This is my core concern really. So far, most outages I experienced here in Germany were mildly annoying, mostly due to the fact that cash is still King here and I had enough around the house to cover a couple days, but everytime it happens I think of what it would be like if we were as cashless as for example China. I'm not against all those modern payment methods, but I seriously think it should be mandatory for stores offering the basic necessities to accept cash.
My major concerns are about surveillance and control.
The USA is mow requiring banks to report all transactions over $600 to the federal government; the credit card companies are adding category based tracking to transactions at businesses in unfavored industries like gun stores, and banks and credit card companies are denying service to specific individuals due to online speech that had nothing to do with the financial institutions themselves. Canada is “de-banking” protesters. At a macro scale the US government and others are using the SWIFT system to interdict transactions by unfavored individuals, and are electronically “seizing” accounts of such people, usually without a warrant.
I upvoted this because I agree with most of it. It is not all transactions that need to be reported, however. Only transactions through 'third party' payment systems like Venmo, Cash App, Paypal, etc... Additionally, they have delayed this rule until next year.
The problem with cash is that a lot of commerce occurs over the Internet these days. And cash can be controlled or abused by the government. Even if cash is never technically banned, banks can limit withdrawals to low amounts, any limits can be kept and functionally eroded over time due to inflation, and with enough effort it can be tracked just as well as digital payments.
Personally I see this as the (probably only) actual-use-case for crypto: permissionless payments
Yup, this is my stance as well. I switched to a cash-friendly bank, I always carry a few bills on me, and I prefer to shop at stores that do take cash. (This is in a region of the world that's virtually cashless in everyday business.)
When people hear this they assume I must be anti-electronic payment but that's far from true. I love the convenience.
I just think it's really, really important we retain the option of physical cash, and hope that we rarely have to exercise it. It's worth the additional investment to achieve resilience.
There is also something very pleasant about the feeling of cash. It establishes a permanence and a respect for the currency that has to figure into the psychology of money.
BTW. For short outage batteries in terminal is enough, and BTSes have UPS that last quite long. Basically when my neighborhood has power outage (once a year maybe) for max 2-4 hours, cell service still works (a bit slower because everyone switched to it).
I regularly get power outages of several hours in the pacific northwest [1]. My local cell towers go about 2-4 hours before dropping off. The telco DSL drops immediately, not sure about the cable company. Gotta make sure you've got offline entertainment or you're gonna be real bored.
[1] mostly from trees falling into lines; the same soil conditions that make undergrounding lines very expensive also contribute to trees having shallow roots, saturated soil and high winds strongly implies no power. Also, local regulation requires the power company to pass costs of most undergrounding along to the affected customers and they have to approve the work; most people don't want to spend their money on undergrounding, so it's not typically done.
Natural disasters. In the early 90s a blizzard knocked out power on the US eastern seaboard for weeks in some areas. Two years ago Texas's grid was compromised for nearly a week during the ice storm, and even cell service was down.
I'm sure there are other examples. How long was power out in New Orleans after Katrina? Puerto Rico after Maria?
When superstorm Sandy hit New York in 2012 I lost power for 2 weeks. Local stores/gas stations/restaurants were without power for about a week. This was in a densely populated suburb, not a backwater.
