{"id":178059,"date":"2019-03-18T18:15:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T23:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/03\/18\/new-jersey-does-the-right-thing\/"},"modified":"2019-03-18T18:15:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T23:15:00","slug":"new-jersey-does-the-right-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/03\/18\/new-jersey-does-the-right-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"New Jersey Does the Right Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>I know that this sounds like a typo, but the Garden State has passed a law <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/2019\/03\/new-jersey-becomes-second-state-to-ban-cashless-shops-and-restaurants\/\">banning cashless shops and restaurants<\/a>.<\/div>\n<p>This has increasingly become an issue as shops have gone cashless in order to refuse service to the unbanked and homeless:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">On Monday, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed a bill banning cashless retail stores and restaurants in the Garden State. Murphy&#8217;s signature makes New Jersey the second state in the US to ban cashless stores, after Massachusetts banned them in 1978.<\/p>\n<p>More recently, New Jersey&#8217;s move follows that of Philadelphia, which banned cashless stores earlier this month. Philadelphia&#8217;s legislation was a reaction to a growing number of stores that only accept credit cards or require customers to pay with an app, like Amazon&#8217;s new Amazon Go stores. <\/p>\n<p>Ars contacted Amazon for comment on the new law, but the company did not respond. <\/p>\n<p>Much like Philadelphia&#8217;s new law, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nj.com\/politics\/2019\/03\/nj-bans-stores-and-restaurants-from-refusing-to-accept-cash-from-customers.html\">New Jersey&#8217;s law makes an exception<\/a> for parking garages and car rental companies, where a credit card is required upfront for incidentals. There is also an exception carved out for some airport stores, according to NJ.com. <\/p>\n<p>Proponents of cashless stores say that they prevent theft, speed up customer convenience, and are generally more modern. Opponents say that cashless stores unfairly disadvantage people who don&#8217;t or can&#8217;t have credit cards and who don&#8217;t want the fees associated with prepaid debit cards. <\/p>\n<p>According to NJ.com, State Assemblyman Paul Moriarty said in a statement that &#8220;Many people don&#8217;t have access to consumer credit, and any effort by retail establishments to ban the use of cash is discriminatory towards those people.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s a good start.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the so-called &#8220;innovations&#8221; coming out of tech seem to have as an unspoken selling point the ability to discriminate.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve seen this in AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, etc.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d like to see this on the ballot in California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know that this sounds like a typo, but the Garden State has passed a law banning cashless shops and restaurants. This has increasingly become an issue as shops have gone cashless in order to refuse service to the unbanked and homeless: On Monday, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed a bill banning cashless retail &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[714,456,449],"class_list":["post-178059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-discrimination","tag-finance","tag-legislation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178059"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}