Is a completely cashless society desirable?

There will be less people trying to steal our hard earned money but the system must be improved.

... and the government must be cheaper as no coin to be minted or bill to be printed and less "men in the middle" to pay for.

The abolition of money is desirable.

Without cash what do you do when there is no power, say after an earthquake or other natural disaster?

How can there be black ops without cash...I suppose they have bitcoin now so maybe cash is no longer king

A 'cashless' society would put ALL transactions in the hands of Corporate and its intimate partner, Government. If 'absolute political control' is desired, then a 'cashless' society would be just the way to do it making essentially every citizen of such a society subject at least to 'sanctions', if not political persecution, because there is no 'privacy' when either Corporate or Government or, more often, a combination of the two, can track every Yen spent. And, although the anonymity of blockchain currencies is touted, I have seen many postings which dispute this assertion and news items reporting tracked blockchain transactions. For the 'average' person, such control may seem normal or even desirable, but for the 'outside of average' person, such control would be intolerable. And 'convenience' can be its own prison. "But what about 'criminals'?" There would be no greater criminality than total financial fascism.

Is a completely cashless society desirable?

I can onl speak for myself.

Yes

No. Having all of your money on e-currency platforms is just another way of making it easier for private companies, hackers and the government to control you. Yes, authorities can freeze your bank accounts and bank safes can be broken into, but you can still spend your physical cash on hand regardless. What's more is that when the grid goes down or just a system error, you won't be able to pay, let alone if you're in an area with bad phone signal. Cash is still king, but e-currency has its place.

I really feel this is an idea that needs to be strongly resisted. Its mainly being promoted by financial institutions that want to take a cut out of every transaction we make. Its good business for them, but bad for everyone else since it just adds a cost to our economy that we all have to pay for through higher prices.

And that isn’t even getting into the privacy concerns, power that this will give those financial systems over us, etc which are even worse.

The abolition of money is desirable.

you better move to fairyland then

The only reason governments want a cashless society is so they can monitor its citizens financials,

How much they’re earning, how much they’re spending, how & where they’re spending it. Plus, the government’s tax coffers will increase substantially.

Big brother will know everything

When there is no further need for employment how will people have money? AI and robots are future workers.

The perfect way to be dependent of banks and government manipulations, to track every single coin you have to charge you of taxes when you just sell something etc...

Cashless is good for govt tracking, but make it hard to buy things we don't want tracked.

Society needs to decide which is more important.

For me, not being tracked in any way, unless I want it, should be the default. Individual rights for privacy should outweigh any govt needs, without probable cause and a disinterested, judicial representative of sufficient power to be convinced the request by law enforcement to break our privacy rights is more important.

We all have the human right to be left alone.

The abolition of money is desirable.

When the communist has nothing, he has nothing to lose.

A cashless society is desirable only for globalists and the weaklings who wish to be controlled.

It's slightly desirable. In reality, as things are right now, the flaws mentioned by others are all prevalent as is and isn't that much different in the long run vs a cashless society.

Cash does offer relief in the short term if "it" hits the fan in the system. But chaos would ensue in the long run if it's not fixrd. So for this reason only, society won't go fully cashless.

I am already living cashless, lol, real and virtual at the same time, so I am not affected in either case, having just a nano money particle more than the dying limit, so there’s also nothing to trace.

I can’t speak for society, but being cashless is not good.

Cash is king. No extra bank charges for using cash but for cards, some charge extra percentage in fees.

Computer system down at the bank, Internet outage, power outage at store, WiFi issues. Cash always works.

I will never go cashless.

No, i dont want the government to know everything i spend, everywhere I go.

No!

for all the very cogent reasons stated above.

Who would have thought I would be in broad agreement with William Bjornson :)

A future society that no longer requires workers because of the available technology has nothing to do with communism. It will become a fact in the lives of some on this forum but not myself.

Where will people get money from, universal benefit?

Eventually, but soon work and money will be abolished.

A moneyless society, not a cashless one.

Too many people cannot see the future.

I think cashless society very hopeful. With the trend speeding up, our social activities will be more and more efficient. However, one thing we have to care is a security measure. Given all cash flow is deal with a field of online, it will be focused on malicious cyber attacks. While the end-users might be free from their pressures from protecting theri financial properties, service suppliers will have to be more careful for such crimes.

Within the next 30-50 years the internet will be replaced by something better.

Totally cashless is not of any use if you are in a disaster, earthquake, flood, etc that knocks out electrical power for a prolonged period of time. In normal times it is indeed very convenient.

No. A cashless society is only desirable if you can 100% guarantee a benevolent government at all times and forever. Because if a dictatorship or foreign power should ever gain control, cash allows the people to resist, or flee. Not so if the government can simply remove access to your money, which is what a cashless system allows.

Remember, the situation may not always be like it is now. Cash ensures the people have more options should the political environment become dangerous.

I get money back

Of course you do.

As it is now we have to pay to withdraw money off hours or at a non bank ATM and especially overseas while on vacation.

Then we can spend all we want without service charges.

You can bet your last Yen the day we go fully cashless the powers incharge will be charging you for every single transaction, it maybe something like 10 transactions for ¥1 but you can bet they will charge.

