Swedes turn against cashlessness • Hacker News Board

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#271

Post by oldcynic » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 10:24 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #173

Good. The cashless drive gives me the creeps. 1 - First, I like cash. It's tactile and gives me a feel for my spending. 2 - Cards are an duopoly, layered onto an oligopoly. Cashless gives this system a 2% tax on all spending (+ fraud, which retailers pay for). 3 - Government control is creepy too. Liberty reasons, privacy reasons, single-point-of failure reasons. Just simple competency reasons. 4 - It advantages big…

> It's tactile and gives me a feel for my spending

Both in games with premium currencies like diamonds, and in real life with plastic cards and services, it's been shown time and again that the further you are from actual cash the more you spend.

This can't be emphasised enough and is, to my mind, a near complete explanation of the drive for cashless. We, as good consumers, will spend more in a cashless world.

When we were struggling to make ends meet after the dot com bust we slowly realised this, and came to draw out cash first for everything possible. If the cash wasn't there first, it did not get bought. I will still, nearing 20 years on, draw cash prior to shopping, or buying fuel etc. Debit cards get used online. The credit card lives in a drawer. Unused and balance free for years.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#272

Post by debt » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 10:34 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #173

Good. The cashless drive gives me the creeps. 1 - First, I like cash. It's tactile and gives me a feel for my spending. 2 - Cards are an duopoly, layered onto an oligopoly. Cashless gives this system a 2% tax on all spending (+ fraud, which retailers pay for). 3 - Government control is creepy too. Liberty reasons, privacy reasons, single-point-of failure reasons. Just simple competency reasons. 4 - It advantages big…

"1 - First, I like cash. It's tactile and gives me a feel for my spending."

"Going cashless" is a flavor of class warfare. There are some people that absolutely depend on, live on, cash. Believe it or not, there are people that do not have access to cards.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#273

Post by kqr » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 10:38 PM UTC

hashmush wrote: post #170

This is confusing. I thought it was just a couple of friends and I that thought that cashless is a horrible idea. Seems like we at least have older people on our side. > Yet Sweden is divided into two camps: the first says "we love the new technology", while the other just can’t be bothered, Skarec says. Also, it is scary that people think like this. Everyone is in such a rush to digitize everything and implement new…

This is an uncanny coincidence. Just today I (being a Swede in the largest city) wanted to deposit some old bills, and found out my primary bank went completely cashless years ago, and my secondary bank never dealt in cash to begin with.

This sounded so weird to me so I had to google it while on the phone with the support rep. Turns out it's a big shift where at some point around ten years ago, the government released control and now almost every big private actor is moving away from cash, despite the fact that it goes against the recommendation of nearly every expert in the field.

It worries me hugely, and I am considering switching banks to the only big bank that is actively in favour of dealing in cash: Handelsbanken. I know this will come at some cost to me, but if the alternative is sticking with a bank that does not even offer one of the core services of banking---even society---that will have to be worth it.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#274

Post by acchow » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 10:49 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #173

Good. The cashless drive gives me the creeps. 1 - First, I like cash. It's tactile and gives me a feel for my spending. 2 - Cards are an duopoly, layered onto an oligopoly. Cashless gives this system a 2% tax on all spending (+ fraud, which retailers pay for). 3 - Government control is creepy too. Liberty reasons, privacy reasons, single-point-of failure reasons. Just simple competency reasons. 4 - It advantages big…

Most of my money is spent on rent or online shopping.

Do people really have that much opportunity to spend cash? And for those opportunities, isn't the 2% tax a fairly reasonable price to pay for the safety of never needing to carry cash around and the convenience of never needing to go to an ATM or run out of cash?

I imagine petty theft crime has dropped significantly in large part because people stopped carrying cash.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#275

Post by oarsinsync » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 10:55 PM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #230

dalbasal wrote: post #173

Good. The cashless drive gives me the creeps. 1 - First, I like cash. It's tactile and gives me a feel for my spending. 2 - Cards are an duopoly, layered onto an oligopoly. Cashless gives this system a 2% tax on all spending (+ fraud, which retailers pay for). 3 - Government control is creepy too. Liberty reasons, privacy reasons, single-point-of failure reasons. Just simple competency reasons. 4 - It advantages big…

1. Can your cash do this? [1] A breakdown of spending by my internet bank, by category. 4. In Sweden, and some other European countries (and China?) a lemonade stand works by person-to-person bank transfers, initiated using a mobile phone app. The Swedish one is called Swish, but I link to the Danish one [2] as they have an English explanation. People really do use these apps for things like lemonade stands. I've see…

> 1. Can your cash do this? [1] A breakdown of spending by my internet bank, by category.

