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A comment on Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasonal Tips. Parent comment

Re:Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasona... by tomc1985 on Monday December 18, 2017 @12:37PM (#15953441)
Maybe we should keep cash and stop trying to kill it? So many think there is no value to a physical, untraceable, my-transaction-is-not-necessarily-logged money, so sad :/
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Re:Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasona... by betterunix2 on Monday December 18, 2017 @12:59PM (#15953642)
We can make untraceable electronic payment systems; in fact, there was a failed startup doing just that all the way back in 1989:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digicash

That said, what makes you think having a cash-oriented society guarantees tipping? There are industrialized nations that still rely on cash but where tipping is not ingrained in the culture; my experience in Japan was that if I left a tip people would assume I had made an error in my arithmetic or forgot my change.

I agree that privacy is a problem with going cashless. Let's ignore tipping and instead focus on an actual problem.

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Re:Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasona... by tomc1985 on Monday December 18, 2017 @02:28PM (#15954591)
Why must this be only about tipping?

Cash provides for people in a lot of ways that digital money can't or never will. Tipping, getting paid under-the-table, drug purchases... can digicash benefit all these people? Those groups should stay with cash, the amount of OpSec required for digital alternatives is too much...

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Re:Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasona... by betterunix2 on Monday December 18, 2017 @02:33PM (#15954641)
Yes, digicash (more properly called "ecash" among researchers) is useful in every example you listed: it is anonymous and supports offline payments (i.e. direct payments between two parties).
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Re:Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasona... by CM30 on Monday December 18, 2017 @03:59PM (#15955450)
Normal cash is also much easier to use, doesn't rely on any software needing to be installed (or a computer/network access in general) and offers a decent amount of deniable plausability too.

Why the obsession with replacing everything with technology when sometimes the old system works fine?

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Re:Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasona... by betterunix2 on Monday December 18, 2017 @04:38PM (#15955745)
Cash cannot be used to pay websites/etc., and having a single method of paying is more convenient than having two methods. So the growth of online ordering essentially pushes people to use electronic payments of some kind, and as the number of online purchases increases so does the pressure to use electronic payments generally. Don't confuse ease-of-use in specific situations with ease-of-use generally.
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Re:Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasona... by tomc1985 on Monday December 18, 2017 @06:19PM (#15956353)
"having a single method of paying is more convenient than having two methods"

How is that more convenient? You've a pipe dream if you think one option is more convenient for everyone

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Re:Casualties of the Cashless Society: Those Who Get Seasona... by newen on Tuesday December 19, 2017 @08:06AM (#15959883)
> having a single method of paying is more convenient than having two methods

Are you a GNOME UI designer?

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