So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Trenchfriend]

There are certainly "prescription mill" doctors here -- they do a big business in handing out medical-marijuana cards, ED prescriptions, and, until fairly recently, opioids. The law, however, has been cracking down rather heavily on cases of the latter, due to mass opioid addictions over the past twenty years or so.

Interesting, but I meaned it in another way. "Blank(o)-prescription" as a term for getting a pre-signed prescription for your usual medis on the counter without seeing uncle doc.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That I've never seen. In fact, the practice I go to requires you to come in in person to get a renewal direct from the doctor -- they won't do it over the phone. Which, for me, is a fifty-mile drive each way.

 

[GHT]

What's the chances of society becoming cash free, as in, no currency tender like bank notes & coins. I had thought about starting a thread on the idea, but wondered if there was enough mileage in it.
What struck me yesterday, was the queue to pay for fuel. At our pumps you can pay at the pump, or the kiosk, just press the appropriate button. Four motorists in front of me paid either by the tap the reader with the card or zap it with the phone. I paid cash.
My tank of fuel amounted to £64, I tendered two £20 notes, two £10 notes and four pounds in coins.
The young man on the till had a brain storm over that. Twice he counted it, then, he counted it again, like he lacked basic numeracy.
My fellow motorists all produced their loyalty cards, it confused this young fellow when I said that I didn't have one.

I can't believe that eleven years of schooling failed to produce a student capable of counting to ten, but then I read that 98% of under 35's have never written, nor received, a hand written letter. That fact still shocks me, has the ubiquitous, internet connected phone negated the skills of basic literacy and numeracy?

A cash free society will leave us bereft of banks, at the mercy of scammers and give big business a free for all in harvesting our data. Is it the way we will go?

 

[Trenchfriend]

That I've never seen. In fact, the practice I go to requires you to come in in person to get a renewal direct from the doctor.

Would be of course the normal way in Germany, too, because of doctor's duty-of-care. In the last twenty years, more and more doctor's offices switched to either prepared prescription (just given in doc's room for signing in a minute) or even pre-signed prescription.
The HMO Association is a passive institution, here. They would probably intervene, if a specific number of compaints on a single topic is reached.
But I always think, there will come a point in time, when this prescription-practice will be stopped, naturally.

 

[Bushman]

What's the chances of society becoming cash free, as in, no currency tender like bank notes & coins. I had thought about starting a thread on the idea, but wondered if there was enough mileage in it.
What struck me yesterday, was the queue to pay for fuel. At our pumps you can pay at the pump, or the kiosk, just press the appropriate button. Four motorists in front of me paid either by the tap the reader with the card or zap it with the phone. I paid cash.
My tank of fuel amounted to £64, I tendered two £20 notes, two £10 notes and four pounds in coins.
The young man on the till had a brain storm over that. Twice he counted it, then, he counted it again, like he lacked basic numeracy.
My fellow motorists all produced their loyalty cards, it confused this young fellow when I said that I didn't have one.

I can't believe that eleven years of schooling failed to produce a student capable of counting to ten, but then I read that 98% of under 35's have never written, nor received, a hand written letter. That fact still shocks me, has the ubiquitous, internet connected phone negated the skills of basic literacy and numeracy?

A cash free society will leave us bereft of banks, at the mercy of scammers and give big business a free for all in harvesting our data. Is it the way we will go?

I imagine it may happen in my lifetime, but at the same time I can't imagine it being so, as many many many people of lower economic status depend on physical cash. From the kids peddling lemonade on the sidewalk, to the old panhandler outside a McDonald's looking to scrape up enough change for a hot lunch. I always try to keep about $20 on my person "just in case."

 

[WonkyBloke]

Would be of course the normal way in Germany, too, because of doctor's duty-of-care. In the last twenty years, more and more doctor's offices switched to either prepared prescription (just given in doc's room for signing in a minute) or even pre-signed prescription.
The HMO Association is a passive institution, here. They would probably intervene, if a specific number of compaints on a single topic is reached.
But I always think, there will come a point in time, when this prescription-practice will be stopped, naturally.

At my GP's surgery, you have two options for repeat prescriptions. You can either walk in, fill out a quick request form, and drop in in a little mailbox, or you can log in to an online system and place your request that way. Either way, one of the doctors there will check your request against your records, and authorise the prescription within two working days. You can either collect that from reception, or have the prescription sent direct to your local nominated pharmacy.

