Dinner convo about life without global banking system

[whymadam]

AIBU to think we could be sleepwalking into financial crisis?
Last night, over dinner with the ILs, we were talking about whether we should stock up gradually in case of climate disaster, some kind of infrastructure collapse, whatever. They are organised hoarders, so have a bit of a headstart! The convo moved on to what if the global banking system was hacked, and nobody could access money, for an indefinite period. Given that money is basically data, how would that work out? Should we stock up with cash, alongside our tinned tuna? Gold coins 💰? LOL. Would cash work where the banking system ceased to exist? Or should we all be growing veggies, raising chickens and harvesting rainwater? Im aware plenty of people in the 'developed world' exist like this, but how would 'the West' survive in a world without money? What would the fallout be like?

What a miserable sounding dinner. But at least you were in good company.

I think we are in real trouble if we have any prolonged outage of the banking systems. I do think having some cash available at home is sensible following other banking outages (or internet outages) so you could still purchase essentials. But hoarding cash at home isn’t wise.

I think cash wouldn't get you very far because shops would quickly run out of stock because of disruption to global supply chains.

This is what we thought - but I wonder what happens after?

Not at all! It was a really interesting 'what if' debate.

If that happens, you should stock up with ammunition

And do what with it?

Lionel Shriver’s novel The Mandibles A Family 2029-2047 is a good read. Not exactly about the banking system so much as a global financial meltdown which sends the dollar plummeting. Eventually becomes a fight to survive.

Hard to hack the whole system but individual banks do go down for 24 hours or so occasionally.

keeping some cash at home is sensible but large amounts not really.

It's a possible but not probable future. Storing a few tins of corned beef won't save you, so why bother?

How much cash would be sensible to keep at home though?

Trade it or use it

If the banking system collapses then cash is useless- it's just paper. We'd fall immediately into a barter system, but only after everyone just looted like crazy and we had a huge amount of violence.

This ^ . A small amount of cash for short term banking disruptions, sure. But things like spirits , cigarettes , medication, even chocolate, and gold would be much more appealing to most people as it would be a trade based system.

And you have to think, if there is no banks, how will shops pay suppliers? How will suppliers get petrol when a huge amount of stations are digital? There will inevitable be shortages as the system will very quickly break down. Staff won’t get paid and so won’t go to work and the value of money will plummet because cash is just paper so will be worthless. Think about the photos from school history text books of the wheel barrow full of notes just for a loaf. It wasn’t bread that was ridiculously over priced, it was the cash that was completely and utterly worthless. our cash system is pretty much honor based with the BOE and isn’t inherently worth anything. But the price of gold is very stable. My dad follows the market closely and has about 25k in gold and silver.

Something in one of the newspapers today about the Swedish government asking people to keep the equivalent of £80/€80 per person in cash at home after years of driving towards a cashless society. Link should be free of the paywall Why Sweden is abandoning its cashless society
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/c9ba7830d6dd4651

I was listening to a radio drama thing called “Money Gone” with a similar premise https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001yj6s

If you really think about it too hard, the concept of money on the grand scale is ludicrous. It's not a tangible thing in most cases now, it's "there" but not to see or hold.

Football players being bought and sold for millions, governments "finding" several billions in the budget, robbing Peter to pay Paul, tech CEO's having a "net worth" of more money than most whole communities would ever need over several generations.

It makes me think, if the whole system did come crashing down, how would people choose to restart?

I have this on the shelf and I’ve been meaning to read it a while - bought after reading several of her previous novels - you’ve given me a push 👌🏾

This wouldn't work in UK 🤗

This!

I love your optimism

Not sure why my post got blocked but read up on techno-feudalism as it feels like this is where we’re heading

In my country, we're advised to have about 200 in for emergencies. That's mostly to pay for a cab to get us home and to get groceries if the internet goes down for a few hours, rather than to help at the end of the world. If the intenser goes down, the trains are likely to stop here and we're mostly cashless so completely screwed.

It's not optimism as much as pragmatism. Most people in the UK would not be able to get a gun so the ammo is no use to them personally. The number of people who have a gun is also pretty small. Your chances of identifying such a person during a collapse of society in order to have a rational discussion with them about your trading terms are v small indeed. There are other things that would be far more useful as trading chips but that assumes that there's any sort of "bartering" as opposed to just looting and thieving- ie. survival of the strongest and most violent, which is what would logically happen.

I think chats like this can be really interesting and thought provoking. They don't have to be gloomy, it's a bit like 'what would you do if your house was on fire in the middle of the night?' Thinking through the possibilities may one day save your life.