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EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

consilium.europa.eu

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Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#781

Post by koliber »

AlfeG wrote: post #694
tastysandwich wrote: post #506

A similar thing was attempted in Australia [1]. I just ask people to consider that even though we all have bank accounts and we take that for granted, there _are_ actually people who don't, and they're not operating a criminal enterprise. My grandparents came as refugees. My grandfather has never had a bank account. He bought a car with $50 bills once. It was so funny, they were all stuck together and the clerk had t…

There is similar law in Ukraine for quite a long time. Everyone just ignore this law.. I bought flat for cash in USD not even in local currency. Car were bought in cash in severL transactions to be below limit. Part of payments were in foreing currency. It only consumers who became affected. Less protection from law in case of fraud. By documents car price were 10 times less You pay. Meanwhile this law has not preven…

The documented price is important when you have to return the car 3 days later because it is badly broken and you were scammed. It happened to a friend of mine. He was screwed because the seller offered to return all his money based on the price on the invoice.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#782

Post by Teandw »

atahanacar wrote: post #470
Teandw wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but would you want it to be illegal if the vast majority people that did walk 200 miles on foot instead of driving, did it because they were doing it to get away with committing a crime?

Would you want the internet to be banned, because people are using it to get away with committing a crime?

Would I want certain things on the internet to be illegal, yes. Like they already are.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#783

Post by pclmulqdq »

thiht wrote: post #735
pclmulqdq wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The European crowd on HN in general is very much in favor of big government. I assume GDPR is very popular here despite making software development a huge pain, for example. Americans on HN (and ironically a lot of Germans on here) seem to be much more libertarian in their sensibility.

You guys are unbelievable. Of course GDPR makes some things harder. It’s the whole point. GDPR is probably one of the biggest pro-freedom laws of the last years. Not big corp freedom for sure, but people freedom, and that’s GOOD. But Americans with their skewed vision of freedom just can’t see it I guess. Honestly if GDPR pisses off Americans, it probably means it hit on the nail.

We just define freedom differently than you do. I honestly think your version is weird and totalitarian, exactly the way you think mine is.

Here's mine: "Freedom" is what you have in the absence of coercion. The freest state of being is being the last person alive on Earth. Freedom gives you nothing, because if freedom gave you something then someone else would have been coerced into giving it to you. Freedom also gives you the chance to do everything you need to do to survive and thrive.

In a society, we necessarily give up some freedom because my freedom to have stuff is threatened by your freedom to take it when I'm not looking (you would not have had that freedom in isolation). In more recent times, we have started to give up freedom in exchange for security, too, and everyone thinks that is worthwhile, although we disagree on how far you should go. The US military budget and all the government healthcare programs in the world are this kind of trade.

That's what GDPR is: it's a trade of freedom for the security of European sovereignty and European business (notice how I didn't mention privacy or user security). It's not about the "little guy" vs the "big corporations," the big corporations have plenty of money and lawyers they can use to comply. The people that all of these laws hit are the startups and small companies. This philosophy is why there are no European unicorns. Europe as a whole has given up the freedom to "start up" without compliance with a huge number of rules and regulations (or money to pay bribes). Uniquely, GDPR goes a step further and tries to impose this burden on everyone in the world, not just people and companies that have signed up for the European project.

In the European worldview, there seem to be a lot of "rights" exemplified by the UN human rights charter. These include things that nobody had 25 years ago, like "the right to high-speed internet." These "rights" and "freedoms" really aren't freedom: someone has to pay to provide them at the end of the day. For those of us across the pond, these are weird trades: you voluntarily pay incredibly high tax rates and huge administrative burdens for these supposed "rights," some of which look like luxuries to us, and feel as though they don't make you any less free.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#784

Post by CraigJPerry »

teo_zero wrote: post #730
CraigJPerry wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need CBDC, just the existing system today. Here in the UK something like 3% of money is available as paper cash. The rest is just a row in a database. Assets are zero sum - if i sell you my car, i no longer have that asset. Money is not zero sum. It is created and destroyed as loans are made and repaid. Which kinda frazzles people’s minds when they hear it. I know it certainly did mine when i first learned.…

> Money is not zero sum. It is created and destroyed as loans are made and repaid. I don't think this is true. Every transaction, even the ones that take place in the rows of a bank's database and not with physical money, involve an amount added to some account and an identical amount subtracted from another account. Even loans don't create money: the issuing bank have the amount subtracted from its reserves the exac…

>> Even loans don't create money: the issuing bank have the amount subtracted from its reserves

Not even the old system (fractional reserve) referred to in the fed link above works that way. The new system deletes what was left of fractional reserve policy.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#785

Post by pclmulqdq »

ls15 wrote: post #758
pclmulqdq wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The European crowd on HN in general is very much in favor of big government. I assume GDPR is very popular here despite making software development a huge pain, for example. Americans on HN (and ironically a lot of Germans on here) seem to be much more libertarian in their sensibility.