 

[Zombie_61]

...I can't believe that eleven years of schooling failed to produce a student capable of counting to ten, but then I read that 98% of under 35's have never written, nor received, a hand written letter. That fact still shocks me, has the ubiquitous, internet connected phone negated the skills of basic literacy and numeracy?...

Approximately 20 years ago, give or take, the youngest son of a good friend was having difficulty in school with spelling and math, so I accompanied his mother to a meeting with the school principal, her son's teacher, and a counselor. When we expressed our concerns about his spelling and math skills deteriorating, their response was something to the effect of, "Well, word processing programs all have spell check now..." and "But calculators will do the math for him..." At the time we were not pleased with their rather dismissive response, but in retrospect it was almost as if they were trying to tell us, "Listen you idiots, it won't be long before everyone will be using electronics to such a degree it won't be necessary to know how to spell, construct sentences, add, subtract, etc., etc...."

...A cash free society will leave us bereft of banks, at the mercy of scammers and give big business a free for all in harvesting our data. Is it the way we will go?

I'm guessing it will all become a world of virtual currency that exists only in the computer world, and that will "replace" physical currency until everyone becomes accustomed to it. After that...who knows? I was surprised when restaurants here in the U.S. stopped asking me to enter my four digit security code when I used my ATM/Debit card to pay for a meal. I was even more surprised when the $14k check I received from my insurance company (for my truck which was totaled in an accident in December) didn't require a signature on the back in order to be deposited. "Oh, we can verify whether or not it's valid in a matter of minutes, but you can go ahead and sign the back if you want to."

I imagine it may happen in my lifetime, but at the same time I can't imagine it being so, as many many many people of lower economic status depend on physical cash. From the kids peddling lemonade on the sidewalk, to the old panhandler outside a McDonald's looking to scrape up enough change for a hot lunch. I always try to keep about $20 on my "in case."

Kids peddling lemonade??? Where do you live, 1956?

 

[Edward]

What's the chances of society becoming cash free, as in, no currency tender like bank notes & coins. I had thought about starting a thread on the idea, but wondered if there was enough mileage in it.
What struck me yesterday, was the queue to pay for fuel. At our pumps you can pay at the pump, or the kiosk, just press the appropriate button. Four motorists in front of me paid either by the tap the reader with the card or zap it with the phone. I paid cash.
My tank of fuel amounted to £64, I tendered two £20 notes, two £10 notes and four pounds in coins.
The young man on the till had a brain storm over that. Twice he counted it, then, he counted it again, like he lacked basic numeracy.
My fellow motorists all produced their loyalty cards, it confused this young fellow when I said that I didn't have one.

I can't believe that eleven years of schooling failed to produce a student capable of counting to ten, but then I read that 98% of under 35's have never written, nor received, a hand written letter. That fact still shocks me, has the ubiquitous, internet connected phone negated the skills of basic literacy and numeracy?

A cash free society will leave us bereft of banks, at the mercy of scammers and give big business a free for all in harvesting our data. Is it the way we will go?

Skills that go unused can tend to slip away. I suppose in the current world so many folks always have a calculator to hand or, indeed, it's all otherwise automated that it really should be a surprise. Cash transactions are slowly disappearing. Ten years ago, 70% of all in-person transactions were in cash; by 2019, 70% were on card - and that was before the pandemic. A lot of places now are very much avoiding cash as card payments require less contact, so Covid has had an impact, but it's rapidly changing anyhow. I've been to a few nights / events where the bar was 'card only', and there is a card only pizza place local to us. I'm sure there will be ways round it all for those concerned with the privacy angle, but it seems that it has become ever-cheaper for business to take cards (I don't remember the last time I saw a minimum card payment sign in a shop, though I think the last time I did encounter one it was as low as £3. I've paid on card in the supermarket for a bill of less than a pound), and we're just on an inevitable slide towards cards being used for everything. I have a feeling that we'll eventually see a move by banks to replace cash with pre-loaded credit on a chipped card. That could easily be done with a level of anonymity if the card is unregistered (like cash, then, if lost it can't be recovered), though I should imagine law enforcement and the tax man will push hard for the stamping out of any means of payment which can't be recorded, for obvious reasons.

It's an interesting period to be living through, on that front. I can only recall using cash on three occasions since March 2020 - two of them in the last week.

It's the same, but even moreso, in Beijing; my first trip there in 2006, everyone seemed to use cash for pretty much everything; I still do out there, but the locals, particularly those under 25ish, seem to pay for absolutely *everything* with their phones.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

The best "post-cash" movie scene:

 

[Trenchfriend]

Would you rub your eye with your unwashed fingers, while sitting in the railcar?

