The End of Benjamins
By Marcus and Mia
What do I think?
It was recently announced that Denmark might be the first country to accept a cashless society. If a country coverts to a cashless economy there will be many negitive effects on their society.
What is Wrong With Going Cashless?
In a documentary on the CNN Money website, a man sums up his experience with Bitcoin, a digital currency, by saying, "If I've learned anything from this experience it's that Bitcoin is interesting, it's really cool to use, but it's a little bit impractical,"(Pagliery 4:24). Throughout his day, Mr. Pagliery, experienced many delays and problems with this form of cashless payment. He describes it as impractical because in many instances, the people that he was trying to buy from had little knowledge on how to actually use Bitcoin.
What about Banking?
A post in Washington's Blog states that, "we can't rein in our banks if we can't pull our money out of them,"(Washington 1). Converting to a society where people don't walk around with physical currency in their wallets would mean a world where all money is kept in a bank until it is spent and transferred directly into someone else's account. This restricts many freedoms in managing finances.
How does it affect my spending?
Another article states that using digital payment methods, "is actually making us spend more money without realizing it,"(Raphael 1). Not having physical currency to spend affects how we feel about spending a large amount of money. When paying in cash we are more reluctant in our puchases than if we pay by, for instance, credit card because we are handing over something that our brains know has great value, like a fifty dollar bill. When we pay digitally we feel more comfortable paying large sums of money because we can swipe a card with relative ease and pay without really registering in our minds what we just did. Even if the payment is the same.
So whats your point?
Overall, going cashless would not benefit society, but would, in fact, cause many calamities in our everyday lives.
Picture Sources
- Saputri, Girly. "Digital Payment and The World." Cubeacon. IBeacon News, 7 Sept. 2015. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.
- Kern, Christine. "Aetna Pushing Digital Payment." Aetna Pushing Digital Payment. Free Health IT Outcomes Newsletter, 20 May 2014. Web. 13 Nov. 2015.
- The Danish Government Has Proposed That Most Stores Could Dump Their Cash Registers from January 2016. "This Could Be the First Country to Go Cashless." CNNMoney. Cable News Network, 2 June 2015. Web. 13 Nov. 2015.