It's so weird that digital infrastructure is still treated so different from traditional infrastructure in so many ways. Plumbing and electrical networks are run by the state, why not treat fibre networks the same way? Same with digital vs traditional cash.

You must be delusional if you think anything good will come of digital euro.

It will be nothing but a mass surveillance tool. And another step towards the abolition of cash.

"No tracking" is the one we're least likely to get, since the.Christians want to.be a me to control what you spend it on

That would happen in an ideal society but at that point you basically have cash. Cash works offline but a digital currency wouldnt because there is no way to prove that youre the one who has the money. This way an offline transaction could be used to basically duolicate money and the first one to reconnect to the network would get the money. But idk, there are much smartee people than me, they can probably figure something out.

the government needs to facilitate a digital currency that is functionally identical to cash. No fees (neither transaction nor accounting), no tracking, no restrictions on how to use it. Ideally, it works offline.

This will happen sooner or later because cash and crypto are currencies of criminals and tax evaders.

Buy a home. The paperwork costs a % of the home's value. It's the same paperwork whether you buy a 2 million dollar home or $200k home. It is not a insubstantial sum. Plus you you tip your realtor a % of the sale value. Absolute scam.

They also create money out of nothing to lend it for profit. So that's fun.

"Money is created out of nothing, as bank debt" / "Although new loans are being created, the interest on the principal is not. Nowhere in the system is this additional money created. This gives rise to scarcity, which, in turn, creates competition to acquire the extra money to cover the loans’ interest." / "The competition to obtain the money necessary to pay the interest is structurally embedded in the current money system. [...] to pay back interest on a loan requires using someone else’s principal. In other words, not creating the money to pay interest is the device used to generate the scarcity necessary for a bank-debt monetary system to function. It forces people to compete with each other for money that was never created, and it penalizes them with bankruptcy, should they not succeed." / "When a banker checks a customer’s credit score, it is to assess how successful or aggressive that individual or business will be in contending with others to obtain funds that are not created in sufficiency to pay back the interest on the loan. In a manner of speaking, it’s like a game of musical chairs in that there are never enough seats for everyone. Someone will end up getting squeezed out. There isn’t enough money to pay the interest on all the loans, just like the missing chair. Both are highly competitive games. In the money game, however, the stakes are elevated, as it means grappling with certain poverty or, worse still, having to declare bankruptcy." (from the book "Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity Into Prosperity" by Bernard Lietaer [who worked at the central bank of Belgium] & Jacqui Dunne)

Every loan made by a bank can create another loan 90% the value of the first loan. Think about what I just wrote and you will see your argument doesnt scratch the surface of the greed they create.

Most don't pay interest on paltry amounts.

And being able to control what people are able to buy.

A common loophole for that (because the credit card companies themselves demand no fees for using a credit card) is to offer a discount for cash/debit. So everything is priced with the CC fee built in, but they take it off the price when you don't use a CC.

Though I have the most respect for the places willing to say "nah, we won't take CC at all".

Isn't that the case in most countries? I've never seen in European offline shops different prices advertised based on payment method. They'd put up the annoying "cards only above 10 €" and such, but never "cash 9€, card 10€"

Then you have places like where I work where 2% is our the entire profit margin, pay me cash or fuck off.

When I worked at Target many years ago, one of my roles was the Cash Office.

I can confirm it was incrdibly tedious and expensive work. The store would do $100k in sales on a Saturday, and Sunday morning i would spend 3 hours counting uo the $10k of that which was cash. Plus another grand or so in checks.

Then there was the change to deal with making sure we were well-stocked on all the various coins. It's been a while but I think we sometimes ordered Ones, Fives, maybe even Ten dollar bills too. All of which of course cost a premium over face value tl have delivered to the store. Plus I am sure it cost a decent amount to have the Twenties and higher picked up a few times a week. Then there was the cost of equipment - the registers themselves, the safe, the cash counting machine, the software, the special envelopes, the cash cart we used to move cash between the registers and safe, the double-locked doors in the cash room. The opportunity cost of dedicating a whole room to that which could have been retail or office space. The insurance on it all.

Aa much as I hate the control and privacy issues, I also absolutely understand why businesses hate using cash.

For small, local, high volume transactions cash wins.

For large purchases over long distances or time periods, modern banking is more efficient

Oh they can more than make up for the costs of dealing with cash by not declaring it as income. What sale? Waves hand. There was no sale!

In processing fees

Sorta. It's 1.5% to the bank out of that 3%

That's interesting, here in Germany a 50€ note is very common, a 100€ note is not that common but people do use it from time to time, we also have a 200€ note that is definetly rare and then there even was a 500€ note which is basically extinct by now.

But we probably also use more cash here, I've never heard of a place here that doesn't accept cash, only of places that don't accept cards.

Took me an hour in the evening to do the cash admin and banking when I worked in retail, for a 3-6k a day business years ago. I think my hour was cheaper than 1.5% of takings, but then card was usually faster at checkout, so maybe it does all balance out.

But cash can be kept at home or in a safe deposit box. All cashless society means there's no benefit to that and the reserves on bank increase. Per person it's a small amount but over all account holders and fractional reserves, it maybe be worth several billion dollars

Not only being able to be cut off, they can know specifically that any given person buys. There will be zero privacy

It is.

Sure, the note doesnt change, but whoever receives payment does not receive the full $100 because of taxes.

Unless you're at a local fair which does not pay taxes, nobody is just trading a full $100 at each stage

LSD

There are still fees for the retailer, and on lower cost purchases, the fees tend to be higher. That's why stores often have a $5 minimum for cards. They don't want people buying a pack of gum with their debit card, and end up costing them more than the meager profit.

Debit cards cost merchants 2% , which they add to prices. you thought that was free?

In the states the machines to process debt are far more expensive than credit, and all of the services I looked into using had a monthly subscription... on top of the fees to take debit. While the fee schedule was less than credit, it was not zero.

Erm... Pretend like I don't know what that is.

A bill doesn't rip that easily, so I'm guessing that was worth the exact amount of paper it was printed on.

You can buy sex toys or mushrooms and pay by card, no issue.

I dunno, with the profits of the drug trade that HSBC has swallowed up, perhaps they could give us a better return.

This doesn't have anything to do with taxes...

The sales tax goes to the states and goes back to you through public services...

How the hell does this have anything to do with sales tax?

Tell me you don't understand any of this without.... Fuck it you already did

Each time the money exchanges hands for goods or services the card compies take their fee. So I pay you 100. You receive 98.5. You spend that 98.5 to buy something from me and I receive 97.02.

If we did the exchange in cash we would retain the full amount.