301–310 of 628 posts
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I fail to see how Sweden in this case is enforcing the cashless trends through surveillance or coercion.
Maybe the near monopoly of the payment network is the coercion?
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The trouble with cash is that you cannot really control high-school dropouts to charge $10 for a $2 beer without skimming a bit on the side. Hence this whole "here's some fake money that only works here" BS.
Just do an incorrect inventory. Some venues let workers do inventory and reporting. They are charging for the cup itself and that is how they determine sales. If a stack of cups disappears, there is no reconciliation. Music venues have some interesting procedures, Alpine valley allows under an oz of weed to be brought in. They have college girls carrying backpacks with 40k in cash. There is an off duty cop directly b…
Why do they allow weed to be brought in? Why do they have college girls carrying cash in a backpack? Why so much cash? Why is there an off-duty cop following her around? Isn't an off-duty cop just an ordinary member of the public? If a cop is required shouldn't it be an on-duty cop? If it's somehow a trap to catch drug dealers, how is it meant to work? Why do they limit the amount of weed? And why are they trying to catch drug dealers at all?
Cashless society is not an utopia, it's an antiutopia. Every penny you pay or receive cashless (unless it's some sort of privacy-centric crypto) is monitored.
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I fail to see how Sweden in this case is enforcing the cashless trends through surveillance or coercion.
Maybe the near monopoly of the payment network is the coercion?
The danger is that society as a whole ends up making sub-optimal decisions because each person is (selfishly / rationally) choosing to avoid these extra costs.
Powerful entities (even those falling short of absolute monopolies) probably get away with a lot more societal harm than they would if we were more aware of this "coercion of convenience".
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In Denmark we have a festival called Skanderborg festival, and they build both your ticket and your cashless payment into the festival bracelet. Disney does that at Disneyland and Disney World in America: https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/plan/my-disney-experience/... You can also use it to unlock you hotel room and to link to those photographs that are taken of you when you're on the rides.
The main difference being that Disney has multiple backup systems, including switching to a completely manual process in case their network or servers are offline. I watched a presentation on this, and it's actually very interesting how they manage the ride experience so that even during a system outage they can still let people get on the rides.
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.
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I've heard that too, but my bank (Sbanken, normally a good user friendly bank) wouldn't let the payment go through without all the fields filled out.
I suppose that would be because of EU regulations against money laundering.
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.
Not to be pedantic but a person can in return also revoke their obligation to abide by these rules (like paying for food at the cashier or board a train without a ticket) at any time. So essentially there always exists a choice to not play by the rules if the regulators of this cashless society decide to cut you out
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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.
Plus a wired landline phone is always charged, with excellent reception.
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I fail to see how Sweden in this case is enforcing the cashless trends through surveillance or coercion.
The primary cited reason for the cashless trend is the security against money laundering. My government has done every policy and regulative action they can to guarantee that all money transaction is recorded and a bank liable if anything is not clean.