According to a new book, The Power of Cash by Boston University professor Jay Zagorsky, cash should be people’s preferred method of payment — not credit cards. This book is the latest of many recent volumes preaching the value of cash, including War on Cash by David McRee, Cash is Freedom by Rafael Ganowski, and War Against Cash by Ross Clark.
Zagorsky explained that cash is important for national security. During emergencies, when banking systems might be out of service, only people with cash on hand will survive. In addition, he wrote, using cash helps people save money since consumers tend to feel the cost of their purchases more acutely than they do when paying for goods electronically. Finally, using credit cards generates data that sacrifices people’s privacy.
The storage of credit card information also makes electronic payments easier, reducing the time needed to think purchases over, thus increasing impulse buying, which, in VideoAge‘s view, takes us to the quick embrace of multiple streaming subscriptions.
The development of online stores, where everything became easily accessible with a credit card, is recognized as setting up a playing field for streaming media. Today, there are cases where consumers can’t even keep track of how many subscriptions — including to streaming services — they have.
The case for a cashless society, however, could be made for emergencies such as a pandemic, assuming that said emergency is not associated with disruptions to electrical or communications systems (like what happened this week in Spain with an electrical blackout that also halted cash dispensers).
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