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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

• Svoka 7y ago
  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.
  • codr7 7y ago
    Mysterious? You should read up on your history. Some authority, not the absolute surveillance and control this path leads to.
  • malloryerik 7y ago
    > Barter is the way. Umm, could you explain how this would work? Money has typically emerged as a "universal barter," like gold or tobacco (in colonial Virginia for ex.) or cigarettes in prisons that can be exchanged for anything in the assumption that they will always be in demand. So I can trade you gold for your sysadmin work (simply indirect "barter") and you can trade the gold for drinks at night, breakfast cereal, a NYTimes.com subscription, etc. But you can't trade your sysadmin work for any of those because it can't be divided up like that. So whenever you try to have a direct barter system you'll just end up with some kind of money by necessity, maybe gold, silver, seashells, etc. It's merely a higher abstraction on top of the barter, thus "universal barter." And indeed for the NYTimes sub you'll need some kind of e-gold... Money can be stored to use later but its value is always based on the current amount of money in use and the current amount of goods and potential services/labor. Hoarding it in Smaug's lair under Lonely Mountain is bad not because Smaug is thus in the wealthiest 0.00001% of inhabitants of Middle Earth (meaningless since he doesn't actually use the money) but because by removing the supply of money he has been creating deflation and is thereby depressing economic activity. Decreasing the supply of money means falling prices (because there's less exchange-medium, not because there's more production) means debts are harder to pay back, ppl hoard what's left and the dour mood discourages future economic activity. When Bilbo frees the hoard there will be massive inflation but also a burst of economic activity (i.e., work). It's true that with only direct barter there would be no problems (or benefits) from increasing or decreasing the money supply, but you'd have much bigger problems. Remember that money is not itself value but merely a means of exchange, one way to measure value, and storing that money is a way to make a future claim on an amount of future value. Economists are simplifying when they say that money is a "store of value." You're actually just storing a claim on future value. How much value? However much you can get for that amount of money at the moment someone trades you something for it and regardless of the value when you initially stored it. "Modern" paper money, "reserve notes" used in lieu of the notes' corresponding gold or silver stored for example at a goldsmith, was quickly abused as the reserve keepers learned that they could lend more notes than they had metal, thus creating a kind of virtual store of money (or if money is economic RAM, virtual RAM?), and what might have started as a kind of scam was soon recognized as a great boon because the money supply could expand when there was an opportunity for increased work/production of value and shrink back down if and as the opportunity came to a close. Of course this credit money system a.k.a. Our World has perils and requires constant maintenance and repair but without it we'd be far worse off, more unequal, less healthy, more wretched and to return to your original point, we'd most likely be controlled by more direct and onerous authorities. And with just direct barter we'd be in... the stone age?
  • pretendscholar 7y ago
    >You accepted some authority initially >You must now accept more authority because you accepted some initial amount of authority I don't follow
• ecmascript 7y ago
  Not that long ago I was on a ferry and their credit card readers didn't work properly. There was long lines for everyone that didn't have cash and as one of the few that always carry cash, I just walked in front of everyone.
  • codr7 7y ago
    Happens all the time, all of a sudden no one can buy food even though the food is still there and people are still willing to pay for it. Basing a society on such a shaky foundation is just stupid, period. The people in power who let this to happen should never be allowed to make an important decision again.
    • AnssiH 7y ago
      > The people in power who let this to happen should never be allowed to make an important decision again. Out of interest, do you have some ideas on specific measures that could/should have been implemented to stop this development towards less cash?
    • 2rsf 7y ago
      Although bills and coins don't require electricity, running a business offline will not work in many cases, especially if you are bigger than your small grocery shop or local doner kebab
• rlv-dan 7y ago
  I pay more often with cash today than some years ago, as a statement. Interestingly, if you talk about cash in Sweden the comments you will get tend to be very hostile. It's like talking about meat in a vegan community.
  • codr7 7y ago
    More people should, even if they don't go to the same extreme as me. I've come to a point where I feel like it's my responsibility to do whatever I can, and getting a card or phone with Swish would make it too easy. There's some serious programming going on, it's sort of a Swedish tradition to brainwash people into policing each other.
    • patrec 7y ago
      Can you say more about what you see as the Swedish tradition of brainwashing people into policing each other? Sweden has a reputation for extreme political correctness, which I guess could be framed as a more polite way to express the same thing, but the way you put it sounds far more exciting!
