D-Day for LSD

(~5 minutes to read)

The 15^th of February 2021 marks the 50^th anniversary of D-Day.

Not that D-Day, O history buff. Decimalisation Day.

On this day in 1971, the UK officially moved forward into the eighteenth century with its money system. The USA and several European countries including France had “gone decimal” in the 1700s, but mention that to some Brits and they’ll tell you that that’s all the more reason to have stuck with LSD.

Yes—LSD. Pounds, shillings and pence, or to use the Latin words, Librae, Solidi and Denarii.

Many Brits (specifically the English) have what can be most politely called antipathy to things French (unless it’s wine, fashions or letters). The two countries have been feuding on and off for the last thousand years or more—think “Hatfields and McCoys” on a global scale, although given the length of the love-hate relationship, it makes the Hatfields and the McCoys seem like good neighbours.

If you don’t know about the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys, let Wikipedia fill you in.

And… for an amusing look at the English-French relationship, check out a book called 1000 Years of Annoying the French by Stephen Clarke.)

The Golden Anniversary of the bronze, nickel and copper revolution seems to have re-awakened the debate about a cashless society, and given the change in payment methods during the current pandemic, it would, on the face of it, seem to be a debate worth seeing through to a conclusion.

But on the other side of the coin, there are many sectors of society who don’t have any other means of payment.

Actually, that’s not true. There’s the barter system, but that really makes tax season awkward.

“How many of these chickens should I declare dear? And how many cabbages did we get per chicken?”

Or…

“They’ve messed with the tax brackets again! Those thieving bastards at the National Revenue Agency want seventeen-point-five eggs for every cow we earned!”

“Fried or boiled?”

There’s also “body bartering”—selling one’s body (in the biblical sense) or parts thereof. The former is, in the most depressing way imaginable, a licence to print your own money (although in my case, it’d only be spare change), but as for the latter, once you’re down to one of everything (kidney, lung, eye, fallopian tube, testicle, etc.), body bartering becomes an increasingly risky way of paying.

Paying “an arm and a leg” for something is possible only twice, unless you start stealing other people’s limbs, which is quite upsetting for those people, because they’ve become quite attached to them.

But I should apologize, dear reader, for straying from the subject at hand—sectors of society who need cash.

Children don’t normally pay for their treats (comics, books, sweets/candy, ice creams, magazines, pet spiders, etc.) with plastic. They’re given pocket money (or in north American parlance, an allowance.) They use this money to buy their parents Christmas and birthday presents (my dad got pipe cleaners every year, my mum got slippers). As they get older, they use it to buy rite-of-passage items like cigarettes, booze, weed, and fuel for their vehicles.

I cannot imagine a world in which pre-teens keep a debit card, a credit card, and several customer loyalty cards tucked in the waistband of their underwear. (And even if I could, I shouldn’t, because that’s creepy!) So cash is still needed for the youth of our society.

Next, I come to the homeless. Whatever the reasons for their circumstances, they don’t, by definition, have an address—“Overpass at Junction 28” is not a permanent enough address for most financial institutions—and therefore, to the best of my belief, they are unable to have a bank account. Many (most?) homeless people live from day to day, meal to meal, and rely upon the charity of organizations and the generosity of individuals for their daily McBread. How would these generous individuals give if there were no cash?

Gift cards? Coffee shop gift cards, fast food restaurant gift cards, grocery store gift cards…? Now we’re dictating where they have to buy from.

Some of these unfortunates have habits to feed. I’m pretty sure that drug dealers aren’t going to accept a Golden Arches gift card in exchange for a hit of one’s habit of… habit. There would therefore have to be some kind of exchange system among these people; presumably tattoo parlour and jewellery store gift cards might be of more interest to the purveyors of addictive substances than a “Patty and a Tattie”™ fast food restaurant card.

Which means there would have to be some kind of exchange rate implemented—a twenty-dollar/pound “Patty and a Tattie”™ gift card might be worth thirteen dollars/pounds towards the purchase of a “Tats on my tw**”™ gift card, for example.

Of course, these homeless people could always announce on their handwritten cardboard sign that they’ll accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and debit cards, but apart from the need for a bank account to accept such donations into, they’d need a machine to accept the donation in the first place. It’d need to be battery operated, with access to wi-fi and/or the cellular network, and functional in minus forty weather.

And how would it look if a homeless person had to tell a kindly CEO attempting to give to her that his card had been rejected due to insufficient funds?

None of that would work of course, so unless we’re going to eradicate the need for people to beg money first, cash will always be needed.

The last category I’ll mention for now is “exotic dancers”. According to the movies etc., and definitely not as a result of personal experience, I’ve heard that “gentlemen” will tip these clantily-scad entertainers by placing folding money in what little clothing they’re wearing (the dancers, not the punters…). Somehow, I can’t imagine Trixie pulling out a payment machine from her cleavage and waiting while some guy suffering a midlife crisis taps his card on it (the machine, not her cleavage). It’d wreck the rhythm and flow of the entertainment. Of course, some bright spark might invent tappable dancewear, but somehow I doubt it.

Another problem occurs to me. If this dancer is of the variety who insists that her attire is actually making her feel overdressed, where on earth would she put the payment machine then?

No. Money is here for the long haul. It may not be used as often, and it may become a niche commodity, but it will always be needed.

Next time, I might mention the survivalists, the paranoid conspiracy theorists, and the luddites and their continuing need for cash, but for now, I think it’s a toss-up whether cash will disappear or not.

(Post Script: Today is also Canadian Flag Day.  Our beautiful maple leaf flag was raised for the very first time on Parliament Hill fifty-six years ago.)