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Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

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Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#321

Post by mixmastamyk »

beefield wrote: post #138
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…

> It's all very convenient until the crap hits the fan I have difficulties imagining the crap hitting fan that simultaneously breaks down electronic payment systems but rather miraculously keeps the purchasing power of paper money intact for any extended time. Could you maybe elaborate why you consider this specific scenario likely enough to worry about?

Every once in a while my card simply doesn’t work for a day or two. One time it was during an emergency.

Sometimes it’s fraud. Imagine not being able to eat because your card was locked by the bank.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#323

Post by aabbcc1241 »

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 card itself cannot identify the user, but the tracks of all transactions related to a card can lead to other problems.

E.g. When you use the card to pay for A, the receiver many query in a federate system and found that you also paid for B recently.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#324

Post by kungtotte »

2rsf wrote: post #280
kungtotte wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go to any number of places that still accept cash? Our major grocery store chains all still accept cash (ICA, Coop, Willys, Hemköp etc.) and at least ICA and Coop sells pretty much -everything- at their larger stores. They don't sell mattresses or furniture I guess, but you can go there with enough money and come out fully equipped to go camping for example. IKEA also accepts cash still, so you can buy your furniture…

I guess you live near an IKEA store then. To get to IKEA and buy furniture you'll need to top up your SL card using card. In rural ("rural" meaning an hour commute from Stockholm) you'll find it even harder to get and use cash.

I actually live 90 minutes outside Stockholm, going by public transport. According to https://sl.se it would take me 2 hours to IKEA Kungens Kurva.

It's trivial to both get and use cash here.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#325

Post by new2628 »

cko wrote: post #248
new2628 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was a practicing Buddhist for years. When I say Zen it's the pop culture connotation of the word, not specifically referring to Buddhism itself. I was 19 before I got a cell phone. Now I travel internationally quite frequently so I'm jealous of people who are can go no phone. Also I didn't have friends or a real job until I was 25, so though I grew up with AOL CD ROMs and Netscape and dialup and cassette tapes, the…

You can also travel internationally without a smart phone.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#326

Post by kmnns »

petre wrote: post #286
jcbrand wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Germany and routinely use one and two cent coins when paying exact amounts. Still have to experience someone laughing in my face for doing so.

Holding up the queue, eh? I use € coins for tips or cereal bar purchases. In my country you'd get odd looks if you did that, because we have a bill that's roughly equivalent to 1€. But in Germany or Austria you'll get smiles and herzlichen grüßen because sparing-inclined citizens of the aforementioned countries only tip small change like 10 or 20 cents. Doing it often enough at a Greek tavern gets you freebies.

> Holding up the queue, eh?

Hardly. Just have your coins ready at the cashier. Often you can do the math yourself and present the money immediately and in the correct amount. On some glorious and surprisingly frequent days, you can empty your coin pouch in one swoop. It’s a nice little game.

Anyway, nobody is obliged to sacrifice their privacy because someone in the queue can’t manage their time properly.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#327

Post by SuoDuanDao »

beefield wrote: post #232
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's legal to own bitcoin or gold, what good does eliminating cash do?

Central banks do not guarantee purchasing power of gold or bitcoin. (A note, The questions I made above are not meant to be snarky. Those are the kind of questions I struggled literally for months when I tried to get my head around negative rates and whether they make sense or not.)

How do they guarantee the purchasing power of legal tender? Serious question, I thought the health of the economy and the need to pay taxes was all that did that.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#328

Post by SuoDuanDao »

beefield wrote: post #311
wnoise wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If supply is greater than demand, why doesn't that mean trusting the normal price signals and reallocating the supply ? Artificially propping up the demand just masks the price signal builds up more crap, and keeps this adjustment from happening. The argument against this is "oversupply in all sectors, so nowhere to reallocate the supply to", but this is clearly nonsense when people are demanding better housing, heal…

There are multiple reasons. 1. Prices (especially wages) are sticky. Interest rates you can adjust overnight, but to get the adjustment of wages can easily take years. 2. Economy is not actually nicely behaving equilibrium seeking thingy, but a complex, chaotic system with various time constants. So we actually need a body that works to stabilize the mismatches of aggregate supply and demand. So it is not "artificial…

But surely, if people want better housing and can't afford it, the right thing for each of those individual people to do would be to save their money until they can, not load up on debt and buy something they don't want as much.

Granted, that would cause unemployment in the industries that people would rather give up consuming from, but maybe that would free up some talent to go into building houses - isn't that how the capitalist system is supposed to work, that things people don't want don't get produced?

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#329

Post by aglavine »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #175
aglavine wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know why an option of both anonymity and cashless isn't possible. Why couldn't a virtual wallet with just a fake name and a password exists?

Pseudonymity is not anonymity. Your legal name is not really the most interesting aspect of your identity.

I agree, yet you can still hide most of the info with stuff like P2P transactions or encrypted transaction storage.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#330

Post by poizan42 »

ACS_Solver wrote: post #315
erk__ wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems strange to me, I don't know the law on the area in Sweden, but in Denmark stores must take cash, though there are a few times where they don't (eg. stores that are late open does not need to take cash between 22 and 06) I don't know if I can find any English sources but here is one from the ombudsmand in Danish: https://www.forbrugerombudsmanden.dk/hvad-gaelder/betalingst...

The question was considered by the Swedish Supreme Court a few years ago, and it ruled that stores, transport services and such have no obligation to take cash as long as they clearly advertise they're cashless. The legal reasoning is based on freedom of contract (avtalsfrihet). The shop has to take cash, but since what the shop does is enter a contract with you (agrees to sell certain goods for a certain price), it…

If there is a law saying that you have to take cash then I would think that limits freedom of contract, not the other way around. It's not like absolute freedom of contract exists anywhere in the world, at least that I know of, e.g. you can't enter into a contract allowing someone to kill you, sell yourself into slavery etc. Sweden definitely have a lot of other restrictions to freedom of contract such as limitations on what you can agree to in an apartment lease or employment contract.
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