Canada

Why bother with a downtown anymore. Literally everything I want or need is walking distance.

Kinda reads like you think because downtown doesn’t fulfil your needs you don’t see a point to it.

Who do you imagine is responsible for the state of downtown areas? Capitalism seems to be the culprit for decimating downtown areas.

I used to work for a company that converted coin-based parking meters to contactless card payment. And I completely agree.

Payment by card/app saves the companies a ton of money because they don’t have to handle cash — the guy going around is now just a fact checker and the automated systems handle the cash.

Previously, some cash was “lost” at each touch point (human handling the cash) in the chain; now this is replaced by higher fees, and a percentage going to fintech executives directly.

Oh yea. It's ridiculous that governments have let financial transactions be a private company thing.

Yea. I could go on and on about why I prefer cash a lot of times. Not always, but I always carry a couple hundred bucks on me. I also usually hide $20 or so somewhere in my car. Just in case I need gas and I forgot my wallet or the payment system was down or anything like that. It won't get me a full tank. But it will get me home.

The odds of getting robbed are slimmer than getting my credit card skimmed. I've had credit cards skimmed multiple times in the last few years. Last time I was robbed was over a decade ago, and that's cause I passed out at a party and someone told my wallet.

One could spend thousands of bucks before getting shut down (and thankfully I have good fraud protection so I didn't pay) while the other got 50 bucks.

Bartering is also a good one. It's easier to barter with people at stands or who make their own goods. Most handymen or trades workers will charge you less if you pay in cash. They probably aren't reporting the income, but they also aren't having to pay the payment processor 5% of the total. When you make a $5000 repair to your house, that's $250 just in fees the contractor/handyman has to pay. Cash avoids that.

You are right about the fact that businesses are not legally obligated to accept cash. I was wrong on that.

As for e-payment not working, it happened to me at least 3 times since last year, and it fucking sucks.

I don't like to walk with a lot of cash on me, but if I know that there is a outage of payment systems, I can at least use the cash I keep at home to pay for my basic needs.

More options is good in any case. We are already tracked enough as it is, so I understand people that want to use cash.

Also literally every car. Why the hell is my sexual activity in the privacy agreement KIA?

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-wheels-every-car-brand-reviewed-by-mozilla-including-ford-volkswagen-and-toyota-flunks-privacy-test/

Nah, a converted electric milk float. 🤣

Kind of ironic that you’re excited about EVs, though.

"Excited" isn't really the word. It's more that I acknowledge the inevitable. Even if we ignore the damage done by burning it, the world supply of gasoline is finite, and the extraction and refining process is not only messy, polluting, and making many parts of the world beholden to countries with bad human rights records, but also has chokepoints—a relatively small number of large refineries—that are increasingly at risk as the climate gets worse. Better to get off it before we're forced to do so one way or the other.

This is just conjecture on my part, but I imagine people are against a completely cashless society as it gives companies and the government more information about us than they deserve.

Do I want the government or credit card companies knowing everything that I spend my money on, where I parked my car etc. people should be allowed to be anonymous if they so choose and paying cash allows this to some extend.

Plus, how am I gonna buy my weed if we go cashless, back to dark web and waiting two weeks for delivery, 😩.

And you are not just a clueless idiot, but an asshat as well.

But cash exists right now. There is no reason to drop support for it.