Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 338 posts

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#181

Post by new2628 »

cko wrote: post #99
codr7 wrote: post #66

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'm quite interested in your setup. You walk around with a feature phone and some bills? Sounds really Zen. I would like to get to that point. How do you navigate without Maps, Uber, etc.? Do your friends know you won't reply to texts? Maybe I'll buy a separate flip phone and leave the smart phone and credit cards at home just in case.

Not the OP, but I walk around with a bunch of bills and occasionally a feature phone, most often no phone whatsoever. It works perfectly fine, my friends keep in touch with me in more roundabout ways, usually drop me an e-mail or call the landline when I'm home or in my office.

It amuses me that it sounds like zen buddhism or something super extreme when it is how almost everyone operated 5-10 years ago.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#182

Post by dsfyu404ed »

fredsted wrote: post #109
cko wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite interested in your setup. You walk around with a feature phone and some bills? Sounds really Zen. I would like to get to that point. How do you navigate without Maps, Uber, etc.? Do your friends know you won't reply to texts? Maybe I'll buy a separate flip phone and leave the smart phone and credit cards at home just in case.

I mean, yes, that seems like how you would do it. If you've lived in your city for a while I don't think you'd really need maps all that often. I still remember printing out routes in the age before GPS! Also, regarding texts, I carry an iPhone, but I'll answer text messages when it fits in, which can take hours. Don't want my phone to control my life.

If you're somewhere mostly covered by street view it's often easy to just walk through the route that way and then just do it from memory.

If you don't mind a small increase to travel time you can usually reduce the number of steps to get to any particular place to a small and conveniently memorable amount.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#183

Post by ACS_Solver »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #153
ACS_Solver wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in Sweden for nearly 10 years, and the whole cashless aspect is really something I've embraced. Cashless payments dominated even 10 years ago, but I've also seen a massive change in the past 2-3 years with places no longer accepting cash. Grocery shops still do, but most restaurants, takeout places and cafes are cashless. On the contrary, I find myself irritated in Germany where cash is required. The main…

> The main thing I want to see is stronger privacy laws regarding transactions. There's some hope here with the EU. There is some hope here ... that there will be new rules to ignore? Like, how do you think such rules could ever be enforced effectively and in a way that the public can actually trust that it is being enforced effectively (to avoid chilling effects)? Plus, how do such rules prevent data leaks due to se…

You build good systems with a combination of technical and legal measures, of course. Ban sharing of purchase data (legal measure) and also build systems to the data is encrypted with your on-card key (technical measure). It's no different from any other system. Violators need to be punished accordingly, but that's a broader failure in tech, that fines for abuse are very small.

Of course legal restrictions don't work well without technical measures, but anything privacy-related is a social problem first and foremost, so it needs legal solutions in addition to the technical ones.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#184

Post by pritovido »

I am from Spain, and today the people in power there are socialistic(psoe) and communist(podemos),the last one friends and money receivers from Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Iran and Cuba.

I attended a talk in the past("Know your enemy") when they defended and wanted to collect money and people for helping Colombia's FARC.

Those guys want to destroy democracy from democracy, just like Hitler, Mussolini or Chavez.

The last thing you want to do is give a Government like this all the information of all transactions made by the people in the country.

And that is exactly what "cash free" means. In countries like the US the mechanism of control of political power by people are more powerful, but even there companies control and concentration of information is too high(Americans distrust Government but trust companies) for a healthy system.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#185

Post by hexl »

smichel17 wrote: post #166
ksec wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I really hope this trend dies off, a cash-less society is a terrible idea.... 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.

A few years ago I would have agreed with you, but spending time in Germany has changed my view on coins. See, in the US, coins are kind of useless on their own. You can't pay for anything with only coins, so giving exact change is always an extra step on top of paying with cash. Ugh. But in the EU, they have €1 and €2 coins, and it's difficult to overstate how much this changes the dynamic. It means that for purchase…

He didn't literally mean coins, it's cash what He was talking about.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#186

Post by beefield »

pb82 wrote: post #171
beefield wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really hope this trend dies off, a cash-less society is a terrible idea. I fully understand that my opinion is both unintuitive and deeply disliked by many if not most people, so I can only ask you to spend some time thinking if you really have thought this through. Anyway, I believe there are realistic scenarios where it is good for the economy and society to have negative interest rates imposed by central banks…

I'm skeptic. Forcing people to buy crap they don't need by denying them ways to store cash will probably increase some numbers in some spreadsheets. But is it really a net positive for society? Or are there other reasons that I didn't consider like more people seeking investment options like the stock market?

Well, not "forcing"[1] people buying crap today makes the people creating the crap jobless and yes, that has a real cost for society. first because the jobless do not create value and second because someone needs to pay their unemployment benefits.

[1] Nobody is forcing you to do anything. You can voluntarily choose to lend your money to the bank if you agree with the interest rate. If you do not, you are free to do as you please with your money. Find someone who is willing to pay better interest rates (typically more risky)[2], buy crap, or even buy bitcoin or gold.

[2] Interesting question is, why society should guarantee you a return[3] on your investments if you do not yourself find a counterparty that is willing to pay you high enough return that you are happy with? Smells awfully lot like socialism to me.

[3] And why this guaranteed return needs to be exactly 0%? Why not 5%?

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#187

Post by hosteur »

AdjectiveNoun wrote: post #78
codr7 wrote: post #66

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…

The reason for this is that "deeply negative interest rates" are coming (to keep the ponzi scheme going) and they don't want people pulling money out of the banks and hoarding cash. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT9vP_RoCdM https://blogs.imf.org/2019/02/05/cashing-in-how-to-make-nega...

Wow. That is terrifying.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#188

Post by ACS_Solver »

mehrdadn wrote: post #112
ACS_Solver wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in Sweden for nearly 10 years, and the whole cashless aspect is really something I've embraced. Cashless payments dominated even 10 years ago, but I've also seen a massive change in the past 2-3 years with places no longer accepting cash. Grocery shops still do, but most restaurants, takeout places and cafes are cashless. On the contrary, I find myself irritated in Germany where cash is required. The main…

What does a cashless society do when the power/internet/etc. goes out (whether due to a natural disaster or otherwise)?

It's not that fragile, although it should of course be improved further. Payment terminals don't depend on constant connectivity, they can store transactions and send them to the bank later. Some of them, especially the ones used by smaller merchants, are battery-powered. If card terminals are unavailable completely, mobile payments should still work. So in my experience, the cashless society here can deal with such intermittent technical problems just fine.

A lunch restaurant near my office had a total outage once, couldn't take any payments. Things worked out just fine on an honor system then - they wrote down names and amounts on paper, and asked people to pay in the next days.

What doesn't work currently is resilience against long-lasting technical problems. If there's no power in an area for several days, there's no sensible way for the current cashless technologies to work.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#189

Post by alkonaut »

johnlorentzson wrote: post #107

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…

The proprietary id is at least co-owned by all the major consumer banks, so it's slightly better than it being just some random small company. I'd prefer if it was a government operation of course, especially since now almost all contact with authorities goes through this system. The right thing to do would be to create a publicly owned e-ID and electronic cash, and replace the reliance on BankID and credit cards.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#190

Post by jalk »

johnlorentzson wrote: post #133
rlv-dan wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> buses not taking cash is perfectly fine I guess, if you are ok with leaving an electronic trail whereever you go...

The tickets have no way of identifying you unless you register on their website. You could always just get rid of your card and get a new one when you want to.

How do you add money to the card? Here in Denmark we have a similar thing, but the only way to top up your card anonymously is through cash. Or do you have prepaid throwaway cards?
Post reply on HN