As someone who had to carry large amounts of cash regularly, I feel like the author is neglecting many of the costs of cash. Personal security is one of them, and certainly one that local government care a lot more about than controlling drug traffic.

As someone who lived in Northern Sweden, freezing your fingers off is another — albeit negligible.

More seriously, I doubt that rampant inflation was the tool Argentinian government used to force a technologically unimaginable solution on its citizen.