Then you can bet the government will figure a way to collect taxes directly via every transaction.

Look at Quebec, in Canada certain businesses are required to purchase a special cash register that is connected to the internet and directly connected to the tax office.

Every transaction the sales tax is instantly deducted and the government collects it, but if for any reason the internet connection is down, the business has 10 minutes to call the service number and report why or suffer a $10,000 CND fine.

If we go fully cashless expect things like this to apply to everything, you sell your old lamp on mercari or Craigslist, boom either sales tax or income tax will be instantly deducted and you will need to apply at year's end to get it back if it didn't apply to you.

System goes down and we’re back to barter - until a medium of exchange is established and we start again

Toshihiro - No. Having all of your money on e-currency platforms is just another way of making it easier for private companies, hackers and the government to control you. 

Paranoid much? A cashless society does not mean e-currency. Perhaps you've heard of Direct Debit? Being Japanese I'm not surprised you haven't.

I live in Australia now. I've had the same $20 in my wallet for months. Every shop has direct debit. Taxis are aslo direct debit. I work for myself and have a portable direct debit machine that connects to my phone, which is how I get paid for my jobs. Everythig is done online. Registering your car, paying bills and fines, renewing your licence, paying tax and tax returns and, all the city hall rigmarole. I've registered a couple of cars in Japan, It takes half a day (or longer) hopping from building to building on the red stamp trail. It's a joke! It takes me ten minutes to register my car online, including third party insurance. Vehicle inspection checks are uploaded by the mechanic. I've got in line with the hundreds of other people at the Japanese licence center to renew my licence and it also takes half a day. It takes five minutes to do online in Australia. All the stuff that takes days to sort out at the Japanese shiakusho (city hall) are done online in ten minutes. If Japan was to update all these systems tens of thousands of people would be out of work and thousands of tons of paper and red ink could be discarded. All these things are available in Australia because of a direct debit network. It has nothing to do with holding onto your money for security. Any purchase or cash withdrawal over $100 made by card requires a PIN. All the banks have apps that you control your account with. You can cancel a card in seconds if it's lost or stolen.

Australia doesn't have one or two cent coins anymore (over 30 years ago). The smallest is five cents. There is aslo a push to do away with the five cents and make the smallest ten cents. I mentioned this to a group of Japanese adults in a lesson and suggested the one yen coin be abolished. You should have heard the uproar! I nearly got kicked out of the building. Japan will never change anything! And, if they do it will be 50 years behind the rest of the 'modern' world.

I live in Australia now. I've had the same $20 in my wallet for months. Every shop has direct debit. Taxis are aslo direct debit. I work for myself and have a portable direct debit machine that connects to my phone, which is how I get paid for my jobs. Everythig is done online. Registering your car, paying bills and fines, renewing your licence, paying tax and tax returns and, all the city hall rigmarole. I've registered a couple of cars in Japan, It takes half a day (or longer) hopping from building to building on the red stamp trail. It's a joke! It takes me ten minutes to register my car online, including third party insurance. Vehicle inspection checks are uploaded by the mechanic. I've got in line with the hundreds of other people at the Japanese licence center to renew my licence and it also takes half a day. It takes five minutes to do online in Australia. All the stuff that takes days to sort out at the Japanese shiakusho (city hall) are done online in ten minutes. If Japan was to update all these systems tens of thousands of people would be out of work and thousands of tons of paper and red ink could be discarded. All these things are available in Australia because of a direct debit network. It has nothing to do with holding onto your money for security. Any purchase or cash withdrawal over $100 made by card requires a PIN. All the banks have apps that you control your account with. You can cancel a card in seconds if it's lost or stolen.

Its 2030 and Disillusioned's electric car has refused a charge due to gov't blackouts. He must now walk to the supermarket where his cash card purchase of meat has been rejected because records show he has had his allotment for the month. Insured he settles for crickets. His cash card purchase of crickets has been cancelled because they are now classified as "meat" by the government.

Some people are so cemented into the past they can't see the future.

some people are so familiar with the past they can see the future very clearly.

When freed up from work people can take up other pursuits.

like what?

What purpose will they have in life if theres nothing to work for?

How fulfilling would nothing but down time be for the average human?

Would this not be disastrous?

Have you really thought this through?

What purpose will they have in life if theres nothing to work for? 

How fulfilling would nothing but down time be for the average human?

Would this not be disastrous?

How sad all the rich people who don't have to work must be. Imagine having the time to do whatever you want, and the money to do it with. No worries about paying the rent or the mortgage or anything else.

How disastrous for them.

How sad all the rich people who don't have to work must be. Imagine having the time to do whatever you want, and the money to do it with. No worries about paying the rent or the mortgage or anything else.

How disastrous for them.

This right here is why lazy people fail. Its why socialism fails and fails again.

They think the rich and successful got to where they are in life with an attitude that says "Once I have enough money, I'm just going to switch off and sit on the sofa"

It denies human nature, itself.

NO. Because it will be controlled electronically. If world financial systems go down or even your local bank how do you get your money? What's to say systems don't get wiped and your retirement fund says zero? We are teetering on that point by everything already being digital. To have zero material that acts like cash (paper and/or coins) that means we have nothing nor will financial institutions give us anything as an IOU.