Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia • Hacker News Board

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#31

Post by notyourday » Sat, Nov 10, 2018, 6:39 PM UTC

jamesblonde wrote: post #17

As a resident of Sweden, i can only say that this is the future for all western countries. Life is just better without cash. We don't pay the mental tax of always ensuring i have dollar bills on me to tip left, right, and center. Your phone is enough to get you through the day. The govt is still run by the people for the people here, so most people aren't worried about totalitarianism. Most beggars now have signs wit…

Naivete is abundant... Guess what happens to your ability to do anything if whatever the ID that is used to identify you is marked as invalid or even better deceased?

https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/16/9340511/perstin-experian-...

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#32

Post by simplyinfinity » Sat, Nov 10, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

intertextuality wrote: post #29

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how services work though, you can't really be self sufficient unless you're a hunter gatherer. And even then you still need to be strong enough to kill the other tribes who are contesting with you for land. Imagine going to Mars and the very air you breathe is owned by your government. For me that's not an argument against going to mars, that's an argument for working harder to build a stronger, more trustwort…

This is a false comparison. Physical cash, in your possession, cannot be frozen or revoked unless those entities stop accepting government fiat currency. It has nothing to do with being self-sufficient.

But it can be stolen. Much more so than money in your bank account

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#33

Post by EthanHeilman » Sat, Nov 10, 2018, 6:41 PM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #18

CPLX wrote: post #14

A society without cash is a society in which every person has no choice but to get the permission of someone they don’t know and will never meet each and every time they seek to obtain food, water, shelter, or transportation, and that permission can be revoked instantly, silently, and invisibly at any time.

I agree, but the main point of an e-krona is exactly to try and reduce that risk. One of the proposed goals is to have non-traceable transactions. Seems unrealistic to me but that would be the holy grail.

We have known how to do untraceable* transactions [0] since 1982. There has now been thirty years of cryptographic research building on these results. The reason it hasn't happened is not because we can't do it but because governments resist the additional privacy protections.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecash

* - For some values of untracable. The privacy provided by ecash is in theory less than cash provides in practice, but certainly a massive privacy improvement over credit cards. In theory cash provides less privacy than ecash since stores could record the serial numbers on cash. However in practice they don't and thus cash in practice provides quite a bit of privacy.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#34

Post by ellius » Sat, Nov 10, 2018, 6:41 PM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #28

zzzcpan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Untraceable anonymous transactions is the minimal requirement for it not to be harmful and dystopian.

I agree, but unfortunately I don't believe a society being run by humans would ever implement that. The leaders will not tolerate that kind of loss of control.

It also probably makes counterfeiting and fraud an enormous problem.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#35

Post by pishpash » Sat, Nov 10, 2018, 6:42 PM UTC

intertextuality wrote: post #29

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how services work though, you can't really be self sufficient unless you're a hunter gatherer. And even then you still need to be strong enough to kill the other tribes who are contesting with you for land. Imagine going to Mars and the very air you breathe is owned by your government. For me that's not an argument against going to mars, that's an argument for working harder to build a stronger, more trustwort…

This is a false comparison. Physical cash, in your possession, cannot be frozen or revoked unless those entities stop accepting government fiat currency. It has nothing to do with being self-sufficient.

I think the point is even with cash in your wallet it is already a society where you have to obtain permission from unknown people to "obtain food, water, shelter, or transportation" because all of these things are delivered to you after many rounds of market exchanges which require clearing houses, escrows, the Fed, SWIFT, etc. Society has been essentially cashless for ages.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#36

Post by api » Sat, Nov 10, 2018, 6:42 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #14

A society without cash is a society in which every person has no choice but to get the permission of someone they don’t know and will never meet each and every time they seek to obtain food, water, shelter, or transportation, and that permission can be revoked instantly, silently, and invisibly at any time.

Shhh... politicians are likely to read stuff like that and think "what a great idea!"

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#37

Post by paavoova » Sat, Nov 10, 2018, 6:43 PM UTC

jamesblonde wrote: post #17

As a resident of Sweden, i can only say that this is the future for all western countries. Life is just better without cash. We don't pay the mental tax of always ensuring i have dollar bills on me to tip left, right, and center. Your phone is enough to get you through the day. The govt is still run by the people for the people here, so most people aren't worried about totalitarianism. Most beggars now have signs wit…

And what happens if you wish to opt out of relying on a phone? The consequences of total and utter dependency on a technology you don't control and which is ripe for exploit are horrifying. If it ever comes to that, it's no different than having an embedded microchip under your scalp. Thanks, but I'll bear the minor inconveniences of cash, where applicable, for the freedom such transactions still offer in this ever-digitized, tracking society.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#38

Post by api » Sat, Nov 10, 2018, 6:43 PM UTC

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #27

CPLX wrote: post #14

A society without cash is a society in which every person has no choice but to get the permission of someone they don’t know and will never meet each and every time they seek to obtain food, water, shelter, or transportation, and that permission can be revoked instantly, silently, and invisibly at any time.

That's how services work though, you can't really be self sufficient unless you're a hunter gatherer. And even then you still need to be strong enough to kill the other tribes who are contesting with you for land. Imagine going to Mars and the very air you breathe is owned by your government. For me that's not an argument against going to mars, that's an argument for working harder to build a stronger, more trustwort…

No. Self sufficiency is a continuum, not a boolean. Cash decentralizes permission for economic transactions.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#39

Post by solarwind » Sat, Nov 10, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

mamon wrote: post #2

More appropriate name would be "dystopia" because banning cash will have mostly adverse effects, intruducing nearly-totalitarian control over the citizens being the most important one.

If you are a Canadian citizen who ever used a credit/debit card at a cannabis dispensary (or if you even just invested or worked for a Canadian dispensary), you are now permanently barred from entering the United States. A cashless society is a totalitarian society.

Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

#40

Post by emerongi » Sat, Nov 10, 2018, 6:46 PM UTC

mamon wrote: post #2

More appropriate name would be "dystopia" because banning cash will have mostly adverse effects, intruducing nearly-totalitarian control over the citizens being the most important one.

Implementation is key here. If a new method can be introduced which offers the same benefits of cash while being digital, open-source and on open hardware, I don't see a huge problem.

Alas, such a solution would probably be extremely hard to create and therefore never will be.