I understand why Kings Island, as a company, would want to go cashless. Forget about the conspiracy theories for a minute of a global cashless system run by a communist regime. They have many people under 22 years old that they employ, and cash is messy. Everywhere there is something to buy at Kings Island, at the beginning of the day and the end of the day, Kings Island must act as a major bank and carry a lot of cash on hand to operate. It is a tricky problem to put all that money in and out of a safe. Then there are all the mistakes that the employees make during a typical business day, and they lose a lot of money at each station where goods are purchased. Then, of course, money is dirty, all kinds of people touch it, it never gets washed, and it becomes a cesspool in the pocket of someone’s dirty, sweaty pants. For the convenience of Kings Island, one of the biggest amusement parks in America located in Northern Cincinnati, getting away from cash and moving to credit cards makes their job a lot easier. That is part of the big global plan to push for a cashless system. Companies like Kings Island have tremendous overhead just in dealing with employees who handle cash on any particular business day, and it’s a real pain, especially if there are options. I understand why Kings Island wants to be cashless. I know why global communists wish to be cashless, which we’ll talk about in a minute. But what nobody was asking is, what do the customers want?”
Well, I can tell you my thoughts, I was infuriated when I was stuck in the Festhaus of Kings Island with all my grandchildren, and my wife couldn’t buy any food because we just had found out while paying for that food in line that they were only taking credit cards. No cash allowed. We were all hungry and tired. We had been swimming, so we didn’t bring anything that might be easy to lose into the park. We put a hundred bucks in our pockets for food but otherwise kept all our valuables in the car. Now we couldn’t use that money to pay for food, and we were highly inconvenienced. The guy at the checkout apologized and explained that Kings Island had made the switch due to Covid restrictions, which infuriated me. Because I knew it wasn’t Governor DeWine who was pushing a cashless system. It was Cedar Fair Amusements who were using Covid as an excuse to go cashless. An advantage to them that I explained above. That’s when we left the park to get food somewhere else, which became a nightmare all its own for similar reasons. But needless to say, that was the end of our day at Kings Island, and it will likely be my last time going for a while. Going cashless for me is a breaking point, a take it or leave it a moment, and I’d just soon leave it.
The push for a cashless society comes from communist China. They are already doing much of what Kings Island is working to do, so why not do it. Why are they doing it? Well, it gives them control over their people. It allows for the concept of a social score to accept or deny financial transactions. For instance, if you speak out against the communist government in China on social media or some other traceable way, they can lower your social score, which might prevent you from riding a bus or going to see a movie. Just think of the censorship of Twitter and YouTube but apply it to things you need to do in life, like go to the grocery store. If you have a terrible social score, you may not be able to buy food. That is how China plans to control its population of over a billion people, and it’s why many American corporations are leaning toward a cashless society. Having that kind of consumer control is very attractive to some of the variability in any financial transaction. I have seen this cashless thing attempted at several tradeshows and other venues around the country, and so far, it hasn’t been working very well. There are still many people who still want to use cash, so vendors have to make accommodations. What it always comes down to is whether or not someone wants a customer. The consumer desire drives the behavior, not the other way around. It is for that reason that cash will always be king in America. Cash is freedom.
I give an example in the video above about me wanting to buy a beer at Kings Island. Typically, I enjoy going there to look around and think. If I pay ten bucks for a beer, I pull the money out of my pocket and pay whoever is selling the beer. The transaction is between the seller and me. No bank in New York even knows about it. They might understand that Kings Island sold a beer, but to whom and for how long someone like me took to drink it, nobody knows. And I like it that way. So do a lot of other Americans. Part of drinking the beer is a minor rebellion in it that is specific to American culture. Just drinking a beer to be drinking one is pretty dull. Also, using anything but cash means you must trust the system and all the employees who handle the transaction. While traveling around, it’s happened to me that my wife might go to buy something, and she gets to the counter to pay with a credit card, and the company has shut down the card. That happened to us while I was traveling in Japan, I had made a suspicious purchase, a tiny one, and the credit card company thought it was a stolen card testing it out on something less risky before making a more significant purchase. My wife in the states was the one who got stuck without a way of paying until we could resolve the issue with several phone calls and a lot of embarrassment. Carrying around cash as a secondary or primary way of paying is an obvious solution. But if we have a cashless society, you must trust the entire system to get everything right, and we all have stories we could tell. The burden shifts to the consumer while the corporations and governments of the world get the ease of control they so much desire.
I expected a lot more out of Kings Island, and for them to blame the decision on Covid was just too low of a blow to accept. I generally love Kings Island and Cedar Fair Amusements. All I could think of was when they announced that they were not leading in the world but was only copying what the communists in China have already been doing. It diminished them significantly to my mind. It felt like a betrayal. My family was out of that park within 10 minutes of that attempted food exchange. They do have cash conversion machines that can put a value on a card, but then your cash becomes like a gift card, and you must start figuring out how much money you put on it for all your transactions, and the whole thing becomes a significant pain in the neck. Not that a few hot dogs and a hamburger cost $40, but they were making people stand around and use all these cashless systems was too much. So, we left, and I can’t say I’ll be going back any time soon. I go to Kings Island to enjoy myself, not to go to communist China. Because that’s essentially what it has become—too many rules, too much control, and way too rigid. And lazy.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 