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Swedes turn against cashlessness

theguardian.com

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Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#321

Post by greggarious »

Thiez wrote: post #299
greggarious wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have valid reasons to want to hide legal purchases. Alcohol is a legal drug, but how will you feel when your credit card company sells your purchase history to some analytics firm that deems you high risk for health issues, sells that data to your insurer, and your rates go up? When I go to a bar or a McDonalds I pay cash for this reason.

> how will you feel when your credit card company sells your purchase history to some analytics firm that deems you high risk for health issues, sells that data to your insurer, and your rates go up? I feel confused that you have this very accurate description of a problem ("companies sell your personal data") and your solution is "we must hide from the companies" instead of "we must enact laws to restrict dealing in…

Do you have any data to support your assertion that policy based measures (versus technical measures) are solution?

Facebook used contracts instead of technical controls to protect data, and we've seen how well that worked :)

I'll admit many on HN are obsessed with overly technical solutions, but "using cash" seems much simpler than "establish a complex regulatory regime".

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#322

Post by sokoloff »

Thiez wrote: post #299
greggarious wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have valid reasons to want to hide legal purchases. Alcohol is a legal drug, but how will you feel when your credit card company sells your purchase history to some analytics firm that deems you high risk for health issues, sells that data to your insurer, and your rates go up? When I go to a bar or a McDonalds I pay cash for this reason.

> how will you feel when your credit card company sells your purchase history to some analytics firm that deems you high risk for health issues, sells that data to your insurer, and your rates go up? I feel confused that you have this very accurate description of a problem ("companies sell your personal data") and your solution is "we must hide from the companies" instead of "we must enact laws to restrict dealing in…

Until/unless we do the latter, it's entirely reasonable to do the former, which an individual can implement on their own immediately.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#323

Post by alkonaut »

I'm all for the idea of cash being accepted and remaining. But as a swede I'm also completely over cash. I haven't even seen the latest incarnation of our bills. I haven't touched cash even for buying a flea market hockey stick or a hotdog in a stand, for years. And it's damn comfortable (The mobile payments is used a LOT, so is at least as big as cards for small transactions and individual-to-individual transactions).

But the questoin is: if we just want cash to "be around" because in times of crisis it would be handy - who will pay for maintaining it? If you mandate it by law, chances are that businesses will just have some appearance of cash handling, but no idea how to do it in an actual crisis. Likewise, people who only need to use cash once in a crisis, aren't going to have cash on them, if there is a crisis

One of the reasons I don't have cash is because we are also hellbent on expiring our banknotes - the validity period of banknotes here is probably around 20 years on average. So unlike the US where you might be allowed to pay with a 50 year old green one, in Sweden you can't put a few thousand Kronor in a box in the basement for a crisis. It won't be accepted if that crisis is too far away - and I fear forgetting where I put the money and realize it's no longer valid. (Note that money can always be exchanged at the central bank for modern notes after they are expired - they aren't turned worthless - but that is probably not an option in times of crisis).

So while I agree with the idea of cash being a vital infrastructure in society - how to you encourage it enough to actually be a working system when it's needed, if it's not always needed? There is no way you'll convince the swedes to use a more cumbersome payment system than the least cumbersome one, because "it's good to support it". Mandating that everyone accept cash also seems like pretty bad idea (It will cost consumers a LOT).

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#324

Post by Consultant32452 »

stale2002 wrote: post #111
freedomben wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. There's certainly short term benefit to this Keynesian view, but long term it leads to wild volatility, partly because people are only one pay check away from ruin. When only the wealthy have a store of money to draw on in harder times (job or income source loss, broken appliances/vehicles/etc), it further harms the poor. It's a regressive policy because it disproportionately harms the poor. It forces peo…

It isn't even the Keynsian model! People misinterprete it to this basterdized version a lot though. The real Keynsian model is that we should spend more in bad times and LESS in good times to even out business cycles. People always forget that second part... It was NEVER about spending for the sake of spending or wasting money on things that we don't need to help the "economy". People misinterpret it to the point whe…

I agree with everything you said. Have you considered that the Keynesian model might be a failure since it does not account for human nature? I don't believe a government will ever reliably cut spending in good times and spend more in bad times. I am starting to sound like socialists saying "it's never been properly implemented!" Well, maybe the core idea works on paper but ignores human nature, maybe it simply can't be implemented properly.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#325

