Rambling on the next new normal
Apr. 2nd, 2020 05:20 pmI wonder what the next normal that comes after this normal looks like… one guess is that cash won't bounce back to it's previous popularity. Some hipster sorts of businesses were already trying going cashless; last week our local dépanneur (an unironically retro place) had a no-cash sign. I hope non-cash options become way more accessible to marginalized folks if this happens — I know in many developing countries, cheap feature phones often serve as changepurses. Here, we have half-decent e-wallets in our transit systems — if governments and transit agencies got out of the fare enforcement business (which they're largely doing in a bid to keep drivers distanced now), maybe the technology could be hauled over to cheap touchless payment systems.