Cash

queeranarchism:

This isn’t something that gets talked about a lot, and I have no idea how far the problem extends geographically, but if you care about poor people, if you care about sex workers, if you care about activists, if you care about privacy,

you should consider resisting the transition from cash to card-only payments that is happening in shops in some bigger cities. Including shops where only one register in a long row still accepts cash payments so anyone paying with cash needs to wait in line and sticks out.

Cash is how poor people help keep each other alive without immediately worrying about their benefit cuts, cash is what people get when they do a bit of work or sell some old stuff to feed their kids that week. Cash is how most sex workers get paid. A lot of people need to be able to make cash payments to feed their kids, pay their rent and basically to live.

Cash is also what activists use whenever they need protest supplies and don’t want their full name and address attached to the protest. Cash is how we buy any item we want to keep out of our digital footprint. But whether you’re buying a megaphone or  a dildo, you can’t do so privately if you can’t spend cash.

Banks are eager to work towards a post-cash economy because it makes our spending habits so much easier to track. States want the same because it makes people so much easier to track and control. We should not want a
post-cash economy

and we should resist attempts to create it.