I wrote an essay
for "Wired" advocating not merely for the end of small change, but
an end to physical money, period. And I didn't hold back. "In an era
when books, movies, music, and newsprint are transmuting from atoms
to bits, money remains irritatingly analog," I declared. "Physical
currency is a bulky, germ-smeared, carbon-intensive, expensive
medium of exchange. Let's dump it."
Reader responses were...passionate. "Wolman is a fascist.... Taking
away cash would be like taking away our guns: One needs it most only
after it's gone." Another read: "My cash is my business." I was
accused of shilling for secret lobbying groups, and of sacrificing
"the last vestiges of privacy" so that "those bastions of clarity
and honesty called banks and credit card companies can mine our
every transaction."
I had smacked a nerve. People are willing to kill for cash--we know
that. But what I was hearing made me think that people might kill to
keep it. That got me wondering: what is cash, anyway? The simple
answer is little metal discs and strips of paper bedecked with dead
white guys and cryptic messages that make Nicholas Cage go even more
bug-eyed. But what is its place in our economy, our culture, and our
minds? Could we ever do without it? Should we?
I so agree with dumping physical cash. I find trying to live in a completely cash-based system annoying. Really annoying. It means I am captive to the outcome of ATM roulette--that game of going and trying the ATMs in town in a vain attempt to find one which is both working and has money in it--in order to be able to eat. Could I just go inside a bank if I wanted cash rather than relying on machines? Sure, if I feel like standing in line for 4 hours, which to date has never seemed like a good idea. Then once I have cash, I have to touch it. Money really is nasty. I spent one summer working part time as a cash officer at a department store, and touching a whole lot of money gets really disgusting really fast. It is possible to clean it up--I had one extraordinary roommate who was in the habit of starching and ironing her money, which surprisingly enough works fairly well, almost as surprising as that she went to the effort of ironing her money-- and it's worse in Tanzania where a lot of small bills go through the filthy pockets of bus conductors or live in women's sweaty bras.* I bought a small pouch specifically because I couldn't deal with sweat-soaked wads of money. Then there is the small problem in which no one in the country can make change, meaning that the cash that I get out of the ATM, which usually comes in 10,000TSH units, is worthless except at select locations. It is an exceptionally good day when the ATM is out of 10,000s and can only give 5000s. I've heard there is a magical land in which merchants have boxes of small bills in carefully sorted compartments, attached to computers that tell people exactly how much change is due.
Without any sort of debit or credit cards people are limited to the amount of cash they can carry, which is dangerous in a society with a critical crime rate and also means that people have no flexibility about when they can make purchases. It is fashionable in the US to bemoan credit cards as a way for people to spend money they don't have, and credit card debt is a problem, but if, say, your refrigerator breaks 10 days before pay day, what else are you going to do? (Far be it from anyone in the US to live without such a thing.) Things break and people get sick irrespective of payment schedules. In Tanzania, due to high interest rates on loans, it is almost impossible for entrepreneurship to happen, standard credit card rates in the US are a lot lower than interest rates on loans from Tanzanian banks. Additionally, a purely cash-based society is cut off from the world market. I was working with some expat friends who run a coffee company, because they want their internet to just work (good luck with that, darlings) and have a decent wireless connection throughout their concrete block office building. Again, good luck with that. I checked for them in the computer stuff stores around town looking for a wireless router that is going to be a little strong against concrete and couldn't find any decent routers. In the US, I would just order something online (actually, in the US I would have done that first, because electronic store staff tend to assume that because I am a woman, I am stupid) but that's not all that feasible here unless you have a US credit card or bank account, and then there is this problem of how do you put money back into that bank account when you are paid in Tanzanian cash and you can't electronically do anything to the Tanzanian bank account.
The only real objections I can see to a cashless society are 1) What happens when the power goes out? 2) What about fees charged to read credit and bank cards? It is hard for small merchants! and 3) won't the government be able to trace every purchase you make?
1) is a somewhat facile objection, since if the power goes out, the banks and atms aren't going to work either, so unless you have your entire bank account under your mattress it isn't going to make a huge difference whether or not the economy is cash based. Actually since card readers can be battery operated (we had one such at the Renaissance Fair boutique I used to work at), a non cash-based society can still work through power outages that are short of natural disaster levels.
2) is a real problem. I don't know how to solve it.
3) is also a real objection, but I feel like that's more easily solved than 2. Hire a hacker, yo. My impression is that there is a thriving demand for hacker skills in places like China to get around the Great Firewall.
*It's not like women have pockets here, people. And given the theft rates, I wouldn't trust anything valuable to something as snatchable as a purse. Which leaves bras, but having loose money in one's bra is both nasty and kinda awkward because sometimes you have to fish down your shirt for change.
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