Is a Cashless Society a Crimeless Society?
At least it’s tough on street crime:
Most violent crime is the result of one person trying to take another person’s cash, whether it’s an addict robbing a convenience store or one dealer robbing another, says Wright. If cash isn’t available to steal, the opportunities to commit crimes dwindle. At the same time, the drug trade, which relies on cash at the ground level and drives a large portion of violent crime, withers. Sure, drug dealers can still transfer funds electronically, but only at high levels. Street dealers are unlikely to use credit card swipe machines anytime soon.
The drug trade would most likely be reduced to some sort of barter system with a money alternative. For example, gold coins or some other easily verifiable good. The gold coins could then be turned into electronic money. There would be some increased cost of business, but it would be minimal.
As for drug dealers with credit card swipe machines, this already exists on cell phones. Check out http://squareup.com.
On the other hand, tax avoidance would be nearly eradicated.
The Slate article doesn’t cite any specific category of cash-related crime that has gone down, however.
If this was the case, wouldn’t police chiefs be out there advocating cashlessness?
Think of 10% of Medicare’s budget being lost to fraud. Those are cashless crimes.
Fraud would skyrocket if all economic transactions were done electronically. Does anyone actually think taking a picture of a check on your cell phone that gets directly deposited into your account is not ripe for fraud?
The informal economy runs on cash. There would still be theft and fraud, but small petty crimes would probably be reduced.
A cashless society will INCREASE crime. Cash is just one thing that can be stolen. People still have TV’s, computers, cars, bikes, and a host of valuables of interest to a thief. Drug dealers will simply use foreign currencies or precious metals to conduct business. Then there will be an underground market to convert these currencies and metals back into electronic money or into goods they need. Besides, drugs come from out of the country. It would be easier to barter gold for marijuana, as gold is valuable everywhere whereas the dollars still need to be laundered. Gold can be melted and thus serial numbers are worthless. At least our dollars can be tracked by serial numbers.