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

What is the cost of a cashless society?

thewalrus.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 294 posts

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#181

Post by refurb »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #91

New Zealand has gone largely cashless (and entirely chequeless). Everyone is paid by direct credit to their account. You pay your bills via direct credit / debit. I don't think any bank is charging fees (for customers) for electronic transactions via card, or direct credits/debits. They don't even charge a fee for using another bank's ATM anymore. I am always amazed at how often people in the US mention cheques. NZ r…

Just like cash, people ignore the benefits of checks.

I remember buying a house and receiving about 3 notices of rampant wire fraud when you send closing costs. Realtors or even worse title organizations and crappy security meant you needed to double, triple check the wire details, because once you send that money - it's gone.

Instead of that silly game, I went to bank, got a draft made out to the title company, and stay with me here hand delivered the check. No worries if some Russian criminal org stole my money or if they go it in the end.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#182

Post by anovikov »

TheFattestNinja wrote: post #175

This twitter thread might be a bit extreme, but it raises interesting points ( https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1494444624630403083?lang... ). Basically, if you are not allowed to spend money (transact) then you are really not able to exercise your other rights. And if everything was cashless there is an actual risk of Gov or BigBank having the power to stop you transacting completely. It has happened in 1st world…

I'd raise the opposite point: for every reaction there is counterreaction. Going cashless will inevitably become a major boost for crypto and will greatly help detach crypto from fiat, becoming a major facilitator of illicit transactions of all kinds, to the point that people will stop seeing breaking the law as anything objectionable, destroying the very notion of law and order.

People should be permitted to do lesser evil (go to the corner and buy a joint for cash) lest they will build a workaround so good there will be no reason to stop in expanding it's use until it consumes the very fabric of society.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#183

Post by brippalcharrid »

imtringued wrote: post #110
AinderS wrote: post #2

According to the article, the main problem of a financial police state where you cannot so much as buy a loaf of bread without permission and surveillance from the payment system, is that not everyone is included.

There are anonynous digital payment services. It is very difficult to surveil your loaf of bread transaction history if it isn't recorded and the customer is unknown.

One of the key selling-points of Central Bank Digital Currencies for governments is that they will be able to provide extensive insights into citizens' behavior (how demand and consumption patterns change according to various factors) as well as a variety of levers that they will be able to use adjust that behavior in subtle and opaque ways. I'm not sure how much parallel privacy-focused systems will be tolerated under such future regimes.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#184

Post by refurb »

grecy wrote: post #126
EdwardDiego wrote: post #91

New Zealand has gone largely cashless (and entirely chequeless). Everyone is paid by direct credit to their account. You pay your bills via direct credit / debit. I don't think any bank is charging fees (for customers) for electronic transactions via card, or direct credits/debits. They don't even charge a fee for using another bank's ATM anymore. I am always amazed at how often people in the US mention cheques. NZ r…

> I am always amazed at how often people in the US mention cheques. Banking in the US is like going back in time 20 years. Even when I flew through Dallas and LAX during the height of COVID I had to hand my credit card over for someone to swipe, then pickup a pen that thousands of others had touched to sign a piece of paper. I've been tapping to pay exclusively for years and forgot about all that ancient stuff.

I assume you're using a foreign credit card? I haven't signed for a credit card transaction in close to decade.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#185

Post by pooper »

alexvoda wrote: post #177
qabqabaca wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. It's like Stockholm Syndrome. It comes across the same as when someone from the US tries to argue that putting the month before the day actually makes sense in dates because then the max values go from lowest to highest (12/31/9999+).

That is the perfect moment to mention ISO 8601 and RFC 3339.

I started using 8601 without even thinking about it for one simple reason. Alphabetical sorting just works with YYYYmmdd

So for example, log20220804.txt

https://xkcd.com/1179/

At the very least, use four digit years, not 22 for 2022.

> ISO 8601 was published on 06/05/88 and most recently amended on 12/01/04.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#186

Post by JumpCrisscross »

anovikov wrote: post #182
TheFattestNinja wrote: post #175

This twitter thread might be a bit extreme, but it raises interesting points ( https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1494444624630403083?lang... ). Basically, if you are not allowed to spend money (transact) then you are really not able to exercise your other rights. And if everything was cashless there is an actual risk of Gov or BigBank having the power to stop you transacting completely. It has happened in 1st world…

I'd raise the opposite point: for every reaction there is counterreaction. Going cashless will inevitably become a major boost for crypto and will greatly help detach crypto from fiat, becoming a major facilitator of illicit transactions of all kinds, to the point that people will stop seeing breaking the law as anything objectionable, destroying the very notion of law and order. People should be permitted to do less…

> Going cashless will inevitably become a major boost for crypto

These are unlinked. Demographics using crypto loosely correlate with those going cashless. Cashless countries even more loosely correlate with crypto adoption.

> people will stop seeing breaking the law as anything objectionable

We have a long tradition of this with our 21-year drinking age. People can differentiate between the laws they can break and the ones they shouldn’t.

In any case, arguing crypto will undermine state power ignores the millennia of commodity money.

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#187

Post by cribugv »

tayyab7891 wrote: post #128
mcv wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside the US, "accidental US Persons" may not be able to have a bank account. These are people who are not US citizens and have no real ties to the US, but are nevertheless considered to be US Persons by the US, which means they are required to file taxes. The US has no way to enforce that directly of course, but it can require banks who want to do business with the US (which is every bank in the world) to report o…

Bitcoin solves this

[dead]

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#189

Post by arcade79 »

Norway has been mostly cashless for the better part of 2 decades. I've noticed one particular thing that gets much more difficult.

I have trouble teaching my kid about money, and quick addition/substraction. When money is much more abstract, it's difficult to explain how bank accounts aren't limitless, that it's not enough to put a piece of plastic close to a card reader.

The other part is that I get shocked at how slow kids seem to be at knowing how to do various "money changing calculations".

Re: What is the cost of a cashless society?

#190

Post by perryfsg »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #179

My biggest fear is not cashless society, it's humanless payment processing. If you think losing access to your Google account for unspecified terms violations is bad, what about a payment processing computer malfunctioning? A few years ago my debit card refused checkout at a supermarket. After the cashier rebooted the card reader machine, it ate a hundred bucks from my account without confirming the purchase. When I…

This is the real reason of crypto currencies. When cash is eventually being removed we lose all our rights, and the process has already started now with the introduction of the green pass. It just takes a while before the masses realize what's actually happening.

With a crypto currency I can transfer value straight into your wallet without anyone in between, instantly, from anywhere in the world.

Don't be blinded by the crypto scams and so, scams are everywhere around us, it's not bound to crypto. Do you realize how many scams there are with banking and cash?

Post reply on HN