Cash is in fact the only form of state money we can hold. In much the same way that casino chips are privately-issued promises (issued by a casino) for cash we might hand in to them as we enter a casino, the ‘money’ we see in our bank accounts is actually ‘digital chips’ issued to us by those commercial banks. These chips are promises, or IOUs, promising us access to state money. We can pass these digital chips around within the private ecosystems controlled by the banking sector, but every time we go to the ATM we are redeeming those chips to exit the banking system (like walking out of the casino).
It follows then, that as ATMs get shut down, our ability to exit the banking system goes down too. We are getting trapped inside their private ecosystems. This is in their commercial interests, which is why for many years the private payments industry has used whatever they can to demonise the public cash system, which competes with them. Rather than being showcased as an inclusive form of public payment, cash is continuously accused of facilitating crime and tax evasion, and has long been cast as unhygienic and ‘dirty’.
The War on Cash after Covid-19
Now, with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, this latter argument suddenly seems a lot more visceral to many people. Supermarkets, painfully aware of a duty to prevent the spread of the virus, openly order people to turn away from the public cash system and to use the private banking system for payments (‘please use contactless payment’). It is vital that we always criticise and remain vigilant against the growing corporate domination that surrounds us, but this critique has suddenly taken a back seat to the immediate task of slowing the disease spread.
For big corporates, therefore, this has been a perfect opportunity to consolidate and extend their power. Many of them are already too-big-to-fail and governments always rush to protect and promote them first in the midst of a crisis. We have already seen players like Amazon massively expand their power during Covid (as people stuck at home under lock-down turn even more to the digital giants who already dominate the cyberspace realm), but in the financial sector this same enforced ‘turn to the digital’ is a huge commercial win for the private payments industry (aka the banking industry). They will use Covid forcefully to suppress and undermine cash even more than they already have.
The rise of Amazon and the rise of the digital payments industry is no co-incidence. These players have natural synergies as they all seek to create vast systems of interlocking automation. They wish for, and benefit from, a world in which economies are remotely coordinated via their huge data centre systems, rather than being negotiated through face-to-face interaction between people on the street. And, while Covid might have forced various forms of positive economic soul-searching amongst people, it has simultaneously played directly into the hands of any player that seeks automation-at-a-distance, which includes both Big Tech and Big Finance.
Indeed, Covid is far more than a blow to the cash system. It is a blow to the face-to-face physical world, which includes cash, but also hugs, doorknobs, shared microphones at karaoke evenings, drunken pub conversations, kissing Tinder dates, dancing at weddings, dancing at beach parties, dancing at church, bench-pressing in the gym, and sharing a cigarette with a friendly stranger you meet outside a nightclub. Yes, cash is another thing in the physical world, and yes, as a physical object it does have the ability to carry viruses. But again, so does every supermarket item, public transport system, Uber car, and – for that matter – digital payments PIN pad.
Print
Brett Scott | Radio Free (2020-06-09T15:20:24+00:00) Cash, Kisses and Karaoke: Why the War on Covid must not become a War on Cash. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/06/09/cash-kisses-and-karaoke-why-the-war-on-covid-must-not-become-a-war-on-cash/
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