Digital Age Money

Having recently seen the post with the tag “idiot's dream” it became interesting, and what ideas and approaches in general could make a utopian state in a spherical vacuum enjoyable for potential citizens?



Some high technology quickly changed our lives. However, the changes, touching upon each person personally, bypassed the system. Models of society and the state remained unchanged. Yes, business models began to take into account the availability of the Internet, automation and a large amount of computation. Multimedia has become digital and pizza can be ordered online, but these are just new gears.
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I suggest a little discussion on high technology and matter. Try to analyze the possibilities of IT in the management of the state. I want to share simple thoughts about money (in this post) and politics (in the following, if the topic is interesting). I think that the audience Habra is perfect for finding ideas and polishing them.

Money.

In my opinion it has long been on the surface and partially implemented - the refusal of cash (bills and coins) of money. Personally, I almost do not use cash for a long time. Only 1-2% of my monthly expenses are cash. Terminals for accepting credit cards are in any store, and where there is not - you can pay with a credit card using a phone call. That is, the experience and the opportunity not to work with cash is already now in the hands of both buyers and sellers. Only at the moment the buyer pays for the credit card, and the seller loses the interest from the transaction in favor of the credit companies.

It is not necessary to switch to such a system at all - there is a bill for every citizen and the availability of terminals. We need one unified state bank in which, upon obtaining citizenship, an account will be opened - this is a virtual wallet with cash. From there, they can be transferred to any other bank, private or state, and you can not make other accounts. To work with this wallet will need some kind of card, but I propose to do without it - to use biometric data. Fingerprints, retina, voice, etc. are acceptable. with delimitation of access levels. Google gives a bunch of concepts for this idea, including implants. For example, for operations less than 10 euros, a fingerprint is enough, and for more serious transactions - to scan the eye or combine several checks.

Let's go ahead. The banknotes themselves are not durable and their lifespan, if memory serves me, is about 5 years (now it can be more, because they began to make plastic bills). The cost of printing notes is much less than the nominal value, but it requires constant updating of the bank of worn notes. Coins live much longer, but the cost of production of the coin is close, and often higher than the nominal value. That is, the state has a very large expenditure on the maintenance of cash. It is worth noting that the terminal for small amounts with GPS, GPRS with a fingerprint scanner and voice recognition and a camera (for face recognition) may be less than a mobile phone, and may even be a cellular module (as it was once announced as a credit card module for iPhone) . Considering the number of required terminals, the unit cost will not be large, and the lifespan will be longer than that of a paper note, therefore providing every citizen (account holder) with such a wallet device is a feasible task. It should not be much more expensive than the cost of cash, especially as a long-term program. That is, if everyone has a wallet terminal for accepting a transfer, it is not a problem to transfer a large amount of money from one account to another. So we can already buy a glass of sunflower seeds from the grandmother on the platform and take a five to pay. For large sums, it will be necessary to go to the bank - but this is still true. Yes, and forgetting the wallet at home - you will not be lost, because you do not need it for payment (unless of course you forgot your head and fingers at home).

Naturally, the idea is not in the convenience of users. With this approach, the possibility of carrying out monetary transactions unnoticed in part disappears. You will not be able to pull the salary out of your purse or take the wallet in the gateway - because the recipient must provide his wallet and light up the transaction. Bribes are also problematic. There will be no cash transactions "on black" - yes, taxes must be paid, even to the grandmother with the seeds. Of course, the system has disadvantages - no one bothers to circumvent the restriction of cash in goods or foreign currency. And, probably, few people want everything and everything to be under state control (even utopia). However, these points are interrelated. You are afraid of the sad experience of entrusting to the state everything that has been accumulated by overworking - buy gold bars and keep houses in a safe. Or scatter money across different banks. Cancellation of cash does not limit you to only one bank and ways to waste salary. But bribes with gold and black caviar are not completely invisible - both must be bought, and in order to benefit, the goods must be sold. That is, some accounting will be and you can find traces. So the system, although not perfect, in my opinion significantly improves the current state of affairs with corruption, drug trafficking and theft.

The word is yours. Do not forget that we are talking only about money in a non-existent state. How would an attempt with the help of IT to build the infrastructure of something new, having the experience of living outside utopias? The main requirement for ideas - everything must be technically feasible now.

I drew the picture (by Stephen Doyle) from the post on the same topic on Wired.

UPDATE: On the website of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, I found an interesting report on cash circulation in 2008 and prospects for its development on the topic of reality