Comment by TeMPOraL
4 days ago
> Where I live, in EU, parking meters even take cards.
Unfortunately, a more accurate way of putting it is: stuff takes cards in lieu of coins. Like, where I live (also EU), ticket machines in buses and trams have gradually been upgraded over the past decade to accept cards, and then to accept only cards.
It's a ratchet. Hidden inflation striking again. Cashless is cheaper to maintain than cash-enabled, so it pretends to be a value-add at first, but quickly displaces the more expensive option. Same with apps, which again, are cheaper to maintain than actual payment-safe hardware.
It's near impossible to reverse this, because to do that, you have to successfully argue for increasing costs - especially that inflation quickly eats all the savings from the original change, so you'd be essentially arguing to make things more expensive than the baseline.
a few years ago the vending machines in my office building started accepting credit and debit cards for an extra fee of $0.35 per transaction. just recently they stopped accepting bills and coins leaving cards as the only option, but are still charging the extra fee.
I feel like this kind of glosses over the fact that a lot of people (I'd say an overwhelming majority) prefer the cashless options anyway.
I don't know if I have any friends who miss carrying coins and cash, or who miss carrying individual bus/subway tickets, but if they do, they're awfully quiet about it compared to the friends who happily say they can't remember using cash.
I'd say that if anything, cashless things are catching up to the general public.
Personally, I'm in favor of keeping things cash-friendly because people shouldn't be forced to be cash-free, but that's only to support a small minority of people.
Overwhelming majority prefers shit[0] - people pick from what is made available to them, not from what could possibly exist, and they don't have direct say whether or when what's available changes.
These cashless solutions are just another thing[1] being pushed from top down; the passengers only notice when they suddenly find themselves unable to buy a ticket for coins, but by that point, the decision has long been made, so people only get to whine and complain, or otherwise express opinions that are not actually listened to by anyone with power to change things.
This is not saying that all those solutions are bad or inferior. Just that nobody is actually checking with people whether they want it or not; technology is deployed as fait accompli, and regular people just find ways to cope.
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[0] - Like flies, I suppose. There's millions of them, they can't be wrong!
[1] - Like most technology, really, both software and hardware.
Not advocating for cashless only, but cash also has costs: banks charge for deposits and coinrolls, and you need to protect against robbery
That, + logistics and logistics security in general. I agree, the costs are real; in general, anything physical with mass = costs. So the cost savings are real too - my point is that those are instantly eaten by inflation, so going from cash to cashless and then back to cash isn't a no-op; rather, the first leg quickly turns into a no-op, then the second leg would be increasing costs.