The cashless society should be judged as a public infrastructure question, not a convenience question. A payments system that depends entirely on digital rails has no offline fallback: a power cut, cyberattack, or processor outage can freeze everyday transactions, as documented disruptions at major payment networks suggest. It also excludes people without bank accounts, reliable ID, or smartphones, and hands private gatekeepers control over who can pay. Cash is imperfect, but it is a public fallback that preserves resilience and inclusion. My opponent may stress efficiency, yet efficiency cannot justify a system with no failsafe. That is why a cashless society is a bad idea.

The other side's own example settles the core question: during the Rogers outage, digital payments failed and cash kept essentials moving. That is precisely why a cashless society is a bad idea, not a good one; it deletes the offline fallback the other side just relied on. Unless my opponent can show digital rails are outage-proof, cyberattack-proof, and universally accessible, efficiency remains a secondary benefit. Cash is public infrastructure; a system with no emergency exit concentrates risk in private gatekeepers. That is a structural flaw, not a convenience trade-off.

If a storm knocks out the card network, my opponent's own commuter scenario concedes the central point: cash is the public failsafe, not nostalgia. Calling a cashless-only system reckless and insisting cash remain as backup is not an argument against the motion; it is an endorsement of it. The disagreement, then, is only about labels. Until digital rails are demonstrably outage-proof, cyberattack-proof, and universally accessible, efficiency cannot justify deleting the offline fallback. That structural flaw is exactly why a cashless society is a bad idea.