Created: 2024-02-11 | Last edited: 2024-03-14
Back in high school before I had a debit card I would only use cash. Towards the end of high school I ended up opening my own bank account and getting a debit card. From then on I have solely used that for purchases. As of recently I have started transitioning back to using cash.
A cashless society is somewhat of a scary thought. With that comes a lack of privacy and control. Banks, corporations or the government have the ability to view all transaction data made by people. This is a privacy nightmare, no privacy or anonymity would be possible if cash goes away. Many people may think of digital currencies such as Monero as a solution to this problem. While that may be true, it is not possible to buy everyday goods with cryptocurrency. It also goes against another reason to use cash, less reliance on "the system".
When using any electronic form of payment we are reliant on there being power, internet and anything else required for merchants to accept these forms of payment. None of this exists with cash. As long the dollar still has value, it can be accepted with no problem.
I understand that cash may be inconvenient, but there has to be a trade off between convenience and privacy as well as sticking to ones values.
It is very unfortunate thought that many places seem to not accept cash anymore. They give into the convenience aspect and ditch cash altogether. For example, I mainly shop at Aldi and there is only one traditional checkout line and the other five are self checkout. Of course, cash is only accepted at the traditional checkout where a cashier is present. This just adds another layer of friction when using cash.
I will continue voting with my wallet, maybe if a portion of the population continues to accept cash, then merchants will continue accepting it so that they keep said customers. Hopefully others will follow suit. I don't have much hope as I haven't seen others pay in cash in quite some time
We do not want to be fully dependent on banks and the government and have the ability for our transactions to be monitored or frozen. They can and will do this.
This is worthy of another post, but corporations also push digital payments and their own apps onto their customers way too much.