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  1. #41
    We should totally go the way of In Time, maybe without death, though.

  2. #42
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    Quote Originally Posted by Laize View Post
    Except that's totally not the case.

    I live in NJ and my ability to spend without cash was unimpeded.

    The only businesses I couldn't spend at were the ones that were unable to operate without power to begin with.

    For dealing with average people there are always checks or bank transfers...

    No one needs cash except criminals.
    Because one catastrophic event is equal to all of them right? Because your ability to spend wasn't impeded in one event it never will be? You're not accounting for the fact that there are people who live in areas outside of major cities. Was I inconvenienced in my major city? Not really, but people in smaller areas could have been. Also the fact is that most of the stuff that I needed I could get from a business which was right up the street. If I needed something that they were out of I would have had to either barter with physical goods with someone that had what I wanted or give them physical currency.

    Also as someone who lives in NY currently Sandy wasn't nearly as devastating to the local way of life as say ... Katrina in which there was mass looting, huge shortage of supply for basically everything, etc.

    I always pay for everything with my bank card, but I understand that there are more people than criminals that rely on cash. :/

  3. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wrestler10307 View Post
    Um, What? You'd remove electronic currency but leave it? Also who is going to be in charge of making sure all coins are their pure respective metals? Gold is too soft to make into coins, you'd end up with a pile of bent/broken gold after a while. This would also require a complete restructuring of the way we value money. Gold right now is over $1,600 an ounce. This would essentially make a coin the size of a quarter worth several hundred dollars, and even one the size of a dime would be easily over 100.
    Yea.. people would get paid in "real" currency such as silver or gold coins but you could take it to the bank and buy electronic currency for it for online shopping or to use with your credit card. Carrying a purse with gold around wouldn't be very convenient and safe after all. And yes, gold coins would be the most valuable obviously.. there's also silver and if the smallest silver coins are still too expensive, I'm sure there are less valuable precious metals to make the smaller coins from.

    The benefit from this to people is fairly obvious. Right now, lets say you have $1000. The economy is bad, country is in dept, so the powers that be decide they will print 10% more money. Thats a real practice by the way and done often. Maybe not that much at once but still. Now your $1000 is only worth $900. You still have the paper bills or the same number in your bank account but it can buy 10% less. If there is war or a disaster, that money could be worth less than toilet paper.

    But if you had 10 gold coins worth $1000 now, they'd still be worth roughly $1000 no matter what happens.
    Last edited by mmocc089ef6a74; 2012-12-22 at 09:38 PM.

  4. #44
    Bloodsail Admiral larrakeyah's Avatar
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    Cash allows tax evasion, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.

  5. #45
    "In this day and age"?
    You should try travelling. The world is very different from US.

    How many purchases people do in the world using plastic cards? 1%? 0.5%? Most likely even less.

    There are many disadvantages of moving to FULLY electronic currency. One day you can wake up and realize that your "money" were blocked, and your friends would not be able to transfer money to your blocked accounts. This could happen for various reasons. Blocked by bank because of unpaid credit, blocked by technical mistake, blocked by your government.

    Electronic currency means serious breach in privacy. All of your payments will be visible to a lot of people. To banks, to government, to your wife that was curious about your mistress, to your wife's lawyer that convinced the court that evidence of your infidelity can be found in your payment log, to a random hackers, etc.

    If you like electronic currency you can use do it right now. But world is not ready to switch to strictly electronic payments yet.

  6. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by Cattaclysmic View Post
    What happens during a blackout? Or if the internet is down. No groceries...?
    Well yes, you cant operate the machine (cant remember the name, mental blank) that you put physical money in either when the power is down.

  7. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by breadisfunny View Post
    because physical currencies are needed as backup incase electronic currencies go offline.
    That's as ridiculous as saying electronic currencies are needed as backup in case of a fire.

    ---------- Post added 2012-12-23 at 12:06 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by RoKPaNda View Post
    Because one catastrophic event is equal to all of them right? Because your ability to spend wasn't impeded in one event it never will be? You're not accounting for the fact that there are people who live in areas outside of major cities. Was I inconvenienced in my major city? Not really, but people in smaller areas could have been. Also the fact is that most of the stuff that I needed I could get from a business which was right up the street. If I needed something that they were out of I would have had to either barter with physical goods with someone that had what I wanted or give them physical currency.

    Also as someone who lives in NY currently Sandy wasn't nearly as devastating to the local way of life as say ... Katrina in which there was mass looting, huge shortage of supply for basically everything, etc.

    I always pay for everything with my bank card, but I understand that there are more people than criminals that rely on cash. :/
    If you were in, say, Hurricane Katrina or your home was demolished in the Japan earthquakes, there was no cash left in your home... and if there was it certainly wasn't accessible. In fact, your only savior would have been if you kept it with the bank in electronic form.

    How's that for irony?

    ---------- Post added 2012-12-23 at 12:07 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by traen View Post
    "In this day and age"?
    You should try travelling. The world is very different from US.

    How many purchases people do in the world using plastic cards? 1%? 0.5%? Most likely even less.

    There are many disadvantages of moving to FULLY electronic currency. One day you can wake up and realize that your "money" were blocked, and your friends would not be able to transfer money to your blocked accounts. This could happen for various reasons. Blocked by bank because of unpaid credit, blocked by technical mistake, blocked by your government.

    Electronic currency means serious breach in privacy. All of your payments will be visible to a lot of people. To banks, to government, to your wife that was curious about your mistress, to your wife's lawyer that convinced the court that evidence of your infidelity can be found in your payment log, to a random hackers, etc.