I saw a young woman diagonally opposite doing this. She did it exhaustive and I just thought:
"Really, girl? What did you all got in your hands, today??"

 

[Zombie_61]

...I suppose in the current world...

There's another issue that would need to be dealt with in a moneyless society--current, as in electrical. What happens when there's a power outage longer than a minor inconvenience and we have no access to our electronic personal information such as bank accounts? What then?

...It's the same, but even moreso, in Beijing; my first trip there in 2006, everyone seemed to use cash for pretty much everything; I still do out there, but the locals, particularly those under 25ish, seem to pay for absolutely *everything* with their phones.

Ugh, that's another modern convenience I can do without--everyone doing everything on and with their damned cell phones. How can that possibly be safe and secure with so many thieves out there with equipment that simply pulls your information out of thin air? Nope, not a fan.

 

[Tiki Tom]

"Listen you idiots, it won't be long before everyone will be using electronics to such a degree it won't be necessary to know how to spell, construct sentences, add, subtract, etc., etc...."

Yup. Over the last ten years, my department has shrunk by about 50%. We used to do it all by hand: writing budgets, doing the accounting, (remember Excel?) writing financial reports. Now most of it is done automatically by Oracle. The whole division will probably be reduced to Five people in a few years. Of course, now we are all slaves to Oracle. If Oracle requires a systems upgrade, we’d better damned well be ready to pay whatever they are asking. Thank goodness I’ll be retiring soon.

 

[Benny Holiday]

There's another issue that would need to be dealt with in a moneyless society--current, as in electrical. What happens when there's a power outage longer than a minor inconvenience and we have no access to our electronic personal information such as bank accounts? What then?

C'mon, Zombie, the good folks who plan all this stuff out tell us they're forward thinkers. And we believe them, don't we? [insert sound of crickets chirping]

Yup. Over the last ten years, my department has shrunk by about 50%. We used to do it all by hand: writing budgets, doing the accounting, (remember Excel?) writing financial reports. Now most of it is done automatically by Oracle. The whole division will probably be reduced to Five people in a few years. Of course, now we are all slaves to Oracle. If Oracle requires a systems upgrade, we’d better damned well be ready to pay whatever they are asking.

Now you're really getting me started. Whenever my workplace 'upgrades' to a new and 'better' computer system (which really means the old company went broke and no other company wanted to buy it out and continue to use the existing software), the newer and purportedly more advanced system is never an improvement for the day-to-day users.

The previous property management system, you could revisit the previous property you were working on simply by pressing F3, which was handy if you were busy and getting a dozen phone calls an hour interrupting your work. If you lost your place, simply press F3 and back you go. You also control the status of a property, to make it historical (subdivided), current, or proposed. Not anymore.

Then there's the electronic mapping system. In the old system, you keyed in the property address or title and press ENTER. Not now. Now you've got to tab through each ID component, and keep tabbing down to reach OK (or click on OK with the mouse at the end). By themselves, these are trivial matters and not a big deal, but add them all up over the course of a busy day, and these being only a couple of examples of reduced efficiencies, and it get frustrating, especially if you used the previous system that was much more fluid and user-friendly.

 

[Edward]

There's another issue that would need to be dealt with in a moneyless society--current, as in electrical. What happens when there's a power outage longer than a minor inconvenience and we have no access to our electronic personal information such as bank accounts? What then?

They'll have to have some built-in fall back for that for sure. Back when payment cards first came in, there was always a delay (like with cheques, remember those? Twenty years since I last wrote one, I think... Paypal was ultimately the death of those). Digital, real-time connections to the bank and virtually immediate debits from your account are relatively new. Of course, in the event of the electric, rather than the bank connection, going out, all you have is cash. No cash option, the business has to shut up til the power is back. Fine for a big store who'd do that anyhow (most supermarkets in my experience wouldn't be 'safe' anyhow if the lights went out), but for a smaller, family business who could muddle through and would otherwise miss the income greatly, cash would still be a saviour.

Ugh, that's another modern convenience I can do without--everyone doing everything on and with their damned cell phones. How can that possibly be safe and secure with so many thieves out there with equipment that simply pulls your information out of thin air? Nope, not a fan.

Security-wise, I'm very much of the belief it's asking for trouble. Even aside from getting your tech stolen and/or hacked, the notion of putting all your information in one hackable basket, or even trusting so much of your information to one company, gives me the willies.

