The hidden tyranny of going back to paying for stuff with actual money

Few decisions in life can match the sheer courage required when opting to use cash in our increasingly cashless society.

Like everyone else, you’ve become conditioned to the convenience of paying by card. No clumsy notes. No searching for change. No riffling through pockets or the bottom of your bag. You tap, you go. No muss, no fuss.

Such ease of use, of course, comes at a cost in the form of a surcharge. You don’t mind it because it’s such a small price to pay for all that blessed convenience.

Yet those little hits begin to add up.

It starts small. 1% here, 1.5% there, sometimes even 2%, with some laundromat washing machines going all the way up to 3%.

At first, it seems like just a few cents per transaction but somewhere deep in the recesses of your mind a little flag goes up and you decide to actually keep track.

Turns out that over the course of a single week you’ve paid $9.40 for all the tapping and swiping. That’s almost enough to pay for a movie ticket or a small latte at a corporate coffee outlet. After a year you’d have enough to also buy a slice of blueberry cheesecake.

So you make the big decision to go back to cash.

Seems simple and straightforward enough, right? It’s a free world after all, yeah?

Nah.

The advent of The Cashless Society sounds all modern and progressive and is invariably presented as an inevitable step forward in the evolution of the human species, which you are technically part of.

Yet for those wanting to stick with cash that gentle yet persistent push to go cashless comes with the eerie feeling that you are now part of an increasingly oppressed and rapidly shrinking minority.

At each encounter at the counter you’re politely asked “cash or card” as if it’s an even choice, yet the expression of muted shock from the spotty teenager at the register when you dare utter “cash” says it all.

You’re not part of the program. You are impeding the enterprise of progress. Here we are trying to grow as a species and here you are handing over a fistful of notes and coins as if I’m supposed to know how to add up things in my head. That’s what the app on my phone is meant for. What’s wrong with you?

The marginalisation process continues whenever you confront the array of self-serve checkout registers at supermarkets and department stores.

An increasing amount demand “card only”, forcing you to spend precious seconds searching for a register that will allow you to pay in hard currency. And their numbers are dwindling.

Restaurants now have laminated QR tiles glued to each table that allow you to view the menu on your device and then pay the bill without leaving your deep-fried fisherman’s basket. All very swish and with it.

But try asking for a physical menu and then paying by cash. Again, they’ll allow it but not without that contemptuous side-eye, its silent judgment decreeing how you are not very swish and not at all with it.

Many places won’t take cash at all.

“Card Payments Only” says the large sign above the donut display. And don’t bother trying to argue that they have to take cash because it is legal tender and that this is a free society, dammit.

They’re way ahead of you.

Yes, it’s a free society and, yes, cash is legal tender but, no, they don’t have to take your rotten notes or crummy coins because they don’t have to. Really.

That might come to some as a shock, but it turns out to be perfectly true. All they have to do is display their stupid “Cards Only” sign prominently and you’re forced to pay digitally, including any dastardly surcharge.

So, what’s behind all this?

The dark days of the Covid pandemic boosted the incursion of contactless transactions into our lives, but all that did was accelerate an evil scheme of mass manipulation that was already in train.

The intent is to suck up every bit of information about us so they can ultimately control us, keeping tabs on where we go, what we do, who we see and when we chow into a deep-fried fisherman’s basket.

Tapping a card onto a gleaming screen to pay for a cup of coffee might make you feel like you’re part of an exciting future yet each tap sends reams of data to the shadowy Overlords who forbid you to use pocket change to buy that glazed white chocolate donut with strawberry cream and sprinkles.

This leaves you with a moral choice that will forever define your character:

Should you submit to the tyranny and pay by card?

Or will you forego the glazed white chocolate donut with strawberry cream and sprinkles to defiantly hold yourself up as a hero of free will?

That’s a toughie because the thing looks delicious – and it’s the last one left.