>> The idea that cash is this hilariously inconvenient thing is a complete fabrication.
>That's a strong statement without considering that your experience might not match others'.
IMHO, both the original statement and the respond are opinions. It may well be the case that cash is universally not “hilariously inconvenient.” Without some empirical evidence, it is just a shouting match.
In my opinion, cash is actually very convenient to use and encourages reflections on spending habits.
He's saying that using cash is inconvenient because no-one uses cash where he is.
I'm saying that it's not because at its' core it's fundamentally just handing over a bit of paper.
It's not a statement about how many people accept cash where I am. I can't easily pay my mortgage with cash directly either. The point is that it's not an insurmountably difficult thing.
There also seems to be this bonkers strawman thing going on whereby loads of people seem to think I'm saying "don't ever make a non-cash transaction" which is bloody stupid. It's like, _a priori obvious_ that it's stupid. I hate this aspect of online discourse - if the thing you think I'm saying logically makes no sense, then I probably am not actually saying that thing.
> it's fundamentally just handing over a bit of paper.
No, it's handing over bits of paper at the particular physical location of the person or entity you are paying. For some transactions, like paying for your food at a restaurant, that's no problem because you're there anyway. For other transactions, like paying monthly bills, it is a problem.
Nah because banks exist and can make digital transactions when you give them cash.
Literally, if you were standing next to me, you can give me 10 quid and I can send someone else that ten quid. You have paid them ten quid using cash, reasonably anonymously in a way that cannot be easily blocked or censored as long as cash exists.
This becomes far, far less convenient or feasible if we only have barter and now you need to find someone that accepts some arbitrary valuable object of a value that isn't exactly the amount you want to send.
No-one is arguing that electronic transactions are not useful, this is a strawman. It makes no logical sense, so perhaps you should consider that I'm not making that argument.
> banks exist and can make digital transactions when you give them cash.
And as soon as I use a bank for this, I am no longer protected against law enforcement preventing me from paying my bills and supporting myself, which was supposed to be the whole point of using cash in the first place. Law enforcement can block banks from making digital transactions on my behalf just as easily as they can freeze my accounts at those same banks.
No, it's convenient because anyone can accept or transfer it without a middleman. It's a physical thing you just give to someone. You can't (reasonably) censor it or block it or sanction it without just disabling the whole currency.
I was just describing the fact that it's not some sort of crazy idea to pay bills using cash. If HN weren't full of 21 year olds we wouldn't even be having this chat, it's like these guys forgot that not even that long ago we just paid each other with envelopes at the end of the week/month.
Like, they're literally saying that you can't do X, where X is something that most of us did less than 50 years ago, and no we didn't spend half of our days running around.
> He's saying that using cash is inconvenient because no-one uses cash where he is.
No, I'm not. I'm saying using cash is inconvenient for me for things like paying my monthly bills because it would require me to physically go to each individual company I pay bills to and pay them in person. Whereas with a credit card I can pay all my monthly bills in a few minutes from my desk at home. Even if my utility company, for example, would accept cash in payment (as they probably would since most companies offering basic services like that are required by law to accept cash), I wouldn't do it because of the huge increase it would be in time and effort every month. I have better things to do with my time than schlep around all over the place to pay bills in person.
> I can't easily pay my mortgage with cash directly either. The point is that it's not an insurmountably difficult thing.
You're shifting your ground. Before you were saying that using cash wasn't inconvenient. Now you're saying it is for some things, like paying your mortgage. Which is exactly my point.
> I'm saying using cash is inconvenient for me for things like paying my monthly bills because it would require me to physically go to each individual company I pay bills to and pay them in person.
We could solve this problem with an a service where you'd be able to pool all the money you intend to spend on bills, and then the service would handle getting the cash to each individual company. :)
That money could even accrue 0.001% monthly interest, while it's waiting to get spent on bills.
Yeah, we could even call this service...a bank. And then we wouldn't be protecting ourselves any more against our assets being frozen by law enforcement without due process. Which was supposed to be the whole point of using cash.
>That's a strong statement without considering that your experience might not match others'.
IMHO, both the original statement and the respond are opinions. It may well be the case that cash is universally not “hilariously inconvenient.” Without some empirical evidence, it is just a shouting match.
In my opinion, cash is actually very convenient to use and encourages reflections on spending habits.