Cashless society

So big brother is not only spying on you (facebook, the Democrats who found Lolo was "hispanic" on some database and bothered us with phone calls, or when the Chinese stole my OPM file from the Feds) but now "they" are pushing the "cashless society".

Unherdpodcast discusses.

What could go wrong?

Quora discussion.

4. Risk of System Failure Without cash, the value of currency would have no independent value outside a functioning banking system to which you have access. Your money wouldn ‘work’ without a functioning banking system. If the banking system is down due to a power outage, solar flare, financial crisis, Internet failure, hack or network crash, your money is unavailable and potentially lost. If back up files are lost how do you prove you had $15,000 in your account?

So why am I posting about this?

Yesterday, I went to the bank to deposit a check and get cash for the week, and found they were off line. (I do this weekly so I don't overspend my budget).

Luckily I have a small account in another bank, but still it shows the problem.

sometimes during holiday season, the ATM's run out of cash. Duh.

And we have faced problems like this before: All the banks were slow after a major hack a couple months ago, and of course, typhoons with flooding tend to knock out the phone/internet lines.

And then there was the big internet outage after an earthquake took out a major cable south of Taiwan a couple years ago.

My husband always carried cash (annoying the cashier when he'd pull out $100 dollar bills) because he didn't trust credit cards.

I use credit cards, but have had to replace them a couple of times.

Now they insist they need your phone number to use your credit card on line. Huh? I don't have a cellphone so am out of luck. (I had one before they became popular, because I was a doc, but now I don't).