Freakonomics: Why Are We Still Using Cash? — What do robbery, tax evasion & drug dealing have in common?

Why is the U.S. printing more cash while other countries are doing away with it? Money! It facilitates crime, bribery, and tax evasion – and yet some governments (including ours) are printing more cash than ever. Other countries, meanwhile, are ditching cash entirely. And if Star Trek is right, we won’t have money of any sort in the 24th century. This podcast was discovered on @ottoradio 👍

How do regular people benefit from this in the world of negative interest rates they are unable to avoid? Even the WSJ sees the war on cash as a political move, not a crime move. Edit to add: Also we're all faced with much more privacy invasion. Cash, like many other valid tools for privacy, is used by criminals but so is bitcoin, tor, etc. Are large volumes of cash still moved in bills, or rather in diamonds, gold, or some other store of value? What happens to those when cash is banned? I'm all in favor if eliminating crime but if our goal is to eliminate crime is this the ideal path?

Great podcast great concept