      • codr7 7y ago
        Well, the way I put it is how it works :) Extreme political correctness is not something people are born with, it's conditioning via media and from observing how people who dare to question anything are treated.
  • anonymou2 7y ago
    I pay cash too as much as I can, it freaked me out when my bank started classifying my expenses. That hostile talk you mention reminds me of when I talk about vehicular cycling, specially in northern european circles, where they are a lot into segregating cyclists. I think it is a similar paternalistic issue, hey this is good for you, resistance is futile!
    • altacc 7y ago
• AdjectiveNoun 7y ago
  The reason for this is that "deeply negative interest rates" are coming (to keep the ponzi scheme going) and they don't want people pulling money out of the banks and hoarding cash. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT9vP_RoCdM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT9vP_RoCdM https://blogs.imf.org/2019/02/05/cashing-in-how-to-make-negative-interest-rates-work/ https://blogs.imf.org/2019/02/05/cashing-in-how-to-make-nega...
  • hosteur 7y ago
    Wow. That is terrifying.
• kzrdude 7y ago
  There are real problems, too. One day Swedbank had an outage on their payment systems for more than 24 hours, and this is a bank that has a significant part of the country as customers (I'm just guessing, but it's above 10% for sure). People couldn't pay for anything, couldn't buy train tickets (all digital). The outage was so big that the train companies had to let commuters go without tickets, so at least those people got to work.
  • Freak_NL 7y ago
    This is what really irks me here in the Netherlands too. I'm fine with digital payments (e.g., contactless debit cards) for the bulk of transactions, but cash should be guarded as a valid alternative. The past year I've several times been in a store where digital transactions didn't work for one reason or another (telephone line got cut by roadworks, internet modem crashed, etc.). Fine, I'll just pay with cash in the mean time. Not so for 80% of the other customers: some rush to the in-store ATM, some just give up because they can't be arsed to carry even a single €50 note around. One problem is that our governments like the idea of eventually banning cash.
    • rapnie 7y ago
      That is why I most often still pay in cash. Want to be counted in that statistic. Unfortunately in NL nowadays ATM's are getting scarce. Banks want to drive us towards digital-only payments.
    • TurningCanadian 7y ago
      I don't think there's anything inherent to digital transactions that requires a working connection.
      • 2rsf 7y ago
        your bank balance ? unless you have a digital wallet that stores a balance locally
  • yxhuvud 7y ago
• altacc 7y ago
  It is incredibly convenient but you're right that it presents barriers that are hard to overcome as very little thought is given to handling people without bank accounts, cards, bank id. I'm across the border in Norway and when I moved here I was locked out of pretty much everything because I didn't have a bank account with a BankID (a proof of identity service provided by your bank and used for all government websites and many private businesses). Without that it gets incredibly difficult to do anything.
  • mellavora 7y ago
    And you can't get a bankID unless you are a resident, because it is very hard to get a bank account as a non-resident due to AML regs. So a Swedish citizen who is not a Swedish resident is completely cut off.
• cko 7y ago
  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.
  • fredsted 7y ago
    I mean, yes, that seems like how you would do it. If you've lived in your city for a while I don't think you'd really need maps all that often. I still remember printing out routes in the age before GPS! Also, regarding texts, I carry an iPhone, but I'll answer text messages when it fits in, which can take hours. Don't want my phone to control my life.
    • dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      If you're somewhere mostly covered by street view it's often easy to just walk through the route that way and then just do it from memory. If you don't mind a small increase to travel time you can usually reduce the number of steps to get to any particular place to a small and conveniently memorable amount.
  • muriithi 7y ago
    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.
    • Symbiote 7y ago
      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.
  • new2628 7y ago
• ACS_Solver 7y ago
  I've lived in Sweden for nearly 10 years, and the whole cashless aspect is really something I've embraced. Cashless payments dominated even 10 years ago, but I've also seen a massive change in the past 2-3 years with places no longer accepting cash. Grocery shops still do, but most restaurants, takeout places and cafes are cashless. On the contrary, I find myself irritated in Germany where cash is required. The main thing I want to see is stronger privacy laws regarding transactions. There's some hope here with the EU. Data mining of purchase history should be banned outright for instance. That said, even though I'm privacy-concerned, I don't view cashless payments as one of the bigger threats. I refuse to own any store loyalty cards because they give the store an exact list of what I buy, tied to my identity, which is a much bigger privacy threat. My bank does know which grocery store I shop at, but that can be guessed with very high confidence anyway based on my address, which is public. I'd like to see Sweden at the forefront of developing cashless societies. The national bank is testing the platform a state-backed cryptocurrency. With the right combination of technological and legal mechanisms, that is very much something I would like to see.
