121–130 of 338 posts
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What does a cashless society do when the power/internet/etc. goes out (whether due to a natural disaster or otherwise)?
Cash is not very useful if the power is out either, as for internet you just have to make it as reliable as power.
Sorry, what? I literally bought my lunch with cash the other day when the restaurant I went to had lost its power. Where do you pull these assertions from?
I'm Swedish and this stuff makes me really worried. Especially since the main way for two people to exchange small amounts of money is through a proprietary app that uses a proprietary ID system (owned by a for-profit company) that only runs on iOS, Android, Windows and Mac. I really hope this trend dies off, a cash-less society is a terrible idea. I will say, however, that buses not taking cash is perfectly fine. Th…
Don't know about Sweden, but in the Netherlands that's widely supported and free for consumers. What's the harm in people using a proprietary app on top of that that has slightly more convenience?
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If you really lose your card that often why don't you just order two to begin with? You'd have to take precautions like this even with normal money, since if you misplaced your monthly allowance you'd still be out for several weeks.
Because that’s not possible – you can’t have multiple cards with the same name on the same account. I know, I’ve tried after I’ve spent the entirety of january without without a card due to losing one (and the bank fucking up the replacement).
Also these aren't really problems with a cashless society, they are problems with a partially cashless society. Society will fix these issues very quickly when there are no workarounds, like making sure that everyone can have backup cards for example.
I'm Swedish and this stuff makes me really worried. Especially since the main way for two people to exchange small amounts of money is through a proprietary app that uses a proprietary ID system (owned by a for-profit company) that only runs on iOS, Android, Windows and Mac. I really hope this trend dies off, a cash-less society is a terrible idea. I will say, however, that buses not taking cash is perfectly fine. Th…
Exactly. We could get rid of coins, and replace it with an electronic variant and leave paper cash alone. I am all for contactless payment, but I want the option to use cash. The only thing that guarantees privacy.
And this is especially true in places without democracy, as shown in the Hong Kong Protest.
I recently moved back to Sweden after living 4 years in Germany. I don't have any cards, and I don't carry a "smart"phone anymore; in Germany this didn't cause any trouble at all and I was far from alone. Much of the current Swedish society is currently closed to me, I know of three shops and one cafe in the (200k people) city center that accept cash. Some of it has been gradual but it changed dramatically during the…
I pay more often with cash today than some years ago, as a statement. Interestingly, if you talk about cash in Sweden the comments you will get tend to be very hostile. It's like talking about meat in a vegan community.
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Well, I don't know if it's the difference between “resident” and “citizen”, but i was told “no” or “maybe in a few weeks” many times when trying to open a bank account in October/November last year in Germany. “Maybe in a few weeks” is as good as a refusal.
I've lived two years in Germany and hung out with lots of foreigners. Not only tech employees with high and steady incomes, but also freelancers or people on working holiday visas, working part-time at bars and restaurants. Between big commercial banks and savings banks, online banks (comdirect, ING, DKB, ...) and challengers like N26, I've never met anyone who had trouble opening a bank account. Americans didn't hav…
Don't you need a bank account to transfer money into N26? As far as I know there is no way to deposit cash into any of these disrupter service providers.
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So how do poor people function in a cashless society?
A bank account is a right for every EU citizen: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-pr... Banks are not allowed to refuse account opening to any resident.
I recently moved back to Sweden after living 4 years in Germany. I don't have any cards, and I don't carry a "smart"phone anymore; in Germany this didn't cause any trouble at all and I was far from alone. Much of the current Swedish society is currently closed to me, I know of three shops and one cafe in the (200k people) city center that accept cash. Some of it has been gradual but it changed dramatically during the…
Mysterious crap hitting the fan. You accepted authority when started using money. Barter is the way. Only reason to keep cash IMO is for accessibility.
Umm, could you explain how this would work? Money has typically emerged as a "universal barter," like gold or tobacco (in colonial Virginia for ex.) or cigarettes in prisons that can be exchanged for anything in the assumption that they will always be in demand. So I can trade you gold for your sysadmin work (simply indirect "barter") and you can trade the gold for drinks at night, breakfast cereal, a NYTimes.com subscription, etc. But you can't trade your sysadmin work for any of those because it can't be divided up like that. So whenever you try to have a direct barter system you'll just end up with some kind of money by necessity, maybe gold, silver, seashells, etc. It's merely a higher abstraction on top of the barter, thus "universal barter." And indeed for the NYTimes sub you'll need some kind of e-gold...
Money can be stored to use later but its value is always based on the current amount of money in use and the current amount of goods and potential services/labor. Hoarding it in Smaug's lair under Lonely Mountain is bad not because Smaug is thus in the wealthiest 0.00001% of inhabitants of Middle Earth (meaningless since he doesn't actually use the money) but because by removing the supply of money he has been creating deflation and is thereby depressing economic activity. Decreasing the supply of money means falling prices (because there's less exchange-medium, not because there's more production) means debts are harder to pay back, ppl hoard what's left and the dour mood discourages future economic activity. When Bilbo frees the hoard there will be massive inflation but also a burst of economic activity (i.e., work). It's true that with only direct barter there would be no problems (or benefits) from increasing or decreasing the money supply, but you'd have much bigger problems. Remember that money is not itself value but merely a means of exchange, one way to measure value, and storing that money is a way to make a future claim on an amount of future value. Economists are simplifying when they say that money is a "store of value." You're actually just storing a claim on future value. How much value? However much you can get for that amount of money at the moment someone trades you something for it and regardless of the value when you initially stored it.
"Modern" paper money, "reserve notes" used in lieu of the notes' corresponding gold or silver stored for example at a goldsmith, was quickly abused as the reserve keepers learned that they could lend more notes than they had metal, thus creating a kind of virtual store of money (or if money is economic RAM, virtual RAM?), and what might have started as a kind of scam was soon recognized as a great boon because the money supply could expand when there was an opportunity for increased work/production of value and shrink back down if and as the opportunity came to a close. Of course this credit money system a.k.a. Our World has perils and requires constant maintenance and repair but without it we'd be far worse off, more unequal, less healthy, more wretched and to return to your original point, we'd most likely be controlled by more direct and onerous authorities. And with just direct barter we'd be in... the stone age?
I'm Swedish and this stuff makes me really worried. Especially since the main way for two people to exchange small amounts of money is through a proprietary app that uses a proprietary ID system (owned by a for-profit company) that only runs on iOS, Android, Windows and Mac. I really hope this trend dies off, a cash-less society is a terrible idea. I will say, however, that buses not taking cash is perfectly fine. Th…
I guess, if you are ok with leaving an electronic trail whereever you go...
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I've lived two years in Germany and hung out with lots of foreigners. Not only tech employees with high and steady incomes, but also freelancers or people on working holiday visas, working part-time at bars and restaurants. Between big commercial banks and savings banks, online banks (comdirect, ING, DKB, ...) and challengers like N26, I've never met anyone who had trouble opening a bank account. Americans didn't hav…
>challengers like N26 Don't you need a bank account to transfer money into N26? As far as I know there is no way to deposit cash into any of these disrupter service providers.
AFAIK it's the only challenger bank to support doing something like this for free, even in a limited amount. Even Bunq, which I pay for, doesn't support it (https://together.bunq.com/d/2933-how-do-i-deposit-money-or-t...).