Horses for Courses:
CASH VS E-CASH
Why getting rid of physical cash is a really shit idea
So what have horses got to do with e-cash? Nothing. At least not on the face of it. But on the other hand, one day a horse might be more important than your Ferrari, which you might have to sell for scrap.
And will you except credit cards? Probably not. And heres why:
Banks say we will be cashless by the end of this decade. But only if we let it.
Cashless might work for the high-flyers of the world, those on the hop, who don't want to flap with the tedium of finding a cash-point or catching germs off dirty coins.
I must admit that the tap & go system has its merits. But its not convenient for everyone to use. Old folks for example, those who lived through the 2nd world war and the Cuban Missile Crises and beyond, struggle with keeping track of their finances unless they can physically see them.
Internet banking is another issue for them, because they are less inclined to use computers.
And why is that? Because bank tellers are becoming a thing of the past. More and more physical banks are disappearing on the high street, as redundancies are made to save overhead costs.
Small towns are suffering the most. Forcing locals (with the luxury to drive combustion based cars further afield) to do essential banking transactions elsewhere.
Meanwhile the twenty something tech-savy swipey-whipey youth shrug and don't see any problem. 'Jeeze Granmar, get with the fricken program'
The irony being that at some point advances will overtake them as well. And we have no telling what the youth of today will struggle with in say 80 years from now.
But you can guarantee that the youth of 2100 will look back at the swipey youth of today with candid humour, much as we look back at the youth of the 1900s.
But I digress.
Its unlikely a cashless world would completely happen anytime due to a number of factors.
BAD RECEPTION
The reception for tap readers is unreliable. So cash will always be a good alternative.
I had a friend who uses those square card tapper things at book gatherings and it wouldn't work so he couldn't sell his books. It was fucking annoying because purse strings don't simply open on queue. And after spending most of the night entertaining patrons, only for his card reader to fail and come out broke. Had his patrons had cash on them, this wouldn't have been such a problem.
TETCHY COMS
A cashless system can easily be shut down for any reason. This is major issue for those travelling abroad. Its bad enough when Facebook thinks you've been hacked just because you went online in another town. Now imagine having your bank account turned off while you're on holiday in Spain or Moscow?
NO SAVINGS
You can’t save electronic cash, draw it out and put it in a jar, like you would real money. Thus its hard to keep track off spending. You then have to rely on credit which inevitably leads to high interest and the poverty cycle of debt.
HACKING.
Even if it is stored on a virtual cloud, your banking information is open to hackers.
USELESS IN AN EMERGENCY
Imagine you're stuck somewhere and you've lost your mobile. No problem. Just find a phone box right? But dang-it. I need change. But thats ok because the phone box no longer exists because everyone uses mobile phones. Fuck.
See where I'm going with this?
Now imagine the internet (that supplies the signal to your cashless world) has gone kaput. Now you have jack-shit. And not just you. Everyone else is in the same boat and its sinking fast.
Cashless, relies on electricity duh, which in turn needs people to run more power to keep servers running day and night. As a result electric costs could sky rocket. Not to mention said servers are vulnerable to power outage. A few weeks ago Facebook crashed for several hours. Putting everyone at inconvenience. Imagine the inconvenience of not accessing your bank account?
How long would it be before the first shot is fired? Mad Max Director George Miller noted the fuel crises of 1977 as a pivotal landmark that inspired his post apocalyptic movies.
HORSES FOR COURSES
So yes, a cashless world is likely inevitable and will affirm the gulf between the haves and have nots. But those high-flyers cant fly forever as the very foundation of cashless living, teeters on a huge fundamental flaw that nobody wants to face.
Much like the sudden jump between the Horse & cart to the automobile revolution, the rapid escalation of vehicles happened in a only a few decades.
And why? Because people saw the benefits of cars and not the downsides. Horses crapped everywhere, needed stables, grooming, petting, black smiths etc. And when they died, owners left them to rot in the streets.
Then with the introduction of combustion engine cars, the horse industry was killed off overnight. Suddenly everyone had a car and you could drive almost anywhere.
However, this created a whole new set of problems, stemming from fossil fuel dependency and the reluctance to switch to electric cars before exhaust emissions took their toll on our atmosphere.
And with the fuel crises unresolved, and prices sky rocketing, this might well have a knock on effect on other things, such as cashless transactions.
And we may actually see cashless come and go, in the wake of the world fighting over fuel reserves. For without fuel, we cant run machines and if we cant run machines then we cant have a cashless society.
So in the end physical cash is probably gonna win out. And the horse will have the last laugh.
