If you don't pay cash, add $140 a year to your purchases in charges (as at February 2024). The people and organisations who don't want you to use cash are raking in $4 billion a year from from people who are marching like zombies to a totally cashless society.

It's not just government surveillance and government ability to freeze your bank accounts, or decide what you can spend your own money on. All traders and government departments will add a surcharge if cash goes and, like all charges, they will go up rather than down.

Thank you Ttbn.

In addition, other forms of financial transactions depend on the stability of computers and their networks, which are vulnerable to hacking and many other forms of both natural and human-made disasters.

Those thinking only of fun and immediate convenience would not find it convenient or funny when they are left with no means of transacting and after losing all their hard-earned savings due to electronic failures, that are bound to happen sooner or later.

Yuyutsu

We have already had the Optus failure and other outrages. ATMs are being withdrawn by banks and credit unions, sometimes replaced by independent businesses that have to charge $3 a pop for withdrawals.

There was a recent report of a countryman travelling a 139 kilometres round trip to his nearest bank to get $300, only to be told by the bank teller that they don't do cash anymore.

How about the surcharges on cards: a percentage of amount you spend, not a flat rate. I would not have thought that it would cost anymore to process $500, say, than it would $50.

These are things that we need to grill our so-called representatives on; getting them to realise that it is us, not the government that they are supposed to answer to.

Pay to play.

You mean I won't be able to buy a toilet roll to wipe my bum with, without paying western foreign bankers like VISA a small transaction fee?

It's not just a cashless society, it's a forced tax paid to private enterprise, and I'm not even going to start with the fact that western governments can't be trusted with this level of power.

You see them cutting off other peoples access to money and trade?
You see them stealing the private assets of foreign individuals (Russian)?
Next it will be us, you can absolutely count on it.
They will say 'We have a responsibility to your safety and the environment'.
You can only purchase meat once per week.
You can't have 2 and a half sugars in your coffee.
They will make new rules for us dictating every aspect of our lives, but exempt themselves.

This is the ultimate powergrab by the elite and sellout of individual liberties.
They will get richer, we will become slaves.

Boycott the Big 4 banks.
Always use cash wherever possible.

Dear Ttbn,

Sorry, I have no idea about these surcharges because I just don't use these things.

All I know is that there are certain shops I can no longer buy in and certain places I can no longer go to because I am not allowed to park there any more.

Recently my orchestra gave a concert in a city-centre location where there is no street parking around, only an underground parking that would not accept my money: we were told that as performers we can then present our parking slips and receive a full refund, but that couldn't help. As this concert was important enough, I had to ask for a lift there instead and come earlier, walk the remaining distance with all my gear (fortunately it did not rain) then later ask one of my friends in the orchestra for a lift back.

Life gets more and more difficult as we grow old...

This is the digital centralisation of everything.
Banking, buying, internet posts, all in one place to get your social credit score.