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Comment by countWSS | Hacker News Reader

Any "central payment system"(like e.g. obsession with Paypal) is a single-point-of-failure vulnerability. Cash is decentralized and independent of any technology failing. people find this the hard way during electric blackouts, that credit cards are useless without electricity, but somehow still think "electronic payment" is worth completely switching over.

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So there's no electricity. But you were prepared, you have cash. You go to the shop to buy something with cash, and their cash register doesn't work, they can't record your purchase or calculate taxes, so you cannot buy anything anyway.

It is helping a little bit, but the benefits of this kind of preparedness are overstated.

Where I live, any taxes are built-in to the sticker retail price.

In a shorter term crisis, I can absolutely imagine smaller grocery stores near me using a cashbox for takings and recording purchases with a pen and paper. Any government would be highly supportive of this as it would be essential to prevent anarchy.

Any sane country has a sticker/menu price that is the price you pay when you settle up.

Sure, same here, but you cannot sell anything without recording it on the cash register anyway because of tax evasion.

Except total loss of electricity is not the only case of payment system being unavailable.

I once went on a date where we hit a state-wide power outage. (Let's just say that the date did not go as planned.) We wound up eating at this restaurant, two towns over, that we saw a bunch of cars parked at. Turns out they had gas grills. They were working by flashlight and candlelight, they were cash only, they were adding up the bill on a hand calculator, they couldn't do shakes or french fries, they were pouring soda by hand out of bottles, but wow, were they ever doing business.

When something like that comes, you find a way or the business goes elsewhere. Taxes? Count the cash - that's what you sold during the power out. Multiply by the tax rate, and call it square.

>they can't record your purchase or calculate taxes, so you cannot buy anything anyway.

They don't have a piece of paper and a calculator as backup?

I think it stops at “after 2 hours the fire alert system stops working and anyway it’s too dark inside so any accident would not be covered by insurance hence we should wait it out”. Cash helps but it’s really overstated.

Two power outages where I live told me that.

> their cash register doesn't work, they can't record your purchase or calculate taxes

I say, if there's no electricity, nobody owes any taxes to this government.

I think it is important to distinguish between major credit cards banks (visa, MasterCard etc.) and payment method like GiroPay, EFTPOS , Wero, etc.

This doesn't help that much because cash today is also useless without electricity. You can't go to a bank anymore to get cash from an actual person. The machines run on electricity.

This is why you keep some cash in a safe place, like your wallet, purse or dwelling.

To say cash today is "independent of any technology" which is what I replied to simply isn't true anymore. Read more carefully what the discussion is about please.

I live in Canada where not all that long ago, Rogers took out digital payments at most places for ~48 hours.

I had cash and zero problems. Many had no cash and many problems.

You specifically mentioned banking as a problem and I mentioned a specific solution. Based in real life, not fantasy.

I am arguing your point and you are attacking me rather than making a point of your own.

You are arguing something I did not discuss. The post I replied to made a general case that cash is decentralized and immune to issues like missing electricity. My entire point was only this: while true and thus having some cash is smart for short term issues (e.g. I am now traveling and took cash with me I am unlikely to use, but don't want to be stranded without money away from home), cash itself is long term not immune because today we need electricity to get the actual cash. True btw even if you could walk into a bank and ask for money because without a working computer they're not giving you any money. So overall the ship on cash is sailing, it's not really a solution anymore.

Cash solves the problem of getting through a widespread week long power or internet outage, which is already a pretty serious situation. Beyond that is another situation entirely, and starts to enter the realm of canned food, gold, and bullets.

That's a fair point to make that for 90% of us we get cash from a machine that requires electricity.

It's not a fair characterisation that cash is useless without electricity because once you have it(presumably before the electricity stops) then you can still transact with it.

Just because it wouldn’t help with a long-term crisis, there’s no need to overlook the benefit for a short-term crisis. Especially as the latter is far more likely.

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