This is the reason I try to pay everything I reasonably can with cash. I’m about as northern as you get.

I’m definitely looked as crazy in my friend group from time to time, but over the years I’ve just become known as the guy who will always have cash on him if necessary so I guess the walking ATM bit helped with acceptance of it?

I figure that if folks don’t take a stand and use cash even if they don’t need to now, we will lose the ability to later. I don’t want to live in a world where all my purchases are mineable, because that eventually turns into monitored and then authorized.

The inconvenience is a small price to pay for freedom from surveillance.

It has amused me though over the years how bad cash handling skills have become. When I was a cashier as a teenager 25+ years ago, myself and all my fellow coworkers could break change at relative light speed and often just from mental math/memory. Now it’s amusing watching a young cashier give change back on a $48.31 order after handing them a $100 bill. Sometimes takes longer than the proverbial grandma writing a check back in my day.

They're right :) even if it isn't a conspiracy, that's what will happen because it will be convenient and easy.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, businesses give discounts for cash just because it saves them money. In Portland, we still have a fair number of bars that are cash only. And yeah, liberals here also consider it an invasion of privacy to have to use a card, but they couch it in terms of it being unfair to people without credit or bank accounts (which, tbh, is also a fair argument).