Slashdot Mirror
Swedes Turn Against Cashlessness (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: It is hard to argue that you cannot trust the government when the government isn't really all that bad. This is the problem facing the small but growing number of Swedes anxious about their country's rush to embrace a cash-free society. Most consumers already say they manage without cash altogether, while shops and cafes increasingly refuse to accept notes and coins because of the costs and risk involved. Until recently, however, it has been hard for critics to find a hearing. "The Swedish government is a rather nice one, we have been lucky enough to have mostly nice ones for the past 100 years," says Christian Engstrom, a former MEP for the Pirate Party and an early opponent of the cashless economy. "In other countries there is much more awareness that you cannot trust the government all the time. In Sweden it is hard to get people mobilized."
There are signs this might be changing. In February, the head of Sweden's central bank warned that Sweden could soon face a situation where all payments were controlled by private sector banks. The Riksbank governor, Stefan Ingves, called for new legislation to secure public control over the payments system, arguing that being able to make and receive payments is a "collective good" like defense, the courts, or public statistics. "Most citizens would feel uncomfortable to surrender these social functions to private companies," he said. "It should be obvious that Sweden's preparedness would be weakened if, in a serious crisis or war, we had not decided in advance how households and companies would pay for fuel, supplies and other necessities." The report mentions a recently-released opinion poll, which found that seven out of 10 Swedes wanted to keep the option to use cash, while just 25% wanted a completely cashless society.
There are signs this might be changing. In February, the head of Sweden's central bank warned that Sweden could soon face a situation where all payments were controlled by private sector banks. The Riksbank governor, Stefan Ingves, called for new legislation to secure public control over the payments system, arguing that being able to make and receive payments is a "collective good" like defense, the courts, or public statistics. "Most citizens would feel uncomfortable to surrender these social functions to private companies," he said. "It should be obvious that Sweden's preparedness would be weakened if, in a serious crisis or war, we had not decided in advance how households and companies would pay for fuel, supplies and other necessities." The report mentions a recently-released opinion poll, which found that seven out of 10 Swedes wanted to keep the option to use cash, while just 25% wanted a completely cashless society.
Why would you want a cashless society? Having the ability to pay in cash doesn't require you to do so yourself. I can't wrap my head around the fact that there are some people who actively want fewer choices even when the alternative options require nothing from them in terms of action or cost. Even from a business owner's perspective, there's nothing that says your business has to accept cash payments, unless there's some obscure Swedish laws of which I'm unaware.
If by "obvious" you mean "obviously stupid".
No matter what anyone says, when power goes out and communications infrastructure goes to shit or gets attacked, regular hard currency will still work until the human race forgets how to add and subtract.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Cash doesn't have to be paper. An electronic unit with a battery that can hold an electronic counter can function perfectly as an electronic version of cash, without involving banks and going through bank transactions each time.
It seems this option is totally ignored by everyone though.
So who is going to buy me a smart phone, and pay for a data plan ? I don't have one and I don't want one. My simple dumb Trac phone with just text and phone service is cheap easy and my choice. I have a visa/debit card that I keep for emergency use only, and I have to remind myself to use it for an inquiry once every 90 days or the damn credit union suspends it. As a contractor I am paid by certified check thru my contracting office rather than by the current employer. I use and cash for almost everything except monthly bills which are paid out of my checking account via automatic withdrawal. Does my dope dealer have to pay square or some vendor to stay in business ? How do I give the 'vet' hanging out on the corner a couple of bucks for hamburger evey now and then. Uncle Sam is up in my grill enough with having every dollar I choose to spend analyzed by them.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
No, tax is something that we (society) agreed upon in exchange for other services. That is, we pooled some of our assets together to be able to build roads, hospitals and schools. Sure, some like this agreement more than others, and some, like you, don't like it at all. The mystery is why nutjobs like you don't move to some uninhabited corner of the world and live off the grid, only interacting with other nutjobs. Now let us, the rest of society, to be in peace, not needing to hear your tinfoil, paranoia-filled rants.
That part of the submission confused me - if payment is offered and If it’s the coin of the realm, how can they legally decline it? It’s not like “cashless” transactions aren’t using the same currency.
#DeleteChrome
It's important to differentiate the form of coinage from the backing medium. Coinage often has little or no intrinsic value. This is especially true of paper promissory notes, which cost a tiny fraction of their face value to produce and have few other possible uses (uncomfortable toilet paper, really tacky wallpaper, or a convenient object for arranging your cocaine in lines). Currencies are typically backed by some promise from an organisation to exchange them for something else. For example, the one Pound Sterling could originally be redeemed for one pound of sterling silver. Most modern currencies are established by fiat: a law requires that they can be used to settle any debt, including taxes, so their value is based on the number of people who have debts that can be settled by the currency.
A crypto currency simply provides an implementation mechanism that allows you to maintain a ledger recording transactions without a single central point of failure. This would address the concerns in TFA, where people are worried that if, for example, the Russians invaded they'd be able to shut down all commerce in a region by flipping a few config options in a computer.
Most crypto currencies have difficulties replacing real-world currency uses because they are entirely decoupled from any store of value in the real world. Ideally (gross oversimplifications follow), the monetary supply should reflect the economy. When more value is created in the economy, more money should be created to represent it. When value is removed from the economy, the money supply should contract by a corresponding amount. The money supply should expand slightly faster than the economy so that holding money is discouraged as a means of holding value (you want people to invest in things that improve productivity, not keep piles of cash under their bed).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The US could literally print $20 trillion dollars in $100 bills and pay off their bond holders as they fall due. Of course, this would cause inflation to shoot up, but the debt would be paid.