Where Cash is No Good
Netherlands and Sweden are two cashless countries. This article is from the Numismatic Bibliomania Society weekly email, "The E-Sylum". (Because they are bibliomaniacs, their thrice-a-year print journal is called The Asylum. When the email newsletter was launched in 1998, "E-Sylum" seemed appropriate.)
http://www.coinbooks.org/club_nbs_esy...
I believe that cash always will have a place. However, cows once were "cash" and we no longer drive herds of them to the marketplace to buy grapes and olives. (Imagine the herd that Bill Gates would need to drive around, at about $100 a head...) But, we still trade cows for wheat at the Commodities and Futures exchanges. We no longer have precious metals in our coins... but some people do, indeed, use silver and gold to buy from others in their market circles.
Cash, too, will continue.
I believe that these so-called "cashless" nations actually have cash undergrounds that the mainstream statisticians try to measure without admitting their reality.
In Iraq after the US invasion, the Kurds continued to use the "worthless" final issue of Saddam Hussein because they were finite and knowable, so they served as counters. The same narrative is found in the cyberpunk novels of William Gibson, wherein "New Yen" continue to serve as an underground currency after their formal demonetization. Here in Texas in the 1830s until after the War Between the States, banks were illegal. So, the firm of R. D. & G. Mills of Galveston, acquired a large lot of banknotes rom the failed wildcat "Northern Bank of Mississippi." The firm's own endorsements on the backs gave the notes acceptable value in a wide geography -- and avoided the law...
Just sayin'...
http://www.coinbooks.org/club_nbs_esy...
I believe that cash always will have a place. However, cows once were "cash" and we no longer drive herds of them to the marketplace to buy grapes and olives. (Imagine the herd that Bill Gates would need to drive around, at about $100 a head...) But, we still trade cows for wheat at the Commodities and Futures exchanges. We no longer have precious metals in our coins... but some people do, indeed, use silver and gold to buy from others in their market circles.
Cash, too, will continue.
I believe that these so-called "cashless" nations actually have cash undergrounds that the mainstream statisticians try to measure without admitting their reality.
In Iraq after the US invasion, the Kurds continued to use the "worthless" final issue of Saddam Hussein because they were finite and knowable, so they served as counters. The same narrative is found in the cyberpunk novels of William Gibson, wherein "New Yen" continue to serve as an underground currency after their formal demonetization. Here in Texas in the 1830s until after the War Between the States, banks were illegal. So, the firm of R. D. & G. Mills of Galveston, acquired a large lot of banknotes rom the failed wildcat "Northern Bank of Mississippi." The firm's own endorsements on the backs gave the notes acceptable value in a wide geography -- and avoided the law...
Just sayin'...
It apparently works on other people because I bought my last car by putting down a stack of cash. It was a reasonably big company, yet they immediately made a deal they said they wouldn't do only seconds before I put the cash on the table.
So I just like cash. In people minds, perhaps irrationally, it represents an immediate transfer of value better than checks or electronic transfers. I think there would be a revolt if employers put people's pay on a table in cash, and then moved some of the bills into "Federal Withholding", "State Withholding", and "FICA" cash boxes.
I haven't been to Netherlands in a long time, but when I was there in the 90s I remember debit card purchases, which they called pinnen, were more common there than in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if they're ahead of us on not using cash.
I have been think about this b/c I listened to the debate tonight. They treated the debt like a minor issue. If they keep failing to take it seriously, I can image a monetary crisis in the next ten years so severe that people start making agreements with amounts tied to some basket of crypto-currencies and futures prices of basic materials. I really hope they don't let it come to that .