With physical money there is wear and tear, but every time a "digital" bill change hands 1-5% of it's monetary value is lost (transferred to someone else pocket).
Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
211–220 of 628 posts
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#212> Swedish legislation makes it possible for retailers, restaurants and other companies to refuse to accept cash, for instance by putting up a sign at the entrance or by the till. Yes. It started as a curiosity and now this signs are everywhere. > By connecting a bank account in any bank with a mobile phone number, Swish has become a popular way to share a restaurant bill Yes. And to gather money for a friend's birthd…
"The oldest part of the population have a hard time adapting to this situation" Also immigrants, non-Swedes and vulnerable people in society have a hard time. But the white people find the cashless society works well for them I suppose.
>>But the white people find the cashless society works well for them I suppose
That's an extremely odd comment to make. What does being white have anything to do with this? There's loads of white immigrants in Sweden, they suffer from this exactly the same as everyone else.
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Want to share about my experience about the "permission" part. I once travelled to Beijing and had dinner in a fancy dumpling restaurant. When I went to pay the bill, my European bank instantly flagged the transaction and blocked my card from further use. I had no idea what happened until I called the bank later that evening (had to wait until they opened). So yeah, what you said happened to me - revoked instantly, s…
That’s anti-fraud to stop someone from stealing your card and using it elsewhere. You can usually pre-empt that by informing the bank of travel.
Like the peer comment, my experience is that informing about travel may or may not work and I’ve had really random rejections. These days I travel with backup cards including from totally different bank and network.
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its a fear that shows up in a common interpretation of Revelation 13:17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. This is one of the verses in the Bible that tends to drive a lot of the hatred for national ids and removal of cash in the US.
Granted, but even broken clocks are right twice a day. Just because someone wrote a pre-scientific text which, today, supports antiauthoritarianism ... does not mean that antiauthoritarianism lacks its many other merits. Those people are right to fear national ID and cashlessness; their fear being from Revelations, doesn't necessarily make them religious nutjobs (of the sort whose fears we regularly and usefully igno…
> Granted, but even broken clocks are right twice a day.
I doubt most Christians think the bible is a broken clock
> Just because someone wrote a pre-scientific text which, today, supports antiauthoritarianism ... does not mean that antiauthoritarianism lacks its many other merits.
Most of our culture and philosophy comes from pre-scientific texts. Authoritarianism didn't need science and the ability to stop certain people from participating in commerce doesn't require computers.
> (Not to mention how even some Christians think that Revelation is the writings of a hallucinating madman.)
A small number, while other groups have different interpretations of what the text means or how literal it is.
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#215A 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.
If only there was some sort of peer-to-peer version of electronic cash that would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a
financial institution.
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#216[flagged]
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
There’s a big club in NYC that does this (Brooklyn Mirage), except they link your credit card to the bracelet and you don’t have to load credit. Makes the lines for drinks move so fast, it’s really outstanding.
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Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#218No mention about the privacy implications of having every transaction tracked? We're already at a point where pretty much every transaction is tracked and a cashless society makes being tracked a requirement to function in society. Is privacy even a topic of discussion with governments looking to go cashless? I still try and pay with cash wherever possible, but many offline/physical stores often require a phone numbe…
Few actually require that information. Just say no thanks, and they continue without it.
Maybe they already have it...
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#219I'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 reminds me of Futurama episode where Bender finds a phone booth:
"Now I don't need to carry my phone with me all the time!"
Progress is sometimes a regress in disguise.
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can ask the questions about whether it should or should not enable crime, but the question is useless, because it doesn't address whether it can or cannot enable crime. When you ask this question, you come to the conclusion that it can enable crime. So then you might argue that if it can enable crime, we must do something about it. Admirable ideas, but you then need to ask the question, can we do anything about i…
You're fooling yourself if you believe nothing can be done about Bitcoin. If the powers that be want it dead they'll outlaw it, and that's effectively game over for any kind of common transaction system. The reason it hasn't so far is because there are too many rich and powerful speculators involved, but those winds could change in a hurry so I wouldn't get too cocky.
Bitcoin is borderless. Lets say for example, a government decides to ban all bitcoin/fiat exchanges in their jurisdiction, what will people who want to obtain Bitcoin do? Answer: They will obtain Bitcoin either directly (on the black market, as payment for labour or services), or they will obtain it overseas, where said government has no jurisdiction. In both of these cases, if hidden from the government in question, this is actively harmful to the government because it becomes assets which the government has no ability to levy taxes on.
Another problem is that governments which attempt to restrict bitcoin usage will suffer the economic and brain drain which will occur as people move themselves, their businesses and their money overseas to somewhere more friendly to Bitcoin, whose economies will prosper as a result. Also aided by having a stronger monetary base which can't be devalued by central bankers.
Governments don't want to say "we're going to make Bitcoin legal," because they don't yet know how to deal with collecting tax in a world of Bitcoin use. They also don't want to just say "we're going to make it illegal," because they would be doing so at their own peril.
Good luck enforcing any prohbition anyway. We've seen how prohibition of alcohol played out in the 1920s. We also know that many drugs, despite being illegal for many decades, are easily obtainable anywhere there is a demand for them, and largely at the loss of the governments banning them, who could've been collecting taxes all along on drugs sold.
The main reason cannabis is becoming legal in many places now is because it is hugely profitable, and governments want their slice of the pie.