Yup. Over the last ten years, my department has shrunk by about 50%. We used to do it all by hand: writing budgets, doing the accounting, (remember Excel?) writing financial reports. Now most of it is done automatically by Oracle. The whole division will probably be reduced to Five people in a few years. Of course, now we are all slaves to Oracle. If Oracle requires a systems upgrade, we’d better damned well be ready to pay whatever they are asking. Thank goodness I’ll be retiring soon.

The age-old IT dilemma: go with a supported, proprietary product, or an open-source where you need your own support... The ones that bugs me is Microsoft Office, and how now the whole thing is increasingly, like so much else now, geared towards a subscription model to keep you paying in rather than settling for an older version. I use Office 365 at work and the software *is* great.... but for home use I've converted to open office because I hate the subscription model where you pay out forever or as soon as you stop you have nothing.

Now you're really getting me started. Whenever my workplace 'upgrades' to a new and 'better' computer system (which really means the old company went broke and no other company wanted to buy it out and continue to use the existing software), the newer and purportedly more advanced system is never an improvement for the day-to-day users.

In the university, we upgraded to Microsoft 365 email replacing our own server and system for the simple reason that MS provided it for free. So far it's been okay (even if I'm sure they're ripping all our data for beta testing commercial features, quietly in the background). The bigger challenge was when they introduced a new VLE. Made strategic sense to switch ten or so years ago as it's a much more capable system, and based on OS meant they could do more to 'personalise' it to our brand. Only problem..... it's not even remotely intuitive. Very easy to do a lot of cool stuff, but if you don't know *how* you'd never see it - like it was only recently I discovered, by accident, that to upload a basic document I didn't need to go through the full editing form rigmarole, I could just drag and drop in editing mode. Absolutely nothing indicates that's possible if you don't know. I'm told that if you learned to program in a certain timeframe the approach makes sense, but...

 

[Harp]

^Came back off Memorial Day weekend to an email notice of yet another computer upgrade and mandatory
class instruction within two hours; uh huh. Come-and-get-me.

 

[Hercule]

^Came back off Memorial Day weekend to an email notice of yet another computer upgrade and mandatory
class instruction within two hours; uh huh. Come-and-get-me.

We've been getting mandatory IT training of late. Our University had a pretty serious cyber attack earlier this year so they're trying to educate the masses on recognizing and reporting threats that get past the firewall. It wasn't so onerous, though it was obnoxious in how politically correct it was constructed. Typical of all our online training it was out-sourced from "Training Videos R Us." Not nearly as bad as the diversity trainings that occasionally come down the pike. Their anything but diverse, contrived scenarios and outlandish and broad sweeping assumptions are themselves borderline offensive.

 

[WonkyBloke]

There's another issue that would need to be dealt with in a moneyless society--current, as in electrical. What happens when there's a power outage longer than a minor inconvenience and we have no access to our electronic personal information such as bank accounts? What then?

Plenty of times, I've found myself unable to pay by card. Not because of power outages, but just because the banks systems are down for some reason. I know others have had the same issues with other banks/cards. I always like to have a bit of cash handy for such eventualities.

 

[Harp]

We've been getting mandatory IT training of late. Our University had a pretty serious cyber attack earlier this year so they're trying to educate the masses on recognizing and reporting threats that get past the firewall. It wasn't so onerous, though it was obnoxious in how politically correct it was constructed. Typical of all our online training it was out-sourced from "Training Videos R Us." Not nearly as bad as the diversity trainings that occasionally come down the pike. Their anything but diverse, contrived scenarios and outlandish and broad sweeping assumptions are themselves borderline offensive.

The political strait n' narrer does more harm than good. Within the federal civil strait jacket service the big bugaboo
was sexual harassment with mandated video screens and subsequent tests that took hours. Now, racism is the
topic of constant aggrievement, requiring mandatory doctrine and corrective rehabilitation.

Princeton recently dropped its Ancient Greek and Latin language requisites because of white guys and slavery.
History can never be erased nor hidden away in some PC attic and the kids themselves are the lesser for all this bias.

 

[MisterCairo]

The best "post-cash" movie scene:

This reminds me, I need to feed my marmot...

 

[MisterCairo]

All the cyber attacks mentioned, that pipeline shut down by an attack, a huge meat processor hit in three countries including Canada, and people are still surprised my wife and I did not make our new home a "smart" one, i.e., connected to the internet of things.

We are having a total internet loss as I type, girls cannot do school, I cannot work, and people wanted my home run by it.

Absolutely.

NOT.