Everyone. Imagine you don't have a smartphone, or a bank account, or credit cards, or debit cards.
Can you survive? Can you pay for your housing, food, entertainment?
Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
411–420 of 628 posts
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
So if your phone dies or is lost or stolen, how do you pay for food with no phone? How do you even buy a replacement phone if you have no phone to pay with?
If you lose your wallet how do you pay for food with no wallet? This is a false line of argument.
You don't have all your paper money in your wallet with you all the time, right?
If I lose my wallet now I can go to my house and I have money to eat. If I lose my phone (or my wallet with card in a cashless society) I'm in a bigger problem in the short term
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
"either use Swish or go without food/water/travel/etc" is coercion by any definition
Food is payed with VISA och Mastercard. Water is payed through the online banking service. Travel with VISA/Mastercard (even local buses accept credit cards). "Etc" is also payed with VISA or Mastercard. Swish is a mere conveniency for transferring money without having to log onto your online banking service. I use it once a month tops.
I think not having a bank account is unthinkable in a place like Sweden. Thanks to the strong social safety net and extremely restrictive immigration policy they don't have abject poor. At worst you're lower middle class and can get a bank account.
It does seem to be a bad deal for tourists however. I'm surprised that companies are apparently so quick to ditch traditional credit cards.
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
Smartphones today.
Smart phones today have a long way to go before they come even close to perfect
You can already see that manufacturers have a hard time to come up with new features. Stuff like thinner devices (nobody cares or wants this to a certain degree, compared to a better battery life), 3+ cameras, notches because for some reason you can't integrate speakers behind the display. "AI" stuff that doesn't work when you're offline.
I would trade all this shit for a week battery time.
So yes, while smartphones are not perfect, I see no intentions from developers to fix that.
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
So... the logical conclusion is you would instead have a spare phone at home.
Which is a significantly bigger investment. An extra phone is a permanent loss of the money that went into buying it, it requires maintenance (of a sort) and needs to be replaced on a regular basis since the payment apps will presumably continue to require relatively recent operating systems. It also requires a dedicated SIM card with associated cost. As a bonus, phones sometimes explode and set fire to things - when…
You'll adjust.
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I've noticed this with mature technology. There comes a point where a product is perfect, no need to add anymore features. But the manufacturer still wants to continue adding new features so that they can use those as new selling points. Unfortunately the new features end up making the product worse.
Nobody's happy with keeping things how they are anymore, unfortunately. Got to keep moving fast and keep breaking things, no matter how well they worked. Not introducing new features feels like stagnation to investors and shareholders.
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Just nitpicking, but I believe it was Hermes, not Bender. edit: https://external-preview.redd.it/QkC-IFnu4weXJdqXPJCgaswRHAy...
you are right. I'm sure Bender has always on internet connection, so he doesn't need a phone to make phone calls:)
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
So... the logical conclusion is you would instead have a spare phone at home.
Hmm, keep $200-600 of quickly depreciating assets whose creation is a sin against our children’s enviroment when I can have five crisp linen Benjamins at home? And do the same for car. And the hotel room when you are travelling. Doesn’t seem too logical.
You know I already have a spare phone at home. Cost me nothing technically since when I upgraded I just kept it instead of throwing it out.
Reduce, reuse, recycle.
Y'all bitch it's ridiculous (and I ain't saying it's right or that I agree with the premise of having to do it in the first place), I'm just saying thats what people will do faced with the situation.
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It is worth noting that the article describes how private sector decisions are crowding out cash, how the government (specifically the central bank) is concerned about this, and considering to deliver a solution (namely digital cash issued by the central bank).
The system is still based on central bank currency in the background. What is being lost is direct consumer access to central bank currency: they must rely on private-sector intermediaries.
Re: Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
#420Earlier 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…
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.
Counterpoint, the best place to spend counterfeit money is a music festival....and then it gets passed down to you. I've picked up a half dozen counterfeits at music festivals. Sucks if you're not really paying attention.