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Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia

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

#131

Post by espadrine »

corodra wrote: post #100

I can’t find the article, but didn’t another Nordic country, where they’re going cashless already find a flaw? Their communication infrastructure had some sort of disruption, I don’t think it was an attack, but a failure of something for like half a day. Because of that, merchant services were screwed. Few people could buy anything since few carried cash. Don’t get me wrong, I barely carry cash on me. I just have a b…

There is a practical benefit of locality in traditional distributed systems that may get lost with companies centralizing their operations for economies of scale.

If your bank is local, as is your merchant's, you could design the payment network in such a way that, if your region is cut off from the rest of the Internet, local communication can still allow payment authorizations to go through.

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

#132

Post by mrb »

mamon wrote: post #124
mrb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

« that permission can be revoked instantly, silently, and invisibly at any time » Yes, "permission" is the right vocabulary to use in this instance. In fact, the opposite, being "permissionless", is exactly one of the main selling points of cryptocurrencies: no authority can prevent a user from sending or receiving bitcoins, or ether, etc. This is why cryptocurrencies should be seen as competing with cash, and not wi…

>> main selling points of cryptocurrencies: no authority can prevent a user from sending or receiving bitcoins, or ether, etc. Until you realize that >90% of Bitcoin hashing power is controlled by a handful of Chinese guys, and those guys are probably controlled (or can be easily coerced into cooperation) by Chinese totalitarian government.

«Until you realize that >90% of Bitcoin hashing power is controlled by a handful of Chinese guys»

It's false. You are repeating a sadly misunderstood aspect of pooled mining. Articles writing such sensationalist claims are written by people who don't understand that a mining pool representing x% of the hash rate doesn't mean they "control" x% of the hash rate. Their end-users, who are distributed around the world, are the ones who control the hashrate, who own the mining hardware, and who choose which pool to use. That is, if a pool were to use the hashrate maliciously, users around the world would abandon it and point their miners at more trustworthy pools.

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

#133

Post by onetimemanytime »

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.

Great point! You have the money for as long as you can withdraw it (mistakes, liens etc etc)

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

#134

Post by avip »

masklinn wrote: post #125
StavrosK wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but that doesn't weaken his point.

It removes the entire second paragraph. It takes about 5mn to do a SEPA bank transfer: open banking client, open transfers, create new transfer, enter destination IBAN, enter amount, optionally set a data & some text, confirm.

So assume he's an Aussi and paste that second paragraph back.

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

#135

Post by bamboozled »

eksemplar wrote: post #123
kristofferR wrote: post #97

I'm a Norwegian who went to a Swedish music festival last summer. I couldn't pay for a lot of things there, since the booths only accepted Swish (the only relevant Swedish mobile payment solution, it's a de facto monopoly). I couldn't sign up and use Swish on my phone, since it only accepts Swedish bank accounts. I couldn't borrow money from my Swedish friends either, since they didn't have cash (and it mostly wasn't…

That’s festival payment done wrong, but cashless can be really great at festivals. In Denmark we have a festival called Skanderborg festival, and they build both your ticket and your cashless payment into the festival bracelet. You use the bracelet to pay everywhere, and you can add money to it a range of payment methods, from using a visa or similar in their app, to visiting one of the cash places where you can use…

The best payment experience I’ve had is cash. I pay for what I need and when I leave the festival I can still use my “credits” hassle free anywhere I like.

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

#136

Post by berdario »

solarwind wrote: post #39
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.

Is this for real?

How would the the DHS or another US entity know about payment transactions made on a canadian bank account?

And, I realize that cannabis is not legal at the federal level in the US, but how would lawfully purchasing a cannabis product years ago disqualify you from entering the US?

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

#137

Post by dharma1 »

I’m surprised central banks haven’t become involved in digital currency before. I guess software isn’t their core competence.

I guess if anyone can pull it off the swedes will. And I don’t think they are offering a replacement to physical cash here - just an alternative

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

#138

Post by stale2002 »

mamon wrote: post #124
mrb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

« that permission can be revoked instantly, silently, and invisibly at any time » Yes, "permission" is the right vocabulary to use in this instance. In fact, the opposite, being "permissionless", is exactly one of the main selling points of cryptocurrencies: no authority can prevent a user from sending or receiving bitcoins, or ether, etc. This is why cryptocurrencies should be seen as competing with cash, and not wi…

>> main selling points of cryptocurrencies: no authority can prevent a user from sending or receiving bitcoins, or ether, etc. Until you realize that >90% of Bitcoin hashing power is controlled by a handful of Chinese guys, and those guys are probably controlled (or can be easily coerced into cooperation) by Chinese totalitarian government.

And yet nobody has ever censored my bitcoin transactions.

Banks, on the other hand, censor transactions all the time.

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

#139

Post by [deleted] »

kristofferR wrote: post #97

I'm a Norwegian who went to a Swedish music festival last summer. I couldn't pay for a lot of things there, since the booths only accepted Swish (the only relevant Swedish mobile payment solution, it's a de facto monopoly). I couldn't sign up and use Swish on my phone, since it only accepts Swedish bank accounts. I couldn't borrow money from my Swedish friends either, since they didn't have cash (and it mostly wasn't…

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by [deleted] »

jlokier wrote: post #130
nbsd4life wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've ever been on the bad side of banks you'll dread this a lot. I merely had my credit card stolen but getting a replacement was surprisingly time-consuming and I'm glad I could still eat and travel until then.

If you get on the bad side of the banks, it's much worse. You can't get a bank account at all, or you can't keep the accounts you have. If you had credit (overdraft or credit card), it is taken away exactly at the moment you need to use it and you're put into unauthorised debt. If that happens you may not get credit from anywhere else. Where I live, even high-interest payday loans will likely be declined at that poin…

[deleted]
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