Paper Currency

[Sethran]

When will we, as a collective global society, grow out of paper money?

We, at least we in America, are already one step closer with the national use of Debit cards, and the world as a whole is familiar with electronic transactions as opposed to walking into a store and handing several bills of value to a clerk. With the continued depreciation of the paper dollar, one would imagine the process of transitioning from paper money to digital money would go much faster, and yet we still cling to the physical dollar.

We see it in video games quite a lot, especially sci-fi. Credits, instead of gold or dollars. You get so much automatically transferred to a card, or an account, or merely a name. No hassle with wallets, and while it would require much more dedicated electronic defenses, this would pave the way for even more digital information -- such as a digital ID that updates automatically on your birthday, and updates to a license when you pass your test and thus cut down on plastic usage by the DMV as well as wait times since you don't have to wait for them to type up all your information, take your picture, and then print all of that out onto your card - They just take your picture, and upload it to your digital ID.

So, opinions?

 

[Reaperman Wompa]

Though I do get the idea of using a single card, theft, non payment issues etc. would be major problems. Anything that can be designed by man can be destroyed by another, anything put in place to protect identities would eventually be broken, might take a while but some people have no lives, then there's the fact that putting everything on a single card could be very dangerous. Someone accesses it and they control your life.

 

[Sethran]

Maybe, but as I said in my original post, it would lead to a much greater amount and quality of digital security.

As it is right now, because we still rely on paper money there isn't a whole lot of digital security because it's not the focus. But if it were to become a focus, I guarantee you that it would not only be much harder for a hacker to break through the defenses, most of them will more than likely be making money by enhancing the defenses with their talent, like some are now with major electronic corportations, but on a much larger scale. And even for those who don't want to, that's still a lot of people with similar/equal talents against one or two people who just like to be pricks >_>

 

[Jursa]

In the case of a complete downfall of society you can still use paper money to light a fire, credit cards can't do that...

 

[Silver]

Why not just go one step further, and have it all on a chip, surgically implanted into people? And have it keep track of their criminal activities, as well, and location. People get lost after all, right?

Oh, oh, even better, we could have the chip monitor people's actions and vitals, in case they needed medical attention. And if they tried to commit a crime, we could have it send out an electrical current.


People like money, it's something physical, something you can touch and connect to. Sure, removing it would maybe solve some problems, but theft of credit cards and scams are common enough as it is today, if regular thiefs and thugs couldn't steal purses anymore, where would they go?

The ID has the same issue, while it sure would be convinient, everything is just a small step. It could always be improved with one more thing, and people would be afraid. Lose one code or whatever to that thing, and you've lost it all. Key it to someone's DNA or whatever and we'll have problems with that too, both that people's DNA will be really easy to track and find, but also that it can be copied too.


The ID's were proposed in Britain. You'd have a nice little card with all the information about you, there was an outrage, and several people I know were going to run and protest if the proposition passed. It didn't, btw. People in general don't trust their governments a whole lot. The more information the government has on people, the more uneasy we feel. Look at all the sci-fi horrors, it's always the big bad government.


Now I'm not saying this is a necessarily bad thing, I think a chip such as described earlier could very well be a good thing, maybe without the electrical shocks though, but I don't think many people would go for it, and paranoid as we are, it wouldn't take long before some nutbag started spamming youtube videos about mind-control and alien controlled governments.

 

[Brokkr]

Aside from the security issues, paper money is still the only way to pay for certain things mainly because there might not be enough business to warrant a credit card machine.

 

[marfoir(IRL)]

No...

Good in theory but too open to things such as card theft, fraud etc... and you cant beat a big bundle of cash in your hand.

That said it would be damn cool to have a chip on your palm that you just swipe to pay for things.

 

[Reaperman Wompa]

No...

Good in theory but too open to things such as card theft, fraud etc... and you cant beat a big bundle of cash in your hand.

That said it would be damn cool to have a chip on your palm that you just swipe to pay for things.

Specially for hospitals. Swipe it and they find out important allergy/health issues before they accidentally kill you.

 

[marfoir(IRL)]

No...

Good in theory but too open to things such as card theft, fraud etc... and you cant beat a big bundle of cash in your hand.

That said it would be damn cool to have a chip on your palm that you just swipe to pay for things.

Specially for hospitals. Swipe it and they find out important allergy/health issues before they accidentally kill you.

Hmm, didnt think of that. Sorta like those bracelets that some people have but sci-fi style. I approve

 

[Grimm91]

Theft would be a huge problem,but other than that good idea.

 

[taquito_sandywich]

BARCODE! the thing with a chip though you can fritz it and it and erase everything.

 

[Avida]

I hope we dont, money in hand always feels more rewarding than money in numbers.

 

[Reaperman Wompa]

BARCODE! the thing with a chip though you can fritz it and it and erase everything.

Your skin sags and you have to get another, and stuff like a tan etc. could mess it up easily. Too many problems with barcodes, the best possible is a form of card or maybe something like a pipboy.

Edit: But again, it could be hacked.

 

[teh_v]

Barcode that's awesome and you could but a little number under the barcode. You know tattoo it onto the person body even if the person didn't want it. You know as a way to identify that person as a number and not as a person. I mean that's what the nazi did to the jew in the concentration camps during world war two and it worked real well for them. So yea lets just go around tattooing barcode's onto everyone.

 

[Jeronus]

Why not just go one step further, and have it all on a chip, surgically implanted into people? And have it keep track of their criminal activities, as well, and location. People get lost after all, right?

