In the future, I believe that in order to buy anything at all
, we will have to use electronic cash and that will ultimately be based on a credit card (the electronic IOU). There are obviously tremendous advantages in electronic credit (notice I'm not wont to call it cash), but it also has Orwellian drawbacks in the sense that a new debtor class in society will quickly arise. These people will pay more for the same item than everyone else and will never get out of debt. In fact, there is such a class right now and it is growing.