Yes, but not automatically. You have to manually log all your spending by category yourself.

Big data has advantages but you have to trade off your privacy in exchange for the convenience.

Built in privacy for some people is a feature. For others it’s a bug.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#276

Post by kuschku » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:00 PM UTC

kzrdude wrote: post #107

mkesper wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in Germany, for example. We still have laws that cash has to be accepted for (almost) any trade.

That's nice. In Sweden various retailers and others that sell services claim that cash is a nuisance, a cost or a danger. For example, bus companies have had "cash strikes" after robberies, claiming cash is a danger against their working environment, and as a result nowadays most buses are cashless. Retail shops and banks alike publicize and complain about the cost of handling cash transports securely. We can guess t…

Sadly, people aren’t replacing cash with EC (a very cheap interbanking card standard that’s local to Germany) but with VISA/MasterCard, foreign companies that demand foreign laws be followed in Germany, holding an oligopoly, and having massively inflated fees.

I’d be the first proponent of a cashless society if we’d ban VISA and MasterCard from operating here.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#277

Post by Paperweight » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:03 PM UTC

mioelnir wrote: post #261

jacobush wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes... I wonder how Nature implemented that...

By dropping transmutative alchemy from the sprint, allowing the implementation of a capability system on top of a now unforgeable subset of existing resources...

Sounds like the whitepaper for this week's hottest ICO!

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#278

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:06 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #118

jstanley wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's de facto the same in most shops. If you pick up some goods and walk out of the shop leaving some cash on the counter... what recourse do they have? OK, the shop might not be happy about it, but you owe them the value of goods, and you've paid them in legal tender to the correct amount.

In England that's theft. This is clear and unambiguous. See for example thean who took cash from his company safe, and replaced the same value a week later, but who was convicted of theft because the notes were different. See R v Velyumi here: https://www.lawteacher.net/cases/theft-cases.php

[deleted]

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#279

Post by eswat » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:13 PM UTC

oldcynic wrote: post #271

dalbasal wrote: post #173

Good. The cashless drive gives me the creeps. 1 - First, I like cash. It's tactile and gives me a feel for my spending. 2 - Cards are an duopoly, layered onto an oligopoly. Cashless gives this system a 2% tax on all spending (+ fraud, which retailers pay for). 3 - Government control is creepy too. Liberty reasons, privacy reasons, single-point-of failure reasons. Just simple competency reasons. 4 - It advantages big…

> It's tactile and gives me a feel for my spending Both in games with premium currencies like diamonds, and in real life with plastic cards and services, it's been shown time and again that the further you are from actual cash the more you spend. This can't be emphasised enough and is, to my mind, a near complete explanation of the drive for cashless. We, as good consumers, will spend more in a cashless world. When w…

I’m reminded of the benefits of cash whenever I go certain parts of SEA, like the Philippines, where using cash is actually more convenient than using a card (less time dealing with receipts and signatures, don’t have to hope their credit card machine has a working connection, etc.)

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#280

Post by AnthonyMouse » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 11:27 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #247

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to do any of that. It's a machine that makes exact change. Is your purchase $52.27 but in your wallet you have 39 cents in coins and $64 in bills? Counting is for computers. Just dump the contents of your wallet into the machine and let it figure it out. And you can't count processing failures on one side but not the other. The machine can't read your card. The network is down. Some jerk at the bank fa…

Have you not used a modern contactless payment system before? They're fast enough to be used on the barriers of underground railway systems which see thousands of passengers pass through at peak times. Even the time taken to empty the contents of your wallet into the appropriate slot of a cash system takes longer than those machines, never mind time taken to process the notes and coins, dispense change and allow you…

> Have you not used a modern contactless payment system before? They're fast enough to be used on the barriers of underground railway systems which see thousands of passengers pass through at peak times.

That isn't that impressive when you consider the equivalent traffic was handled in cash before electronic payment systems even existed.

> Even the time taken to empty the contents of your wallet into the appropriate slot of a cash system takes longer than those machines, never mind time taken to process the notes and coins, dispense change and allow you to put that change back in the appropriate compartments of your wallet.

Describing all the steps in detail doesn't make the total any longer. And half of that stuff can be done in parallel with other stuff. You can get out your money while you're waiting in line. You can put it away while you're walking out of the store. It doesn't add any real latency.

> And change-dispensing machines with their scanning software, moving parts and need to be fully stocked with change break down at least as often as networks for card based payments.

Stores typically have more than one checkout machine to handle the volume during peak traffic times, so one can be down and there is not even any consequence outside of peak hours, and only a minor delay even then.

If a network is down, it's down. Retail stores typically don't have redundant internet connections.