[brainwad]

So the alternative is, what, you can spend whatever is left in your wallet, but the rest of your money is still frozen? The difference from maintaing physical cash seems very marginal. Or are you suggesting we all pull all our money out of bank accounts and store it in cash under the bed, just in case one day we get unpersoned? The costs of doing that vastly outweight the expected benefits.

[causal]

This is a strawman argument: You've setup a scenario where cash isn't very beneficial, and then show why it's not beneficial.

Before the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, women could only use cash. Sure it would have been way cooler if they weren't discriminated against, but many women still only survived because of the cash option, and none of them would have said "Well since I might run out of money anyway go ahead and make it impossible for me to use what I have".

[brainwad]

It's not a straw man, it's literally the scenario the guy I was replying to was talking about ("if your accounts are frozen"). If you had a bank account like a normal person, and then you are surprised by your account being frozen, you are going to be almost as screwed whether physical cash exists or not, because you won't be keeping that much cash on hand anyway.

Cash was the normal way to pay for things before the ECOA so I don't think it's comparable to today, where nobody uses cash anymore. You used to be able to be paid in cash, or in a cheque you could cash at the grocery store. Now you probably need to have your pay deposited into a bank account, which you may only be able to access electronically, so if your account is frozen you are far more screwed.