People, generally, want to be able to pay electronically too. It is very convenient.

My experience is the opposite. I can open up my wallet and take out a $1000 bill* in about three seconds; if change is due, that typically takes about another ten seconds. Paying with a credit card takes about a minute, four to ten times less convenient, except a significant percentage of the time the time "no hay sistema" and it just doesn't work, and sooner or later your credit card number gets sold to the Russian Mafia on a carding forum. I guess for super organized people checking your monthly statement to see if you've been signed up for a porn subscription you don't know about is not a big deal, but if you're super organized can't you just organize yourself to have the cash you need when you need it?

Also, do I really want Visa International to know what brand of constipation medicine I take and which anarchist magazines I subscribe to? (None, I swear!) Anything I buy on a credit card is something I can expect to have to explain to the police or the immigration authorities sooner or later, possibly after the next military coup, or maybe just because there was a protest nearby that turned violent and they'd like to know why I was in that neighborhood that day. Also, why do I need acetone? I'm not cooking meth, am I?

If you think this stuff will never affect you, well, nobody ever thinks it will affect them, until it does. Most people alive have lived through an invasion, a coup, or an episode of extreme governmental repression, and most people who haven't yet will.

Bitcoin is a nice alternative when it's applicable, but transaction costs are a bit high for buying a cigarette or a restaurant meal, and it's a headache when the confirmation time is 45 minutes instead of 10 minutes. Hopefully Lightning will fix this.

______

* Inflation is bad here, yo. $1000 is about US$6, but printing $2000 bills hasn't been approved yet.

Why would paying with a credit card take a minute? It's 3s with contactless, and since covid it doesn't require a pin code.

Because mainframes in South America aren't that fast. Specially in Venezuela and Argentina.

Beats me. When did credit cards ever require a PIN, though?

Chip-and-PIN has been prevalent outside the US since its inception, and is still the norm for large credit card purchases.

Threy only know mervhant and amount, not the exact item you are buying

Gee man, it sounds like you live in quite the hell hole. Move to a decent country, you’ll be happier.

Argentina definitely has its disadvantages, but there are advantages too. Healthcare access is universal. University education is free and open to everyone, and although most of the universities are not that great (and none are R1), there are two world-class universities. It's illegal to arrest people for using or having recreational drugs—not generally my thing, but it wasn't Breonna Taylor's thing either, and in the US the laws give the police free rein to loot houses and kill people with the excuse of looking for recreational drugs. The homeless people here are afraid of other homeless people, not the cops like in the US, and actually there is vastly less homelessness because of less rigorous enforcement of building permits. We have the best ice cream in the world, the best empanadas in the world, and the best thieves in the world. Public transit here is better than any of the numerous places I lived in the US, almost as good as in New York. There are single blocks of Buenos Aires with more bookstores than most entire cities in the US. Raising kids is a reasonable thing to do in Argentina; in the US the shittiest people harass you if you breastfeed in public.

The biggest advantage, though, is that when the covid pandemic hit, the people in the US went totally nuts, saying that the government is controlled by a secret Satanic cabal of pedophiles who sacrifice children to drink their blood, that masks cause covid, that the vaccines are fatal, and all kinds of nonsense like that. Europe doesn't seem to be coping that much better. Here in Argentina, meh, it's just another crisis. It's shitty but not as bad as the crisis in the 70s when military dictators overthrew the democratic government, outlawed playing cards, and started rounding up their political opposition and dropping them out of airplanes. I literally don't know anyone who got raped because of covid, much less murdered.

But yeah credit card transactions can take a minute or two, the economy sucks, and ordering things from overseas is difficult and risky.

It's been pretty helpful in gaining perspective on the bullshit I grew up with in the US.

“ and the best thieves in the world.”

That’s good, right? :)

This is the best reply you could have given. Makes me want to visit.

Just don't bring anything you can't afford to have stolen.

I find this kind of recommendation to a random stranger on the internet highly ubjectionable and indecent.

Have you considered, that if they agree they don't like their country, maybe they have to look after ageing or ill parents, or have other responsibilities they can't just abandon? Not to mention money ofcourse.

You also support open borders and universal emigration, right?

How does this approach scale?

That is an unrelated thought: the world can slowly come to hardly ever use cash--or even achieve universal cashless-ness--without the continued existence of cash being actively discouraged by the government.

I agree, although I do not think civil asset forfeiture is specifically used to discourage the use of cash and incentivize people to go electronic, or at least it was not designed with that motive.

Civil asset forfeiture is a power trip by the government that neither political party wants to touch, and it does a great job at reducing trust in the US's governing bodies. When I was a kid, I thought that kind of low level brazen corruption only happened in poorer or less developed countries. Now I get to see my countrymen doing it and admitting to it on video, year after year.

