Thread by @Suitpossum

It's good to see people getting more critical about cashless society, but often their main concern is about governments doing surveillance of our digital payments. In reality, there are at least 9 other reasons to fight cashless society, all of which are just as important (1/10)

1) Corporate data exploitation: It's true that Big Brother states exploit payments data, but 'Big Bouncer' corporates spy on your payments data to decide if you get access to things, while 'Big Butler' corporates use it to creepily manipulate you

https://twitter.com/Suitpossum/status/1594661228768632840

(2/10)

2) Exclusion: Many people cannot access digital payments systems, or struggle to, and find themselves getting excluded. When the option to use cash is removed, they essentially start getting firewalled out of the economy (3/10)

3) Censorship: once you're dependent on the digital payments infrastructure, the oligopoly of big finance-tech firms that control it can choose to exclude you, freeze your account & prevent you paying for certain things. Cash creates a buffer against this possible dystopia (4/10)

4) Resilience: being totally dependent upon large-scale digital systems is extremely risky. Power outages, natural disasters, cyberattacks, systems failures, bugs and hacks can bring entire economies to a standstill when there's no cash backup. 'Cash doesn't crash' (5/10)

5) Spending & indebtedness: one of the big reasons why cashless society is promoted is that people spend 25-40% more with digital payment - this is good for big business, but not good for ordinary humans. See this thread for 10 studies showing this

https://twitter.com/Suitpossum/status/1583059021296115712

(6/10)

6) Centralisation of economies: cash is associated with small-scale peer-to-peer transactions in local economies, whereas digital payment is a darling of globe-spanning digital mega-corporates. In a cashless economy, every local transaction must go via a central corporate (7/10)

7) Vibe: 'Cashless' economies *feel* different, because every interaction has to go via formal institutions. It's one element of a broader process of corporate gentrification that attacks more down-to-earth informal economies

https://twitter.com/Suitpossum/status/1594700789473316864

(8/10)

8) Political capture: the banking sector is already 'too big to fail' & a cashless society only entrenches that, making us dependent upon bank accounts for almost everything. Rather than fighting for a strong public alternative, govts try onboard everyone into the banks (9/10)

9) Financial stability: Ironically, people only have trust in digital money because they believe it can be redeemed for cash. During crises people always run to the ATM, because cash is the only form of public money we can directly hold. Learn more here brettscott.substack.com/p/casino-chip-…