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Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

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Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#221
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…

In The Netherlands I also have a coin jar. I pay for everything with my contactless card or smartphone. I have a 20 euro bill in my jacket pocket for when I encounter a shop where I can not pay digitally. So I use that bill, but then end up with a bunch of coins. Coins are heavy and jiggle around in my jacket pocket, so at home I dump them in a jar. And then I get a fresh 20 euro bill from inventory and put it in my jacket pocket.

Every now and then I go to the local marketplace at the city square and exchange my coin jar for a stack of bills. They usually have to pay for the coins so it's a beneficial exchange for us both.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#222
post #141
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…

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...

I believe even here it will change. Before that, stores had to take cash (like in Germany) and now they are allowed not to in certain cases and e.g. in Reffen the streetfood stands do not take cash at all, but you can exchange cash for some kind of debit card.

Retail in Denmark does not particularly like to take cash and you can see a lot of signs about "no cash stored after closing" and empty register drawers etc. in Copenhagen. I would expect lots of these stores to switch to cash-only as soon as they can. Such a law happened in Sweden already and you just need to go to Malmö C to see stores not accepting cash at all.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#223

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 believe there are realistic scenarios where it is good for the economy and society to have negative interest rates imposed by central banks. Could you articulate one of those scenarios and why negative interest rates would be the best solution?

Okay, I try.

TL;DR: When even at zero rates, aggregate demand is less than aggregate supply.

Then a small disclaimer. I am not an economist by trade, so whatever I write below is my thinking, not learned from a book. Thus no sources available, and take everything with a grain of salt anyway...

If you look at the (macro)economy in the short term from the central bank point of view, there are basically a handful of interesting concepts here. first one is (real) aggregate supply, i.e. how much crap and services economy can produce. In the short term, central bank can not do much about this. (so if you want to draw this, we have a horizontal line above x-axis on a chart where interest rate is x axis and production/demand on the y axis). Second one is aggregate (real) demand, i.e. how much people are willing to buy crap and services given the current interest rates. This is something central bank can affect. With a small trick. they can move the demand to the future or from the future by adjusting the interest rate. If interest rates get higher, people take less loans to buy crap and save more. The opposite when interest rates go lower. (thus, in our drawing, we have a downward sloping line for demand. Draw it so that it crosses the supply on the left of Y-axis for this exercise).Third one is inflation, which I will come back a tiny bit later.

So, now we have a nice (kind of) supply and demand chart. And we see that if we limit the interest rate to zero, we will have oversupply in the economy. That translates to things like unemployment, lower profits for the corporates etc. So we really would like to get the interest rate to the point where supply and demand are equal.

But what about the inflation? One solution would be to have 5% inflation so that zero interest rates would mean -5% interest rates and all would be good again, right? Yep, kind of. If you look again a the chart, where we could find more inflation is where the demand is higher than supply. But that area is even further to the left. To induce inflation, central bank should push the rates even lower than the equilibrium state. and that's why our economies have been between rock and a hard place so long. If we had had an inflation target of 5% in the first place, our life would be much easier. But now we are stuck. And central banks do not have that many options. They can do their best to push the yield curve down to ease as much as possible, but also that has limits. So we are banging against the zero floor and only thing central bank can do is wait for cashless economy or long term economic growth that will increase the aggregate demand. But that is, of course, hampered by lack of demand. Shitty place to be in, today's central bank.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#224
post #141
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…

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...

I was expecting this last time I went to Malmø, but I was surprised to see restaurants in the centre of Helsingborg with "no cash" signs on the door or in the menu.

I think Denmark introduced that law after seeing what had happened in Sweden.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless I'm very wrong about the technical implementation, the data that the bank has is just the store where I shopped (merchant, card terminal) and the amount. They do not have data on what I bought, as in the data that's on the store's receipt. You're partly correct, partly wrong -- as far as I know the payment provider doesn't have/store this data but can request it from merchants. Merchants have to opt in, but…

Some of the language there indicates that's primarily with the US in mind, which it probably is indeed. I think Sweden's different. I've read the data usage policy of my local grocery store chains (those are quite detailed thanks to GDPR), and they indicate that no such data is shared unless I'm in a loyalty program. Joining their loyalty program counts as consent for a lot of data manipulation, but as long as I'm ju…

I know for a fact that these APIs (in general, not necessarily this exact VISA API) are starting to be used in Europe's privacy champion, Germany. I do believe that they can be only used for customer service enhancements (such as electronic receipt service or expense tracking), and are not freely available for third parties. I'm not an expert on the surrounding legislation though so that's just my assumption.

Just pointing out that links to this data do exist, even if it has strong legal protections/opt-in barriers.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Private banks have no obligation to take you as a customer and there's no public alternative.

Regulation could require banks to accept anyone as a customer.

Regulation in the UK requires banks to accept almost anyone -- it looks like there's still no luck for people suspected of fraud, or without a fixed address.

https://www.which.co.uk/money/banking/bank-accounts/best-ban...

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#227
post #71
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…

Mysterious crap hitting the fan. You accepted authority when started using money. Barter is the way. Only reason to keep cash IMO is for accessibility.

>You accepted some authority initially

>You must now accept more authority because you accepted some initial amount of authority

I don't follow

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#228
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.

Not sure how Uber works in Sweden but in Kenya you can call a number and give your location and destination and they will send an Uber to you and you can pay the driver in cash.

Alternatives to Uber exist in Europe, America etc, and for decades the main way to contact them was by phone. The other way was to walk into an office, which were often located near restaurants and bars. (And the final way was by waving at an empty vehicle in the street.)

These options still exist, but I don't think Uber wants this business.

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#229
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?

You could move to India if you wanted a current example. https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/indias-yes-bank-breakdown-...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22502649

Re: Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

#230
post #40

Cash in the only practical anonymous-when-you-need-it-to-be way to pay still. Don't let it die until we have alternative suitable anonymous and un-blockable-by-cyberattacks (eg. "it must still work while the internet is down") currencies! (Note: no, we don't have yet, all current crypto currencies are "barely working prototypes" at best, all of them have issues that still need ironing out! Bitcoin itself is like a pr…

Who are you quoting here?

Italics without quotation marks and not prefixed with > are usually simply for emphasis, not quoting.
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