Years ago.. no, decades ago, I wrote dozens of checks... no, probably scores of checks every month. Balanced my checkbook religiously and actually closed one checking account I could not get to balance after several months' efforts.
Years ago, I'd take about $200-300 a month out of our checking account via the autoteller, stash it in a dresser drawer and keep about $60 in my wallet at all times.
It's been months since I've done that, even since the autoteller limit was raised from 200 a day to 300 locally. Today, several $20's still sit in the drawer, maybe $100 worth, and I still keep about $40 in my wallet.
But I also notice that our Cash Burn Rate, now done via everyday Visa charges, auto-payments via the bank to routine bills and bank-mailed checks to other services, triggered online by me via my bank... All those payments comprise a Burn Rate of about $3,000-$6,000 per month!
Virtually no 'money' is used by me, and I essentially never carry coins in my pocket, either. They just wear out pockets. If I get change from a rare cash transaction it goes to my wife for her piggy-bank 'coin collection' which she empties once or twice a year at the automated machines at the grocery.

I don't see a 'problem' with a 'cashless' world as you seem to describe it.

As I occasionally joke to the cashier in the supermarket... "I'm waiting for the implant in my wrist that I can wave over a reader here to pay my bill"... and at the hardware store, gas station, restaurant...

So, in other words, "... and the Problem Is???"

Orwell visualized a "Big Brother" society in which every detail of everyone's life was constantly under scrutiny by the state. Our electronic, soon-to-be cashless society will hasten this right along. If our dependency on electronics gets disrupted, it will cause instant chaos and the rapid disintegration of all except the most primitive societies. We'd better fear the next solar electromagnetic wave from the sun. It could put civilization out of business.

Correct as always Michael.

Ah, but everyone is missing my main concern...the loss of our electrical grid, which brings it all down and that is not nonsense...it's happened before and in the current cycle we are in and headed it is bound to happen again and few are prepared.
Could it be coincidence that governments and central banks want to move in this direction at this particular time?....naw, their not smart enough for that...but they are cunning though...

There is another of these "cashless society crackdown" threads in the recent list, that one from marc, with 28 comments and 5 "Likes." It is nonsense. The comments reveal a total lack of historical knowledge or social insight.

The Zero Tolerance Drug Wars began with Richard Nixon. They even appointed a Drug Czar. How's that working out for them? If they had just left it alone, it would have not been worse. But the point is that "they" cannot stop anything. Crime or the lack of it -- and I prefer the lack of it -- is a consequence of social culture which is the aggregate of individual choices.

What I read here is an aggregate of paralysis, paranoia, surrender, and retreat.

Read The Fountainhead for the tragedy of Gail Wynand, He was not a nice guy. Ever. And Rand did not laud him for the virtues of Howard Roark which he lacked. Can you imagine Howard Roark leading a gang? Wynand did. Can you image Roark bullying kids? No, he wanted to be left alone. But Rand nodded to the boys in the classroom who could not be controlled, the ones with the fast fists. She was not endorsing violence and aggression. She was giving symbolic meaning to assertion.

The government only has the power that you give it. In a rational world, we all give it the power of physical force in defense of rights. Beyond that, what power do you give it? You give it free rent in your mind -- and then wonder why it has taken over the house.

Time and technology has played a role in the wishes of creatures without conscience.
I assert that they are not human in the same senses as we are or have the potential to be...in my book I identify them as: Parasitical Humanoids.
They are only 2 parts of the 3 part equation...meaning they are only a brain in a body.

You know, using checks was potentially like putting your affairs on the front page of the newspaper, but no one complained about privacy back then. I grant that the government may not seem to have been so intrusive back then, but that is not necessarily true.

I've been buying gold and silver in very limited amounts as I can and I have heard about local currencies and time dollars.

And another thing… Cash is not anonymous. Every banknote has a unique serial number. If, in the production a note is ruined, it is destroyed, but replaced by another with the same number but denoted with a Star. (This is for the USA. I do not know about other nations.)

Banknotes have always had serial numbers. If you have ever seen an old police drama, when they make a sting, they write down the serial numbers of the notes, then catch the criminal with those bills.

However, coins are anonymous. Right now, silver is at $15.46 (ask) and gold is at $1239.40 (ask). At any coin store in America, generic silver rounds such as the American Silver Eagle, Canadian Maple Leaf, etc., are about $20 each. For the same $20 you can get generic US silver dollars (Morgans and Peace), which have 0.773 oz (troy) of silver. The old US coins have higher demand.

Gold is also available as modern American Gold Eagles, classic US gold, modern world gold and classic world gold. You can buy 19th century UK Sovereigns 0.2435 oz gold for about 10% over spot. (If you want the spot price, buy your own 100-oz bar in Chicago.)

And there's US dimes and 1/10 oz gold and UK sterling three pence, and all kinds of small change out there. And people who will take it. You just have to ask. It won't work in a Big Box store, of course. It just depends on what you want and who can provide it. (Please do not bring up Executive Order 6102. By 1938 with gold "illegal" the Numismatic Chronicle magazine was carrying ads for gold coins priced according to the London Fix.)

In WIlliam Gibson's "Sprawl" trilogy, people trade with New Yen, demonetized notes, no longer "good" but limited in number and easy to use. Sounds like science fiction, but, in Iraq, at least for some time, maybe a couple of years, people in Kurdish areas used the last issue of Saddam Hussein. They were "worthless", indeed, but there were never going to be any more. They were counters, accounting symbols.

Read about community currencies like Bay Bucks (http://www.baybucks.org/content/direc...) and Ithaca Time Dollars (http://ithacahours.com). In poor places in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, they use tally boards for the same purpose. You can do it on a computer, but the paper is prettier.

Yes we'll figure a way around...but I wouldn't count on them to do the responsible, reasonable thing...Today, the worlds Kakistocracies are pretty desperate.

Nonsense. Cash will always be with us. After all, we still trade wheat for cows. And cashless can still be anonymous. I don't mean "Bitcoin" or its copies, but simply that public key encryption was developed in part not just for secreting information, but also for validation and authentication in low-trust situations, i.e,, a cash-like mediator between individuals who have no other ties.