GDPR - great Digital Services Act - great Chat control and all the other pushes for increased surveillance - terrible, don't these guys know history? There is no need to applaud/reject them all. > I assume GDPR is very popular here despite making software development a huge pain If it creates a huge pain, then the data probably wasn't handled in a respectful way in the first place.

What's respectful about presenting you with a wall of text T&C document, giving you a checkbox to indicate you read it, and mining the crap out of your data on a server located in Europe? GDPR allows that - in fact, it assumes that you will want to mine the crap out of user data and specifies where.

GDPR has a few good ideas about encrypting data buried in its ~170 articles, but most companies were doing that already because data breaches are expensive.

The rest of GDPR is about (essentially) trade protectionism: they want you using European servers to store and process data. They want that data in easy reach of other EU laws and enforcement agencies.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#786

Post by koliber »

teo_zero wrote: post #730
CraigJPerry wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need CBDC, just the existing system today. Here in the UK something like 3% of money is available as paper cash. The rest is just a row in a database. Assets are zero sum - if i sell you my car, i no longer have that asset. Money is not zero sum. It is created and destroyed as loans are made and repaid. Which kinda frazzles people’s minds when they hear it. I know it certainly did mine when i first learned.…

> Money is not zero sum. It is created and destroyed as loans are made and repaid. I don't think this is true. Every transaction, even the ones that take place in the rows of a bank's database and not with physical money, involve an amount added to some account and an identical amount subtracted from another account. Even loans don't create money: the issuing bank have the amount subtracted from its reserves the exac…

You can create new money, legally.

Imagine the whole world has 1,000,000 dollars right now. This is made up of all cash.

You have 100,000 of those dollars. You decide to buy a car for $10,000 from a friend. You go look at the car, like it, and agree to buy it. You sign the necessary paperwork and you tell your friend that you will bring him the 10,000 cash tomorrow. You drive home.

You just created 10,000 out of thin air. The world right now has 1,010,000 of money. It is made up of all that cash, and the debt you owe your friend. The debt you owe your friend is an asset. If it was drawn up more formally, it can be used to buy things, similarly to how the greenbacks in your pocket buy thing.

Now you might be thinking that this money does not exist because of the offsetting liability. You are right that in a ledger it nets out to zero. However, “money” is not the net balance. Money is the cash, and unpaid loans side of the ledger.

Every dollar that exists was “loaned out” into existence by the government, banks, companies, and people. It will be destroyed the moment it gets paid back.

Don’t confuse money with net balances or with pieces of paper with green ink on them. Those are the things that we colloquially think of as money. But when you dig to really understand money, you eventually get to the fact that it’s all stacks of debt.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#787

Post by jacquesm »

Aerroon wrote: post #537
jacquesm wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instant bank transfer using your phone or laptop, smartcard + token.

If I were to wager then I would bet that at least half the population would be unable to make that work. I don't know anybody in real life who accesses their money via a phone. They can do it via a computer, but most people I know don't have laptops.

> I don't know anybody in real life who accesses their money via a phone.

I don't know anybody that doesn't. And that includes 80+ year olds... mobile gear is how people interact with the internet around here and the internet is how people interact with their banks.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#788

Post by mrfumier »

Smithalicious wrote: post #534

A lot of people here say that it's very rare to spend this much money in cash for legitimate purposes as though that is some universal rule and not a cultural happenstance. I'm currently holidaying in Japan and here it is quite common to make large cash transactions and settle things in person with paper money that couldn't be settled easily that way in my home country of the Netherlands. I actually prefer the Japane…

The risks you're mentionning are true, but I don't see how it has anything to do with cash. It's also your government emitting the bills and coins, and controlling its value.

If you would speak about doing transactions in gold, or having a farm to trade animals in case of collapse of the bank system, like some survivalists do, I would understand more.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#789

Post by koliber »

jaynetics wrote: post #312
mberning wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horrible take. 10k is a pittance. Small business owners, farmers, people buying and selling vehicles, etc. It’s not a large amount of money. If you go down to the apple store and buy a couple well specced computers the bill is going to be over 10k.

So are you from Europe? Or do you know anyone in Europe who has made such a transaction in physical cash?

It’s fairly common in Poland when building a house or renovating an apartment.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#790

Post by koliber »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #463
ROTMetro wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is to make larger denominations, not ban cash sales. But then the government would give up power, so that isn't going to happen. US dollars say explicitly "THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE", it would be ridiculous to say 'under $10000'. Once the government has control what's to stop them doing like China has proposed, and make your virtual currency have velocity, meaning if you…

Note it says "debts". Most retail situations have no debt because you must pay before you receive the item.

If you break down any transaction, it has three components. First, there is the agreement to trade some goods and services for some price. At this moment two debts are created. One is to deliver the money. The other is to deliver the goods and services. The 2nd and 3rd component is the delivery of the money and the delivery of the goods and services.

If you for a candy bar in cash all three happen at the same time. When you buy something and pay later, or pay up front and get something later, it’s easier to see the different components. When you buy stocks via a broker, it’s even more apparent.

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