I’ll admit, I’m often fond of impatiently shouting out from the back of a slow moving line to a store cashier who is patiently trying to help a customer with a problem credit card… “hey, do you still take cash?” Heh heh heh. Head’s turn. The person holding up the line gets embarrassed. Yes, sometimes ya gotta be the smart ass to make the point. And despite PayPal’s CEO, Dan Schulman insisting, “the real war is the war on cash”, cash still rules!

My favorite real life example of the “cash advantage” most often happens at estate sales or one of the major thrift store chains. Once again I’m stuck in line with a half dozen people ahead of me and the cashier is assisting a customer with huge pile of kids clothes and a credit card… actually, credit cards, as it seems the first four cards (or smart phone apps) the customer presented don’t seem functional. Meanwhile, the rest of us wait… and wait. I have five LP records at two dollars each in my hands. I check my wallet to see if I have the ten dollars cash necessary, in exact change, to make the purchase. Yes, I do! I pull the ten from my wallet, walk to the front of the line like I’ve really gotta pee, holding the bill in mid air, wait to catch the cashier’s attention, politely smile and say, “five records at two dollars each. Ten dollars. Here ya go, sweetie!”, and hand her the ten while the rest of the line looks on in resentful amazement as I walk out the door singing “Halleluia, Cash is King!”

According to “The Economist”, as of 2019, 77% of the world’s transactions were done using cash. Most likely, singing was not involved. Japan, Italy, the USA still love cash. Bill Gates, Peter Theil, Dan Schulman and all the rest of the War On Cash, digital payments/digital ID proponents… not so much. My estimate from the flea market frontlines is 80 to 90% of transactions at vintage collector shows are in cash. Even higher at the local swap meets due to the lower income demographic, many of whom are un or “underbanked”; just the kind of folks Mr. Bill and his buddies at the World Economic Forum are targeting in their attempts to ditch cash and force mandated digital payment systems and biometric/digital ID’s in Africa, India and other under developed nations before attempting to force it on Americans in their mad dash to not only commoditize, but to digitize anything and everything. Digital Capitalism 2020?!!

You see, cash is “liquid”, you can spend it anytime, anyplace, anywhere USA. And you can touch and feel it. It appeals to our human analog wiring. Tangible security. Cards and digi payments, while convenient, don’t always have that same “utility”. Which brings us to our next scenario. Imagine your local PG&E power grid is out along with all those faux disguised cell phone towers due to some bored teenage hacker or malicious foreign government beginning “Operation Payback”… and the long anticipated civil unrest has finally come to your neighborhood. Or maybe something more manageable like a category five hurricane wiping out every 7/11 for the next three hundred miles… whatcha gonna do now big boy? Swap yer now useless credit cards and cell phone for a half roll of toilet paper? “Stranded (obsolete/useless) assets” don’t carry much currency value under emergency circumstances, i.e., your digi currency/card won’t mean shit in a survival situation where people only trust what they can see and touch. Just ask some of the folks livin in/escaping from the fire ravaged communities of northern/southern California, etc. Ya want a cup of coffee to settle your nerves at a cafe barely runnin on emergency generator power. Cash, batteries or bullets is going to be your only means of exchange, mister sister. Emphasis on cash. Small bills preferred. From Wikipedia, “Attacks on, or accidental outages of telecommunication infrastructure, also prevents electronic payments from working, unlike cash transactions which can continue with minimal infrastructure.” Really? Ya don’t say?

But why should I scare you into the reality of worst case scenario’s when I could do it just as easily with more mundane, every day reasons… like your privacy? Like the online “brand” you’ve been meticulously cultivating all these years. Like the data info exhaust you leave every time you make a digital purchase for the next aspiring FaceBook and/or Cambridge Analytica joker to exploit. It seems many of the tech heads who once proudly proclaimed privacy was obsolete, “get used to it!”, “a thing of the past”, are now having second thoughts. It seems convenience comes at a price. Those biometric/digital ID’s I was mentioning earlier… step right up.

