I mean it is which is how come I do keep a bit of cash on hand.
How many hacks that generated infinite money have you seen?
Get a conservative business-focused person into the government and watch them give infinite money to business in the form of subsidies, bailouts, and tax breaks.
All presidents since at least Reagan and Prolly all of them but FDR has been pro corporate welfare and each one rewarded his oligarchs with generous subsidies…
Call it chips act or aca or covid relief etc… These are transfers from us treasury to the owner class.
This is not a party politics issue, this is the regime policy
Just 1, but it seems to repeat ad infinitum:
Be born rich.
What good is cash gonna do if the networked cash register doesn’t open anymore?
They have paper and pens that they can track their transactions until the system is fixed.
How are you getting change?
Use exact change?
If we’re going cash only, I’m bringing those coins too.
Somebody’s never worked retail. Yeah, there’s no way they’ll do that. Maybe at a small independently-owned store? Otherwise, there’s no way they’re even allowed to do that!
They can do that anyway. It’s called credit.
Simply not allowed for a lot of businesses in my country, either by the government or corporate.
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If you’re against cashless you’re a criminal or a tax evader, which is also criminal.
What a horribly flawed opinion to have.
Like drugs have never been bought on card, and money washed through banks…
It may be the case that people do not want every single step they take to be monitored as it currently is.
You might not have a phone or be charged per use of card.
Amazon didnt pay a penny in taxes where i live, theyre giant criminals yet they dont need to use cash to evade taxes.
The ability to pay with cash is great just in case a country’s cashless system(s), especially the one you use the most, goes down for any reason. Gives a backup just in case you need to pay for stuff locally like at a store but your digital money is essentially in limbo until the system(s) is/are fixed.
How often does that happen though?
Or… what if the power goes out, you can’t pay with cash or card.
Honestly if this is the best reason to carry cash then we should be cashless.
Why wouldn’t I be able to pay cash without power? If people did it in BCE, I can certainly do it now.
Because the equipment used to record sales uses electricity.
Do you really think the 12yo cashier is going to get out a pad and pen and rithmatic your purchase?
12yo? What’re your child labor laws? Arithmetic? We’re talking simple addition here. I manned a cash register before, it’s doable even without the computer. Just takes a wee bit longer.
Or someone that does not trust a centralised solution as it is easily used to suppress people.
Just pay up, doucher
No
Maybe if somebody needs something we could just give it to them.
Socialism!!! 🤮🤮🤮🤯🤯🤯🤢🤢😷🤒
Think of the shareholders!!!
Socialist scum.
What are you going to say next, that housing is a human right? That food and water should be free? That the economic surplus should first go to the people in need?
You forgot your /s.
Would Taler be more resilient than a typical EMV/AmEx card? It’s designed as an online payment system but it’s less centralised, so that could help.
It’s already an attractive project due to its privacy feature, and due to it being more regulation-friendly that cryptocurrencies. If it’s resilient enough it could act as a digital cash.
Cash alternative
I don’t think replacing cash is a good idea
To me Taler is not a cash alternative, but a card alternative, besides cash. It’s better then cards, probably for everyone involved, but it isn’t better than cash.
*global IT outage shows dangers of monopolies.
Why do you hate the “free market”
