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Global IT outage shows dangers of cashless society, campaigners say
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
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Privacy
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Because if everyone used cash, schedule systems, records systems, communication systems around the world, breakdown still.
If there's a verity of software vendors used in these systems, and financial systems, you don't get simultaneous global breakdowns any more.
Basically. Using cash won't prevent this from happening. Using several interoperable software providers and systems will.
I mean yeah, that’s why I said both, not just cash. I carry some cash on me because you never know. I’d also like to see less monopolization of just about everything because it makes for single points of failure. Diversifying your payment methods by including the potential for cash also helps.
But cash has nothing to do with this.
It's an entirely unrelated issue.
It could equally be a warning to floss every day for all they're related.
When the payment processor goes down, I can buy my groceries/gas/weed with cash, not by flossing my teeth. I don’t follow the point you’re making. Going fully cashless is a bad idea, and the recent outage didn’t affect every system used. I don’t see how having multiple methods of payment is possibly a bad thing. I’m not advocating for only cash.
this wasn't a problem with cashless infrastructure tho, this was a problem with monoculture. if the globe stopped using microsoft for gov and business, and instead threw their tax money towards open development; as in - the people, not microsoft, these kind of global issues wouldn't exist.
The inventory and POS systems also go down. You still can't by your groceries/gas/weed.
Going cashless is a bad idea. But not because of this.
That’s not what I witnessed recently. Payment processors went down but local POS was fine. Inventory didn’t matter with the short duration of the outage. This is one of the reasons going cashless is a bad idea. Far from the only one, but it’s a factor, and I experienced it. Going cashless reduces diversity in payment options and makes the system more vulnerable.
Now you're bringing personal anecdotes to rebut global systemic hypotheticals.
We're not having the same discussion anymore.
Your global systemic hypotheticals are flawed in that they don’t match what actually occurred. Every electronic system didn’t crash. Using cash to buy things was still possible at many places, while people who only had cards couldn’t.
It's pretty clear this incident has highlighted a myriad of very important issues.
It's likely more productive to discuss the other issues in their own threads - this thread is clearly focused on the cashless problem.
That's exactly what we were discussing.
But it doesn't matter any more.
It's also not like as if I care. In case of total collapse and me being hungry, I'll just take the food regardless. Cash is pointless as we've already moved digital, even in a cash country like mine.