I don't see what point you're trying to make here.

Are you saying that you would not give anyone else food?

So you accept that no one else will give you food?

Basically all transactions should stop?

Or are you saying that transactions should not bother being counted. Everyone just takes what they say they need wherever they can find it?

What is the guiding argument or thesis here?

> Are you saying that you would not give anyone else food?

Imagine the point at which my neighbour is willing to riot for food. That means his neighbour is also likely willing to riot for food and so on and so forth. This also means I'm likely willing to riot for food. I am not trading my last couple of meals of which I don't know when I'll get for a thousands or even hundreds of thousands dollars.

The point is if it gets bad enough that people immediate needs are not met, cash or money means very little. No matter how much of it you have, if you are at the point where you're rioting for food, there is likely not enough food for you or your neighbour who also doesn't know when they'll get their next meal.

Do you think there will exist a point at which a person would much prefer food in their hand than even larger sums of cash? My point is that when a food riot occurs is when cash becomes worth less than food.

It doesn't require a catastrophic siege-like environment; it just requires that electronic payment systems be unusable (e.g., a cyberattack).

Having cash means you'll be one of the people buying food that weekend, and not stuck in line at ATMs or simply unable to purchase food until the card system comes back online.

Maybe you need plywood and tarps and a few people to help. Maybe your workplace was flattened, but there's plenty to do - I'd rather get cash at the end of the day than a bunch of canned goods, unless I'm truly out of food and it's truly scarce.

I can use that cash for other things like fuel, or stuff that was lost because my house was flattened.

But in a scenario where people are desperate enough to riot for food, there will likely be shortages of other stuff, too. I'd assume it's more intuitive and fair to convert fuel-to-dollars and dollars-to-bread than fuel-to-bread, or days-wages-to-soup, which is the whole point of money anyway.

Try to model this happening as if you were an actuary trying to price the premiums and payout of insurance.

What odds would you give me of something like this happening over the course of next ten or even hundred of years? That scenario in which people are bartering for resources is a scenario in which power has been lost for multiple weeks in the United States? The odds you should be giving me is on the order of millions or tens of millions, at least.

Scenarios in which it's better to have cash than to not have cash abound. The risk is nil, so I personally don't need odds in the billions to justify keeping cash on hand.

A fender bender can mess up your day or weekend plans just as much as a 200-car pileup of flaming hazmat trailers - and the minor events occur far more frequently.

> That scenario in which people are bartering for resources is a scenario in which power has been lost for multiple weeks in the United States?

Well, 100% certainty since it has happened within the decade.

What makes you think it would matter if you had cash, when the payment systems go down? It's not like the cash registers would work without their own connectivity, which will be down too, if electricity is gone. Since there are almost no mom&pop shops in metropolitan areas anymore, which maybe could switch to pen&paper, abacus, that point is moot too.

In reality you have personnel which shows a deep frown if the till says 42.52 and you give them 50 in bills, and 2.52 in coins, so they can give you an even 5 and 3 or 2 coins back. (adapt to your local currency and coinery)

You can hear their mental scream "Oh my gawd! Aye need to calculate! Ze horror!"

Fuel? With no electricity? Hand pumped? Somewhere far out in fly-over-county maybe.

This is the argument against only having a Stripe terminal in your shop. I'm sure some of them would need therapy after making change for a $50, which is sad on at least two levels.

But most places I've lived seem to have plenty of non-IoT cash registers, and it's not infrequently that something is wrong with their card system, EBT is down, etc. That the financial district Sweetgreen won't be able to take my money is a risk I'm willing to assume.

It's a much bigger deal when you're walking (or in rural America) and are faced with an hour+ trek to another store (or pay $3.75 to get $20 out, assuming the ATM works). I've also had unexpected overdrafts that affect only my account, and having a couple hundred to a thousand-some dollars of cash in my house has saved me numerous times.

Fuel options with no electricity do in fact involve talking to some guy named Jim Bob, Buddy, or Mack, who is gonna want cash or raccoon pelts, not more canned goods or bread (he has plenty already, and I'm all out of raccoon pelts).

Which brings me back to my original point: in any real catastrophic event, it's going to be other random people you're dealing with, not the IoT devices of faceless corporations. And most are not gonna want to negotiate raccoon pelts to fuel oil (or gold shavings, for that matter).

> What makes you think it would matter if you had cash, when the payment systems go down?

Because then you pay cash, to state the obvious.

Even here in silicon valley the local convenience stores every so often have a sign that they're only taking cash today because their network/computer/payment-processor is down right now.

No big deal, pay cash.