    If you like electronic currency you can use do it right now. But world is not ready to switch to strictly electronic payments yet.
    If you're so concerned with privacy, there's a private sector solution for that.

  8. #48
    Quote Originally Posted by orangelemonrain View Post
    Well yes, you cant operate the machine (cant remember the name, mental blank) that you put physical money in either when the power is down.
    The cash registers you can. Most of them have a mechanical opener. And then its just arithmetic.
    Other than that - what if it is just the interwebs that is down? Or if the credit card machine just doesnt work.

  9. #49
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    We need to switch our national currency to bottle caps, or solid gold Spanish doubloons. Maybe a combination of the two with a conversion rate of 10 bottle caps for a doubloon.
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  10. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by Laize View Post
    That's as ridiculous as saying electronic currencies are needed as backup in case of a fire.
    No its not. In one scenario you end up with no money whatsoever in case of a blackout. In the other, if all your physical money burns, you still have whatever electronically stored money - even if none it is still theoretically an option.

  11. #51
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    Quote Originally Posted by traen View Post
    Electronic currency means serious breach in privacy. All of your payments will be visible to a lot of people. To banks, to government, to your wife that was curious about your mistress, to your wife's lawyer that convinced the court that evidence of your infidelity can be found in your payment log
    I'd call that justice, personally.

    At any rate, the sentiment that a vast number of people in the world don't deal in (and don't have the infrastructure for) electronic currency still holds true. Moreover, hackers being more easily able to steal vast sums of money (as their will be a greater incentive to do so,) or fabricating money out of thin air and injecting it, would be a major problem, in addition to "acts of god" like hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, tornadoes, and the like wiping out power for extended periods of time, preventing people from purchasing things because, in essence, their money no longer works.
    “Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
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  12. #52
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    Quote Originally Posted by Stir View Post
    I personally think, in the event of non-physical currency not being present, we shouldn't have a need for any kind of currency at all.
    Edit: For clarity, I personally feel the world would be a lot better off without currency.
    Tell me, what Would make the world go around then? How would you get food? Nobody would produce, well I'm sure some people would still work but a majority would do nothing. And the world would end up even more selfish than today.

    But let's pretend everything went on as usual.. How Would you decide who has the right to products?
    Personally, I'd like a personal jet, how would we be able to cope with demands for things without pissing off someone else and then avoid anarchy.
    Last edited by mmoc2cd64d3072; 2012-12-23 at 12:31 AM.

  13. #53
    A big reason would be because it would be near impossible to transfer funds between persons. Any business off the grid would not be able to accept money. Strip clubs would not work - or any place where frequent tipping is customary. Privacy disappears.

    Penalties would likely be incurred to alleviate some of those problems. I dunno, I just don't think we're ready for a system like that on a personal level. For businesses, sure, why not! But they're already at that point.
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  14. #54
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    Quote Originally Posted by Laize View Post
    Most Americans do the exact same thing.
    Actually most Americans like cash. Especially in red states.

  15. #55
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    I use cash to buy things like below $5 and use my card on everything else.

  16. #56
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    Quote Originally Posted by Laize View Post
    Coins cost a lot of money to make. A quarter (the most efficient) costs about 7.5 cents to make while a penny costs 70% more than its face value ($.017) to create. They're unwieldy, almost no one likes them and most people just throw them in a jar or can when they get home for a yearly trip to a CoinStar machine. Coins are not worth the effort it takes to make them, is what I'm saying.

    On the other end of the spectrum, $50 and $100 bills are the vehicle of choice for high-end crime (a cash only business) including human trafficking, drug cartels and arms deals. Oh, and North Korea has managed to produce perfect copies of US $50 and $100 bills, so our continued use of them enriches the Kim dynasty.

    That pretty much leaves the $1, $5, $10 and $20 bills as being the most common while also being in denominations too small (save, perhaps, the $20) to be used effectively for high crime.

    With the prevalence of digital technology, and the far superior nature of cryptography (Both in cost and effectiveness) to currency security, I see no reason we need a physical currency anymore.
    Flaw in your logic, Drug dealers and Cartels use Electronic Money all the time. Some even pay taxes, it helps legitimize the money. Say you are a drug dealer, you would be smart to own a business as well, the business makes a profit based on drug sales, but on paper it is the service provided. It is very hard to prove that the money is earned from illegal methods.

  17. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by Meari View Post
    In addition to this, what about homeless people? A lot of them survive largely by people giving them some spare change.
    Heaven fucking forbid they get a job
    Cash is now nearly pointless and should be condemned to history

  18. #58
    Merely a Setback Kaleredar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheBeardedOne View Post
    Heaven fucking forbid they get a job
    And where pray tell do they send the paycheck to? What if they're mentally or physically ill? Subsisting on people's pocket change obviously isn't the answer, but the solution isn't just "stop being poor."

    But that's an entirely separate can of worms.
    “Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
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    Kaleredar is right...
    Words to live by.

  19. #59
    The better question is why do we even have currencies at all in this day and age? Money is simply a game that people choose to play. A small portion "wins" and gets to be at the "top" and the rest struggle to be in the middle or at the bottom.

    Money causes more issue's than it fixes (famine, crime, poverty, power, greed, death, ect..). The problem is people are raised with money and don't know any other way of existing, So it's easier for them to stay with the current way of things.

  20. #60
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaleredar View Post
    And where pray tell do they send the paycheck to? What if they're mentally or physically ill? Subsisting on people's pocket change obviously isn't the answer, but the solution isn't just "stop being poor."

    But that's an entirely separate can of worms.
    A bank account? also we have disability pensions where i live as well as government pay checks for those that have no jobs. Filthy scum should get off the street but anyway this is off topic

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