11–20 of 54 posts
Going cashless smacks of dystopianism. We seem to presume that anyone "off the books" is up to no good. Some are up to no good, but many are simply trying to survive. Perhaps I'd think differently if we had no unemployment.
Both your tracks and your most intimate preferences on the web and in real life are perfectly transparent to anyone with access to the transaction database. And I have no idea what kind of protections there are against governmental access to these databases. It is weird that the privacy implications of cashless are so rarely discussed - everyone just seems to be touting the great benefits of cashless all the time.
I believe the trend in the nordics is largely driven by the Dankort and similar ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dankort ) which is a debit card that is free to get and use for consumers. Merchants pay an annual fee depending on their transaction volume and they are not allowed to pass the cost on to the consumer. It doubles as a VISA which is neat when we go abroad. An interesting data point is that every single taxis…
Haha, that's funny. The merchant's whole income is from the customer, there's no way not to pass it on to the customer, just to conceal better the fact that they're passing it on.
Going cashless smacks of dystopianism. We seem to presume that anyone "off the books" is up to no good. Some are up to no good, but many are simply trying to survive. Perhaps I'd think differently if we had no unemployment.
Off the books is no good by default. We have a phrase for it: tax evasion.
Its probablly ok if you live in Norway and your not poor and have a good credit rating, other wise your going to have to go with a prepaid solution that is full of transaction costs. The same with traveling to these countries. At DEFCON last year I took two bank cards, that I had loaded with funds...big mistake transactions for ATMS and using POS systems were very high. I don't think this is a good idea if you are fo…
Debit cards are the norm here in Norway. I pay 275 NOK/year for mine, with zero transaction fees on everyday usage.
Going cashless smacks of dystopianism. We seem to presume that anyone "off the books" is up to no good. Some are up to no good, but many are simply trying to survive. Perhaps I'd think differently if we had no unemployment.
> We seem to presume that anyone "off the books" is up to no good. Off the books is no good by default. We have a phrase for it: tax evasion.
This was a bit of a surprise for me when I moved to Ireland and later the UK two years ago. In Sweden I wouldn't use bills and coins sometimes for months. Suddenly I have had to get used to carrying these around again, and having to pay fees when you pay with cards etc. I'm looking forward for the world to go cashless, and think this will happen very fast.
Its probablly ok if you live in Norway and your not poor and have a good credit rating, other wise your going to have to go with a prepaid solution that is full of transaction costs. The same with traveling to these countries. At DEFCON last year I took two bank cards, that I had loaded with funds...big mistake transactions for ATMS and using POS systems were very high. I don't think this is a good idea if you are fo…
Its probablly ok if you live in Norway and your not poor and have a good credit rating, other wise your going to have to go with a prepaid solution that is full of transaction costs. The same with traveling to these countries. At DEFCON last year I took two bank cards, that I had loaded with funds...big mistake transactions for ATMS and using POS systems were very high. I don't think this is a good idea if you are fo…
Absolutely not true. Everyone can get a debit card which deducts from your bank account without any fees and is accepted everywhere.