Fear of a Cashless Society Is Ridiculous

Of all the dummy dumb things out there, this ranks near the top.

There are a lot of things changing right now, and that freaks some people out. The latest is a long "copy & paste" diatribe that is wrongly attributed to financial guy Dave Ramsey (it only takes seconds to figure out it's not). It's a whole list of why businesses going cashless is bad.

Here are just some of the claims from the post:

* If you are struggling with your mortgage on a particular month, you can’t do an odd job to get you through.

* Your child can’t go & help the local farmer to earn a bit of summer cash.

* No more cash slipped into the hands of a child as a good luck charm or from their grandparent when going on holidays.

* No more money in birthday cards.

* No more piggy banks for your child to collect pocket money & to learn about the value of earning.

* No more cash for a rainy day fund or for that something special you have been putting $20 a week away for.

* No more charity collections.

* No more selling bits & pieces from your home that you no longer want/need for a bit of cash in return.

* No more cash gifts from relatives or loved ones.

What a cashless society does guarantee:

* Banks have full control of every single penny you own.

* Every transaction you make is recorded.

* All your movements & actions are traceable.

* Access to your money can be blocked at the click of a button when/if banks need ‘clarification’ from you which will take about 2 weeks, a thousand questions answered & many passwords.

* You will have no choice but to declare & be taxed on every dollar in your possession.

* If your transactions are deemed in any way questionable, by those who create the questions, your money will be frozen, ‘for your own good’.

Okay, let's make this easy now. Almost everything on the list can be taken care of with a debit card, Apple Pay, Venmo, Pay Pal, or a gift card. Even that fictional "kid helping a farmer" has a phone, and if he has a phone, he has a way to get paid.

Now, onto security. Banks can't control anything that's not your bank account. You can decide what vendors you want to deal with and what they track and what safeguards are put into place; you have plenty of choices.

I feel like I could type eight pages ripping apart how absurd this nonsense is, but why bother? Right now, handing a cashier one card instead of several dirty bills that go into a dirty bill holder and getting dirty change back seems like a better idea. It's also the way things are going and if you don't like it, then you have a personal problem to deal with.

Lastly, if you don't believe money is dirty, it's estimated that 80 percent of all currency has drug residue on it, and if it has drug residue on it, there's no telling what other gross things are lurking there, including COVID-19.

If you want Mr. Ramsey's actual thoughts on going cashless, you can see that here. The long and short of it is that he thinks it's a bit silly and people will lose market share, but it's hardly the gloom and doom that's been attributed to him.