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Comment by jaredandrews | Hacker News Reader

Your last sentence sounds like civil forfeiture and I certainly think it should be outlawed.

As far as cashless society winning, I dunno, I'm definitely worried about that outcome, but it's straight up illegal in my state to not to accept cash in a retail establishment and a good number of bars I go to don't accept cards at all. I use cash all the time and I find it way more convenient than a credit or debit card. My wallet doesn't randomly prevent me from opening it at a grocery store I have been to a thousand times and stop me from paying for groceries.

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> My wallet doesn't randomly prevent me from opening it at a grocery store I have been to a thousand times and stop me from paying for groceries.

One of my least favorite experiences was telling my banks that I was going to travel so that they don't freeze my accounts for "suspicious activity" when I start spending money at my destination, and then having them freeze my accounts anyway when I got there after trying to pay for dinner. Caused a problem with the hotel and the place I rented a car from, too.

Using my credit card in Russia required me to call some poor schmuck every single morning to tell them I was in Moscow. Every morning I'd wake up and my card would be declined.

Agree with this.

I've always found that people throw around this word "inconvenience" without even defining it. It makes no sense to me.

Both paying for and accepting payment for things in person are strictly easier for me to do in cash. It's literally just handing over a bit of paper.

There's always some resort to "but I don't have cash". Well duh, that's a circular argument. If you don't use cash you don't have cash and so you don't have cash. Try harder.

It's handing over multiple pieces of paper, getting back of mix of paper and coin, and then having to futz around with that. Compare with just tapping a single card against a machine, having records of the payment for yourself (for keeping track of spending, etc), etc. It's obviously not all "objectively better" but "strictly easier" is not true if you amortize across all usages of cash vs non-cash (going to ATMs after figuring out you don't have enough on you?)

I'm not going to argue against cash existing, but "swipe the machine" works 98 times out of 100. For the other 2 times, yeah carry some cash on you. I think it's a very good system of last resort, but especially in places with contactless payments cash is less practical

Shrug.

I guess my note book is less "convenient" than notepad.exe. More moving parts.

We're just not on the same page here, sorry, I don't get it at all. It's like, are we counting the waves of the hands or what? I'm literally here now and I've just pressed about 300 buttons to write this message, are movements rationed?

If you're going to argue that one thing is easier than another, then yes, counting movements and time is part of that.

"That'll be $15.77"

Option 1: I look in my wallet and find a ten and a five, put my hand in my pocket and grab a few coins, hand those over. The cashier takes the cash, taps a number into the till, finds the right change and hands it back. Is it arduous, hard labour and the end of the world? No of course not, but it is what it is.

Option 2: I look at my phone to unlock it and wave it over the thingy. Job done. I don't even have to remember to withdraw cash from the bank before I go.

It's easier and quicker, for you and for the cashier. The shop knows it too, particularly supermarkets - they encourage people to use faster payment methods so they can shave even a few seconds off a transaction and push more transactions through at peak times.

You forgot to mention you no longer need to check your change at the end. You have a record of the transaction on your app and you were able to verify the amount before swiping.

It's kinda funny, it used to be that "can I pay by card?" caused cashiers here to sigh and get a little annoyed by having to process a card payment. Some scolded me that I should've told them sooner (though exactly when was never clear to me). Presumably their POS systems were geared towards cash payments and card payments were bolted on as an afterthought.

We just need to preserve the ability to perform an anonymous transaction. Convenience of cashless is predicated on the assumption that you're willing for the tx to be on record. For tx you want off the record, cashless is not convenient at all. If one's position is that there is no need for anonymous transactions, that's a different conversation.

I and everyone here accepts that cash is easy. But there is no way whatsoever it is strictly easier than contactless payments. With cash you need to (a) always remember to withdraw and tale enough with you for what you estimate you will need, (b) compute an approximate factorization of the value you need to pay into the bills and coins you have, (c) hope the business has just the right bills to be able to give you your change, and do it in a decent amount of bills (e.g. not trying to give you change for a hundred in 5$ bills).

All this compared to touching the card/phone/watch to the terminal, and perhaps putting in your pin/fingerprint/face ID.

Again, not saying cash is hard, we've all used it and you get used to it. But it's objectively harder than contactless by any definition.

Of course, cash has other clear advantages in terms of privacy, censorship resistance etc.

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