Unfortunately, the oncoming 'train' of a cashless society can neither be slowed nor halted. The world population will have no choice but to accept it.
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Those who've known me for a long time know I have an increasingly negative view of technology (frankly to the point that I'd happily throw a switch to kill off IT innovation for the rest of my life...I literally do not want to know what comes next).
I would point out that in a sense, the 'small guy' gets hurt by the tracking of transactions as well insofar as the economy has often operated on /not/ following the rules to the letter. For an example of this, ask anyone overseeing a railroad yard what happens when all of the rules are actually followed. This isn't the only industry that's like this. I actually think there's going to be a negative impact from a lot of this in the long term because of the govenrnment's 'cut' both in terms of time and money (e.g. I honestly do not give a flying frak if my handyman is insured, licensed, or bonded...I care if he fixes my broken toilet; I do not care if my barber is licensed, I care how my hair looks; and I only really care if my doctor is licensed because of how high the stakes are).
Setting aside the EMP threat, there's a real risk of a "Puerto Rico" situation (extended power cuts in an area utterly disabling businesses). After Isabel (in VA in 2003), I didn't get regular power back at my house for close to two weeks. This was mostly bad luck (my neighborhood has generally been pretty good about getting power back after a storm, but IIRC we just had a LOT of tree limbs down and there were other areas with more people that were easier to restore quickly) and I personally had a generator at my house (which we basically killed from overuse as a result...it was quite old at the time), but a power cut for 2-3 days isn't implausible in a lot of areas. If you get beyond that, you start having Problems. If the government was going to pair this push with requirements for a robust power network, that would be one thing, but that's...sort-of lacking. Yes, in the short term (and with trusted customers) you can quick-fix this with simply running a paper register and handling the formal transactions later (or indeed, if there are transactions going both ways just "washing" some of them); outside of situations like that, however, things get hairy quickly.
By the way, you won't eliminate bribes and money laundering. It will just become a bit more complicated. Straight cash under the table becomes a transfer to a 'charity' that in turn pays for the official in question to go on a 'fact finding trip' (or indeed, a lower-income charity that doesn't have to file much paperwork with the IRS and that mostly 'loses' its money). Yes, in theory you can trace it more easily...but it's sort of like trying to beat out a bump in the carpet (the bump tends to just move around). And of course, you can't eliminate barter...so it wouldn't be hard to envision a scenario a la John Wick where you have a not-insignificant number of transactions taking place in specie (which is fundamentally convertable) or in foreign currencies of some sort.
I'm also not convinced that the relevant levels of tracking are anything resembling a good outcome. Yes, there is a "slippery slope" argument here but given various "innovations" I am not sure it is invalid to worry about a shift from "we know where you purchased X" to "we know
what you purchased", and I
really don't want to be stuck thinking about my health insurance rates every time I just want a burger.
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As to the airlines, I suspect that the revenue increase occurred because (alongside the "making change" issue, which really shouldn't have been an issue most of the time) on shorter flights FAs were now able to actually cover most or all of the cabin.
