[Brookhaven]

Better yet just get rid of the legal tender laws and let nature take its course. If the money is good (ie. specie) then you don’t need a law forcing banks and merchants to accept it.

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I think computers may have made physical money obsolete.

My pay is deposited into my account electronicly. No physical money changes hands.

I pay my bills online by electronicly transfering “money” from my checking account to various vendors. No physical money changes hands.

Not only is there no gold backup up our money supply, there isn’t even any paper. If some enterprising hacker gets into a bank account and modifies his account so the database says he has $1 million dollars in it, then “spends” it by making thousands of electronic purchases, how will the money every be removed from the money supply?

How do you spot counterfiet “electronic” money? Will vendors cooperate in undoing the electronic payments to their accounts? And if they do, how will they undo the payments they have made to other vendors (and on and on and on)?

[Racehorse]

So true.

All my Christmas shopping was done from my keyboard. No cash or checks exchanged between human beings. Indeed, the only human beings I’ve seen during my shopping spree are the mail men and the UPS/FedEx delivery people.

[KarlInOhio]

If some enterprising hacker gets into a bank account and modifies his account so the database says he has $1 million dollars in it, then “spends” it by making thousands of electronic purchases, how will the money every be removed from the money supply?

Hacker? I thought that was the job of the Chairman of the Fed, except the $1 million would be $1 trillion.

[SeeSharp]

How do you spot counterfiet “electronic” money?

That problem is similar to the problems that existed before the US government monopolized money printing. Banks use to print their own bank notes and it was up to each merchant to decide if he would accept this note or that. The problem was solved by the banks themselves. They began printing and issuing lists of banknotes and discount values based on the bank's confidence that it could redeem the notes for gold. If a bank wanted it's notes to be accepted it had to establish a good track record in the eyes of the other banks. There is no reason to think it will be any different with electronic money.

See The History of Money and Banking in the United States

[kaizen]

Just wait until they try to outlaw all money and put a chip in your arm, which they can turn off or erase if you don’t cooperate so you can no longer eat. Heard this is in the plans for 2012.