Were you on of those who recently panicked purchased toilet paper, hand wipes, latex gloves and sanitizer, overflowing your shopping cart when the announcement was made that the state/city was now on “shelter in place” covid lockdown? And you paid with your credit card/smart phone app instead of cash? Good for you! You are now on Big Data’s radar! And those nice corporate entities can pay to connect the data dots you’ve generated (see above) with the time and day of your purchase… as well as what and how much, to get a hint as to your psychological profile and happily recommend future purchases custom tailored just for you! Oh, we see you are a panicky person! Lovely! Let’s send you some targeted ads that exploit your fear… “A year’s supply of survival food and supplies!… delivered right to your bomb shelter!… only $599! Hurry, this is a limited time offer!! ”… knowing that in your stressed out emotional state, you’re much more likely to bite due to the algorithms filtering the data exhaust you left back at the store. And that’s just the beginning. Wait till you see the ads Big-Pharma, truly the masters of emotional marketing and propaganda, has for you! Drugs drugs and more drugs to help you manage your stress and anxiety (consumer tip, be sure to check the expiration date and dubious country of origin! Better yet, exercise and eat yer veggies!). 

Alas, you could have avoided this intrusion had you paid with lowly cash. 

And Big Finance just loves to exploit our hard wired tendency to purchase impulsively. With cash, you know that if you have five twenty’s in your wallet, you’ve got a hundred bucks available to spend. Woo Hoo!… living within your budget. With a credit card or a smart phone app lacking any sign of dollar/yen/euro denomination, you are much less likely to have a clue as to limits on spending before going into next month’s rent, which is perfectly ok with me if you choose to do that; I’ve got delectable goods to sell! You are also much more likely to stay out of debt using cash. With a card/cell phone app, it’s so easy to spend more than you’ve got, just as the sneaky digital payment entities have in mind. Your ignorance is their financial bliss. Welcome to “The Land of the Fee”! (You did read the microscopic print, yes?) Oh, and Digi Payments cute attempt to suggest cash is carrier of deadly Covid disease… opps! No more than plastic credit cards are. And some research suggests viruses live two to three times as long on plastic surfaces. Oh My! Shall I cut your card into three pieces or four?

Last year, “The Economist” magazine wrote, “ditching cash requires high internet penetration and state support”. All well and good, but a critical item seems to be missing… Trust. What digital finance hasn’t publicly admitted is that 100% digitized currencies can only work in a world willing to trust something unseen, something one can no longer touch… something that they are absolutely certain is out of the reach of digital thieves and hackers, like those who have already successfully managed to haul off with “safe and secure”, encrypted blockchain cyber currencies. How about that, all those sneaky clever folks with nothing but time and computer expertise on their hands figuring out blockchain encryption work around’s. And by way of consumer crusader Ralph Nader, “A computerized economy is one where fraud can easily be committed on a massive scale”. Those abilities would have to be 100% eliminated for the trust necessary for this to succeed globally. You see, along with digitizing currency, one must also digitize trust. Security, what a concept. Best of luck. Maybe in a society of robots! But is our human society really naive enough to believe in, to surrender their trust and cashless vulnerability to a “Cashless Society”? Not in these parts they don’t. Apparently the US Treasury agrees, having printed $6.4 billion in paper currency in 2019. 

Cash is still, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, the working man’s currency, the Main Street local business currency and especially the favored flea market currency. Digital payment has it’s place and seems to be preferred by those who praise and trust Big Finance and the tech gods more than their natural analog DNA. They don’t mind their data trails generating unending 24/7 targeted ads attempting to sell them useless shit they’ll never need. Like I said, Big Data/Big Finance knows who you are, what ya bought, and when ya bought it. With cash purchases, all that info stays between you and me, the buyer and the seller, ie, private. And unlike the brick and mortar corporate franchises with their math challenged employees, we are very good at making change. 

Sayeth The Economist in 2019, “so far, cash has proved stubbornly difficult to stamp out completely”. Heh heh heh… and we flea market vendors intend to keep it that way. Ya see, the growing backlash… the use of cash versus the “digital only economy” has just begun. War? Well, if you insist… Bring it on! Merchants who penalize their customers for paying with cash, shame on you! Your cash carrying customers are welcome at the flea market where the card is often penalized. 

Oh yeah. And as an added incentive, those who insist on paying by card/smart phone lose all their haggling rights. Just saying.

Dismal Dave has spoken …………… All Rights Reserved © Dave Lancon May 2020