A big factor in social resilience is cash, because the inability to
conduct commerce quickly leads to civil unrest. People will tolerate
no entertainment, heating, or light for weeks or months. The danger
is not with electricity itself so much as the tech that depends on it,
because when there's food in the shops, and fuel in the tanks, but no
way to buy it, force is quick to follow. Physical cash acts as a
buffer that can keep the world moving even in primitive conditions.
That's why I think the idea of a "cashless society" is one of the
stupidest ideas I have heard in my life so far.
I don't think cash would hold much value, there would be insane inflation due to hardly any value of cash and extreme demand after limited resources, cash introduction would be fine after maybe a year when people would get used to live without grid, but in first weeks/months it would lose all the value.
Have we got any historical data or decent models? I guess the problem
with this is there's no precedent to formulate a null hypothesis
against.
If inflation was a factor it would affect digital systems linked to
the same currency equally. Cash would still win out on availability.
My feeling is that, in the absence of digital systems, physical cash
would in fact gain value as a tangible asset intermediate to barter of
portable wealth.
Remember the main purpose of cash in my scenario is a flywheel to
buffer the economy until things come back online, not as a permanent
post-disaster substitute. The main thing is to stop needing the army
to guard food trucks or shoot looters. That's what we're undervaluing
about cash and what I think the bankers, in their zealous bid for more
control, are completely missing as a political dimension about how
real people and real societies work.
> Have we got any historical data or decent models?
Yes, Ukraine is the recent example. Cash still worked in occupied territories, that were cut off from communications. It is the only way to conduct transactions, even with inflated costs.
Ukraine ain't isolated island, so at worst you can still keep using dollars/euros which hold stable value outside compared to local currency. And occupied territories still had gov which performed functions for residents.
By cash I meant "money" in general, since obviously digital money would be eliminated by lack of grid.
Your piece of papers covered by nothing have no value, if there is no power and everything need to be produced by hand and it's very scarce. I will rather trade my crops for something else valuable than for some piece of paper in unstable society without grid, since I think long term/infinite collapse of grid would basically mean collapse of (central) gov. After all what can gov do for me without grid and money. I can see only local gov surviving potentially because it's made by people close to you who can actually help each other with something meaningful instead just words or worthless pieces of papers.