Oh, oh, even better, we could have the chip monitor people's actions and vitals, in case they needed medical attention. And if they tried to commit a crime, we could have it send out an electrical current.


People like money, it's something physical, something you can touch and connect to. Sure, removing it would maybe solve some problems, but theft of credit cards and scams are common enough as it is today, if regular thiefs and thugs couldn't steal purses anymore, where would they go?

The ID has the same issue, while it sure would be convinient, everything is just a small step. It could always be improved with one more thing, and people would be afraid. Lose one code or whatever to that thing, and you've lost it all. Key it to someone's DNA or whatever and we'll have problems with that too, both that people's DNA will be really easy to track and find, but also that it can be copied too.


The ID's were proposed in Britain. You'd have a nice little card with all the information about you, there was an outrage, and several people I know were going to run and protest if the proposition passed. It didn't, btw. People in general don't trust their governments a whole lot. The more information the government has on people, the more uneasy we feel. Look at all the sci-fi horrors, it's always the big bad government.


Now I'm not saying this is a necessarily bad thing, I think a chip such as described earlier could very well be a good thing, maybe without the electrical shocks though, but I don't think many people would go for it, and paranoid as we are, it wouldn't take long before some nutbag started spamming youtube videos about mind-control and alien controlled governments.

It's a good idea but most people won't accept the idea because it is already been linked to the Mark of the Beast, one of the signs that the devil is coming back and the Pope would almost immediately come out against the idea. Here is a link for more info on the mark of the beast. http://www.markbeast.com/mark/what-is-mark-beast.htm

 

[anti_strunt]

As every black UN helicopter afficionado knows, only solid gold can support a real economy - everything else is just worthless fiat currency issued by the Illuminati World Bank to keep us ignorant and oppressed. Or somesuch.

 

[m_jim]

With the continued depreciation of the paper dollar, one would imagine the process of transitioning from paper money to digital money would go much faster, and yet we still cling to the physical dollar.

Depreciation of the paper dollar? The digital numbers in your bank account have exactly the same monetary buying power as the dollars in your billfold. Maybe if you were arguing switching over to a gold standard, you could use depreciation of paper money as an argument, but as it stands, it simply does not make any sense.

 

[beddo]

When will we, as a collective global society, grow out of paper money?

We, at least we in America, are already one step closer with the national use of Debit cards, and the world as a whole is familiar with electronic transactions as opposed to walking into a store and handing several bills of value to a clerk. With the continued depreciation of the paper dollar, one would imagine the process of transitioning from paper money to digital money would go much faster, and yet we still cling to the physical dollar.

We see it in video games quite a lot, especially sci-fi. Credits, instead of gold or dollars. You get so much automatically transferred to a card, or an account, or merely a name. No hassle with wallets, and while it would require much more dedicated electronic defenses, this would pave the way for even more digital information -- such as a digital ID that updates automatically on your birthday, and updates to a license when you pass your test and thus cut down on plastic usage by the DMV as well as wait times since you don't have to wait for them to type up all your information, take your picture, and then print all of that out onto your card - They just take your picture, and upload it to your digital ID.

So, opinions?

I don't think that paper money is a backwards way of thinking. It has numerous advantages over digital credit.

Firstly, it's more liquid, it's instantaneously liquid which is more than can be said for digital credit. While you may be able to transfer credit almost instantaneously between accounts there are checks that need to be performed for the transaction to be legitimate. For example, the system needs to check that sufficient credit is available, something that doesn't need to be done with cash or paper money.

Then of course there's the security. By having our lending ratios based on a physical item it becomes more tangible. To get rid of paper money would require destroying it all, or I suppose printing more to deflate its value but that would still require enormous effort. Where destroying or rather wiping digital credit would be a lot easier. Although in the long run you could set up sufficient servers around the country or world to handle hardware failures and attacks.

Security of cash mean that you don't risk any more than what you have with you when buying items. While a shop could steal you details from your card they couldn't steal it from your cash. Moreover they couldn't over-charge you in the same way. By having cash you reduce your liability of loss.

Then of course, there's measuring wealth in the short run. I take out a fiver and spend 3.50 I know I've got 1-50 left over. It's not so easy to do that with a card, you can't just check how much you've got on you by looking at your card. Again allowing you to do so would open up even more chances of attack.

Lastly, there's human behaviour. We like tradition, we like the idea that all of our wealth has some credible and tangible value. We like to be able to hold it, we like it to be part of a representation of our culture and our land.

EDIT: Also, making money digital will NOT in any way reduce inflation unless the money supply itself is altered. Not to mention the fact that computers are bad at mathematics because they can only understand finite numbers. We constantly have to find ways to correct computation errors made by machines.

I forgot one last thing. Trust. Authorities would have us beieve that they can create infallible systems. However, this is far from the case as we have seen many many times in practice. I'm not sure if you're aware of this but in the UK the government lost details, including bank details of 26 million Britons, nearly half the population. The data was put on two CDs, unencrypted and mailed. In the UK we are now a lot slower to trust digital systems.

The problem with this idea that they are machines are better than humans is that mistakes are ignored. Rather than accept the system is wrong they will insist that you are.

 

[Xaryn Mar]

I have heard the idea of combining the Card with the mobile phone tossed around several times here in Denmark. I can't remember if they already have something like it in Japan but they are definitely working on it.

 

[SimplyTheWest]

If u had a chip in your hand ( or wherever) people might kill for the chip on your hand...that would be scary eh?