Post by sokoloff »

oldcynic wrote: post #271
dalbasal wrote: post #173

Good. The cashless drive gives me the creeps. 1 - First, I like cash. It's tactile and gives me a feel for my spending. 2 - Cards are an duopoly, layered onto an oligopoly. Cashless gives this system a 2% tax on all spending (+ fraud, which retailers pay for). 3 - Government control is creepy too. Liberty reasons, privacy reasons, single-point-of failure reasons. Just simple competency reasons. 4 - It advantages big…

> It's tactile and gives me a feel for my spending Both in games with premium currencies like diamonds, and in real life with plastic cards and services, it's been shown time and again that the further you are from actual cash the more you spend. This can't be emphasised enough and is, to my mind, a near complete explanation of the drive for cashless. We, as good consumers, will spend more in a cashless world. When w…

For this same reason, we pay our kids allowance in cash and when they buy toys or other things with it, we make sure they are the one to take the cash out of the little cash purse, carry it in their pocket to the store, and they are the one to physically hand the cash over the cashier.

I don't care if it would be 10x easier and I'd get 1.5% cashback on the purchase with the credit card; I want them to have the experience and understand that they are trading away a limited resource that took time and effort to acquire, not just mindless swipe/stick/tap.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#326

Post by dalbasal »

rhacker wrote: post #219
dalbasal wrote: post #173

Good. The cashless drive gives me the creeps. 1 - First, I like cash. It's tactile and gives me a feel for my spending. 2 - Cards are an duopoly, layered onto an oligopoly. Cashless gives this system a 2% tax on all spending (+ fraud, which retailers pay for). 3 - Government control is creepy too. Liberty reasons, privacy reasons, single-point-of failure reasons. Just simple competency reasons. 4 - It advantages big…

Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. Seriously

thanks. :)

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#327

Post by interfixus »

arghwhat wrote: post #263
powvans wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bitcoin failure (I think it is) teaches something. People don't really give each other money. It's kind of illegal. Money is supposed to move between people and companies or companies and companies, not between people. There is no demand for Peter-pays-Paul. That last bit, that's a profound observation. There is some real demand, but not much. More so there is theoretical demand. In theory I want the option to pa…

As mentioned elsewhere, "Peter-pays-Paul" is huge in Scandinavia. MobilePay, a person-to-person payment app in Denmark, is a huge deal here. It had 3 million users in 2016 (out of 7 million people!), and its second-priority shop payment feature (that arrived much later) is challenging credit cards. It's used for everything from selling used goods to splitting bills. Swish, the Swedish equivalent, has 4 million users.…

Only 5.7 million people, actually, but otherwise, yeah.

Note, though, that it's not really just Peter paying Paul, as the transaction is still between their respective banks with everything that entails. And a MobilePay account is actually tied to a specific payment card. I have had a MobilePay transaction refused (and from a public institution, no less) because my account did not involve a Dankort, the only payment card the institution deemed acceptable.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#328

Post by cjg »

mnw21cam wrote: post #60
Fnoord wrote: post #51

I don't know about Sweden or EU but in The Netherlands cash is legal tender. If a shop does not clearly communicate cash isn't accepted, you can consider your transaction finalized. Its the problem of the business; not the customer.

It should be noted that in the UK, legal tender has a very narrow definition - it applies only to paying a debt at a court. It doesn't apply to your local shops. This is a common misconception.

It would apply in a restaurant. I've eaten the food and want to settle up, here's the cash. They have to accept it.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#329

Post by interfixus »

Symbiote wrote: post #251
jamesblonde wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a verb in swedish for this: "I'll swish you 50 crowns" "Can you swish me 200?"

In Denmark "I'll MobilePay you 50 crowns" or "can you MobilePay me 200?", at least when speaking English. My Danish isn't good enough to reliably say what it is when speaking Danish. Probably something like "Jeg mobilepayer dig halvtres¹ kroner" The system in Britain (Paym) hasn't really caught on. They might be less keen to verb a noun. ¹ This is why I avoid discussing numbers in Danish.

Strangely, I have never heard it verbed that way in Danish. Alle I ever hear is the slightly laborious 'sender dig på MobilePay'.

But then again, I'm ancient.

Re: Swedes turn against cashlessness

#330

Post by hocuspocus »

arghwhat wrote: post #252
drexlspivey wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be free? Shouldn't you pay for the service?

Not when it is effectively forced as only means of payment. The idea of having to pay a fee to a series of private companies in order to be permitted to use money is absurd.

As long as money creation and handling is delegated to private banks, how can you avoid this?

Dealing with cash isn't free to merchants either. And that cost is passed on to the customer.

Sure, governments that are pushing for a cashless society have ulterior motives. But you can't blame them for capping fees that used to be just spread onto everybody, regardless of the payment method. Now at least they're supposed to be comparable.

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