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Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

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Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#261

Post by jotm »

Hitton wrote: post #213
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.

>How do you navigate without Maps, Uber, etc.? Do your friends know you won't reply to texts? It's crazy how everyday reality from 20 years ago is now seen as unimaginable as hermitic living.

It's extremely convenient. I can't stress this enough. I remember navigating some cities in the country I grew up in with paper maps, hand drawn directions and lots of asking other people.

It was more frustrating than it was fun. Then came unlimited Internet and online maps I could print out. Then ubiquitous fast Internet, and smartphones with GPS and compasses! Built-in maps that will lead you straight where you need to go. No more asking for or giving painful directions, just use your navigator/phone/tablet!

Nowadays I can travel to almost anywhere in the world and find my way with just my phone! Amazing!

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#262

Post by wil421 »

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…

The Euro coins can be lost easier than a paper dollar. I’d hate having to carry a change pouch in the first place.

I have about $600+ in a big coin jar with a bunch of paper dollars thrown in. I’ll buy an iPad or a vacation once it reaches the top.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#263

Post by 2rsf »

codr7 wrote: post #80
ecmascript wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that long ago I was on a ferry and their credit card readers didn't work properly. There was long lines for everyone that didn't have cash and as one of the few that always carry cash, I just walked in front of everyone.

Happens all the time, all of a sudden no one can buy food even though the food is still there and people are still willing to pay for it. Basing a society on such a shaky foundation is just stupid, period. The people in power who let this to happen should never be allowed to make an important decision again.

Although bills and coins don't require electricity, running a business offline will not work in many cases, especially if you are bigger than your small grocery shop or local doner kebab

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#264

Post by Tainnor »

bad_user wrote: post #233
robert_foss wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a Swede, who now lives in Germany I would say that there must be a middle ground between the extreme cash dependency of Germany and the opposite in Sweden. I have no idea how you do your shopping and end up not getting a pool of useless 1/5 cent coins. People literally laugh you in the face if you try to purchase things with them. Your only option is to give them away or collect them in a jar. And needing to co…

> And needing to constantly go to ATMs just to keep notes on you is kind of ridiculous. Not sure how it is in Germany, but we have ATMs on every street corner, so it's not a big deal. I do prefer paying via Apple Pay though.

This is a bit difficult in Germany:

First of all, some cities like Berlin (which might be the worst offender here) are ridiculous in terms of how cash-dependent they are. There are whole areas (e.g. Kreuzberg) where you can't find a restaurant that accepts (debit or credit) card payment, even if you eat for 20+€. So, going out for lunch can deplete your cash quite rapidly.

Secondly, private banking is a huge cost centre for banks right now. This means that banks institute a lot of restrictions on when and where you can get cash. Many common banks (e.g. Sparkassen, Volksbanken) only allow you to withdraw money without charge from very specific ATMs, so you have to know where those are; if you withdraw from another ATM, you might have to pay a ridiculous amount of money (e.g. 5€), which is why you'd only use it for an emergency. Some other banks allow you to withdraw from any ATM without charge, but they have been starting to add more and more restrictions, e.g. you can only withdraw money 5x a month or something like that.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#265

Post by dfawcus »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #104
yellow_postit wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storing carbon copies of credit cards is something still supported for when the network goes down, see “credit card imprinter”

So Sweden has gone almost cashless but they still have a manual process relying on embossed numbers? In the UK embossed numbers on cards are gone now

> In the UK embossed numbers on cards are gone now

Nope.

The only ones I know of which do not use embossed numbers are Starling Bank, and (for premier customers) RBS and NatWest. All bar one of my cards is embossed.

Supposedly as of January last year: "Lloyds, Barclays, Nationwide, HSBC and Santander all say they currently have no plans to introduce such cards."

So which ones are you thinking of where the embossed numbers have gone?

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#266

Post by alkonaut »

Legogris wrote: post #215
alkonaut wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much of the current Swedish society is currently closed to me, Yes. Because not carrying a smartphone and a credit card in Sweden and only carrying cash is basically like traveling in from Japan with a bunch of Yen in your hand. Of course society isn't open to you if you don't carry the local currency (which is card and smartphone transactions). A bit exaggerated, perhaps, but that's where we are now, like you noti…

You mean some sort of digital cash? Perhaps settled on a publicly accessible ledger with decentralized infrastructure not relying on any single party? Preferably permissionless to utilize but resilient to attacks and not putting the operators of the infrastructure in a privileged position of power with regards to private information?

> You mean some sort of digital cash?

Yes, exactly.

> Perhaps settled on a publicly accessible ledger with decentralized infrastructure not relying on any single party?

The current project is backed by the riksbank (Sweden's central bank). I think for cryptocurrency to be viable as a proper replacement for cash this is how it should work. The central bank guarantees the value of the digital currency by setting it to be the same as the existing cash.

I'm not sure exactly how the ledger would be maintained in a way that both lets me go to a shop and buy something without the central bank knowing who owns the token, while at the same time offering no less visibility than the current system does in terms of larger scale transactions (e.g. if I go into a bank with a large amount of cash to deposit I'll get questions regarding money laundry etc).

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#267

Post by BiteCode_dev »

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…

Societies are imperfect and have a huge inertia, they need grey areas for compensating for those imperfections.

Cash is a way into those grey areas.

So that you can not have a phone, or be a hobo, be off the grid, go to a gay bar without leaving a trace, hold a controversial artistic/polical/religious event, let a beaten spouse organize an escape, mess around as a kid without your parents always knowing everything, try a product the state doesn't approve of and so on.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#268

Post by Shivetya »

beefield wrote: post #146
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…

> 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…

Well that scenario is only the tip of the iceberg, negative rates are effectively an on demand tax and one you may not have recourse against. I am sure some very well off could employ money shifting processes to keep their money out of the category and it may become a service that banks offer "for a fee" to anyone. Which in turn would end up having the government just change the regulations preventing it or charging for it.

the real threat is the trail created which no government is going to allow you to vacate. just the possibility of a prior acquaintance or business transaction running afoul of the can give some the means to penalize you for past legal deeds in some countries. let alone put you under the scope for having performed now illegal activities, after all why would the want to suspect you aren't predisposed to do it again?

finally it really can be used to put a damper on people just leaving high tax areas because they can just electronically debit you for the act.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#269

Post by mrec »

beefield wrote: post #146
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…

> 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 all for privacy-respecting payment methods, and I'm familiar with the paradox of thrift, but I'm not at all convinced that negative interest rates are a net social benefit. The experience of the past 10+ years has been that ultra-loose monetary policy is far more about bidding up the prices of existing assets than encouraging productive investment. So it disproportionately benefits the old and rich, who own assets, at the expense of the young and poor, who hope to acquire them.

I also don't see that there's much difference between nominal negative rates on the one hand and ZIRP plus inflation on the other, which is what pretty much all the big central banks are doing already and which cash doesn't protect against at all. They both punish saving at a time when the ratio of retired to working people is increasing and the latter's ability to support the former is looking shaky.

There's a separate argument to be had about financial repression [1], but it's a bit more contentious and I don't think you need to accept the badness of that to be against negative interest rates.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_repression

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#270

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

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…

> They use NFC/RFID ticket cards which can't identify you.

Pretty easy to ping these cards and any wireless ID (IMSI, WiFi MAC). Enough hits and the correlations will easily fall in to place.

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