Why does nobody want to touch it? That is what is a mystery to me.

The police unions in this country are powerful. A lot of seized cash is treated as tax-free "bonuses" paid out to officers. Either directly, or indirectly by financing "team building exercises" at a Build Your Own AK Ranch or some shit.

The prosecutors offices get their cut too, so they have an incentive to keep their mouths shut. Everyone else can be bullied into submission.

> A lot of seized cash is treated as tax-free "bonuses" paid out to officers. Either directly…

Is this documented somewhere?

Based on this tweet, no:

https://twitter.com/JodyBarr/status/1440856532959170566?s=20

How is that tweet related to whether the money is paid out to officers?

I don't think so. Spending control is much easier when you withdraw a fixed amount at the beginning of the month.

Checking bank statements is easier (they are very short).

You don't have to worry who will abuse your credit card or bank details.

If the US government actually wanted to (mostly) eliminate cash, they could just stop printing currency, and wait for what's in circulation to wear out. That would take about 23 years [0]. As it is, though, only about 8% of all USD exists in physical form [1], anyway, making the USD largely a digital currency already.

---

[0]: https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/how-long-is-the-life-spa...

[1]: https://money.howstuffworks.com/currency.htm

That would be reported by the news and people would care. Whereas here we get this reaction: "they seized his money and say he is suspected of being a drug dealer, well then i have nothing to worry about - i am not a drug dealer."

I think the most common reaction is going to be "this guy carried my mortgage worth in cash on his person to the airport, I don't think I'm going to have that problem".

Until the time they go buy a $5000 used car.

Also, it's not just cash they go after. There are plenty of "State v. Diamond Necklace" or "State v. Various Electronics Valued at Approx. $1000" cases out there.

> Who buys a car with cash?

I did once. Why? Because I damn well wanted to, that's why! I am allegedly a free man living in the "free-est country on earth" so I gave my bank the required one week notice, came in with a bag, and walked out with the amount of cash necessary to buy my shiny new corvette. I then peacefully made my way to the dealership, where I signed the papers and handed them the money. No eyelashes were batted.

> there's zero doubt in my mind that anyone doing it is doing so for good reason

> in this case is almost certainly involved in drug or human trafficking.

Plot twist: i've never been involved in any drug/human trade, and made the money legally...

I gave you my "good reason". Feel free to call the DA in my area and tell them what to charge me with...

> In my [...] life

There's your issue. Not everyone is you. People have different situations and measuring them all against yourself is ... well ... wrong?

Eg: Have you "in your life" ever lived in a country where multiple bank runs happened during "your life", the banks ran out of money, and the government did nothing to make citizens whole? No? Cause that is one reason people would avoid banks - being bankrupted by such an event leaves a mark on you. Probably enough of a mark to keep you from banks forever, even if you move to USA...

> I did once. Why? Because I damn well wanted to, that's why! I am allegedly a free man living in the "free-est country on earth" so I gave my bank the required one week notice, came in with a bag, and walked out with the amount of cash necessary to buy my shiny new corvette. I then peacefully made my way to the dealership, where I signed the papers and handed them the money. No eyelashes were batted.

Doubt it, considering dealers hate handling cash and filing the anti-structuring paperwork. It certainly wouldn't be a situation where 'no eyelashes were batted', at the least they would have been upset that you were wasting their time.

> Eg: Have you "in your life" ever lived in a country where multiple bank runs happened during "your life", the banks ran out of money, and the government did nothing to make citizens whole? No? Cause that is one reason people would avoid banks - being bankrupted by such an event leaves a mark on you. Probably enough of a mark to keep you from banks forever, even if you move to USA...

So your reasoning for advocating to use cash is because some countries are unstable (even though as a result you are even more likely to robbed of your cash in them)?

Works even better in the EU. 20K in cash on an economy flight? Criminal! No other way. No way you saved up all of that, you poor pos!

It's better to have a clear law, even if it's wrong, so you can carry 19K in peace, then be randomly and unpredictably harrassed by authorities.

Eh, people would care for about 5 minutes, just like everything else. Remember when basically every American adult with a credit history had their entire credit files stolen? How many people do you hear talking about that now?

That is materially different than having your cash stolen from you by a seemingly random person at the airport. One results in a very small probability of it affecting you in any way, the other is someone stealing from you.

I think they are replying to the currency printing hypothetical not the 125,000-dollars-stolen-from-me hypothetical.

I thought they were comparing people’s reactions to news about equifax’s data breach exposing people’s social and other identifying info to news about the government stealing from people via civil asset forfeiture.

@zamadatix is correct.