  • mehrdadn 7y ago
    What does a cashless society do when the power/internet/etc. goes out (whether due to a natural disaster or otherwise)?
    • username90 7y ago
      Cash is not very useful if the power is out either, as for internet you just have to make it as reliable as power.
      • mehrdadn 7y ago
        > Cash is not very useful if the power is out either Sorry, what? I literally bought my lunch with cash the other day when the restaurant I went to had lost its power. Where do you pull these assertions from?
      • simplecto 7y ago
        Ask everyone living in South Florida post-hurricane. Cash is king.
• beefield 7y ago
  > 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?
  • Mirioron 7y ago
    The crap hitting the fan scenario is when people are barred from payment because of something non-illegal that they did. It's a third-party payment service, so it's possible.
    • beefield 7y ago
      Maybe I am naive[1], but I have difficulties seeing that happening in the EU. I mean, that we would have significant amount of merchants accepting only payment systems that are not available to everyone. Of course, if someone has evidence of (a possibility of) opposite, I am keen to educate myself. [1] However, given everything I know (which is not much) about US financial system, I do understand that people there worry about things like this
  • fipar 7y ago
    You may be reading "crap hits the fan" as something massive, like a collapse of the banking system. I'm not the OP, but I can also read it as "crap hits the fan for me", and this makes it simple to imagine ways in which a person can lose access to digital payment (by theft, by being blocked by the bank for whatever reason, etc.) and if this happens, life would be difficult on a cash-less society until this access is regained. Just imagine if you're accidentally identified as a financial supporter of terrorism or something like that, and your bank accounts are blocked. How would you buy even basic necessities if cash is not allowed?
    • mellavora 7y ago
      which can and does happen.
• erk__ 7y ago
  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/betalingstjenesteloven/kontantreglen/ https://www.forbrugerombudsmanden.dk/hvad-gaelder/betalingst...
  • LeonidasXIV 7y ago
    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.
  • Symbiote 7y ago
    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.
  • ACS_Solver 7y ago
    The question was considered by the Swedish Supreme Court a few years ago, and it ruled that stores, transport services and such have no obligation to take cash as long as they clearly advertise they're cashless. The legal reasoning is based on freedom of contract (avtalsfrihet). The shop has to take cash, but since what the shop does is enter a contract with you (agrees to sell certain goods for a certain price), it can choose to make cashless payment a condition of the contract. The same reasoning gives the shop the freedom to only accept paper bills and not coins for instance. This doesn't apply to public entities as freedom of contract is much more limited or non-applicable there - a public hospital must allow patients to pay in cash.
• alkonaut 7y ago
  > Much of the current Swedish society is currently closed to me, Yes. Because not carrying a smartphone and a credit card in Sweden and only carrying cash is basically like traveling in from Japan with a bunch of Yen in your hand. Of course society isn't open to you if you don't carry the local currency (which is card and smartphone transactions). A bit exaggerated, perhaps, but that's where we are now, like you noticed. A solution might be to allow shops to charge extra for cash transactions. That is, force shops to accept cash, but at the same time allow them to discourage people to not use it. That way they don't need to run to the bank with cash so often, but they also have a cash system in place for when the crap hits the fan. There is absolutely zero chance that Sweden will somehow go back to be a place where people regularly use paper money. That just won't happen. What we need is a system that is resilient, accessible, and has decent integrity protection despite people not using paper money.
  • Legogris 7y ago
    You mean some sort of digital cash? Perhaps settled on a publicly accessible ledger with decentralized infrastructure not relying on any single party? Preferably permissionless to utilize but resilient to attacks and not putting the operators of the infrastructure in a privileged position of power with regards to private information?
    • jandrese 7y ago
      And also handling millions of transactions per day with minimal resource requirements of course.
    • alkonaut 7y ago
      > You mean some sort of digital cash? Yes, exactly. > Perhaps settled on a publicly accessible ledger with decentralized infrastructure not relying on any single party? The current project is backed by the riksbank (Sweden's central bank). I think for cryptocurrency to be viable as a proper replacement for cash this is how it should work. The central bank guarantees the value of the digital currency by setting it to be the same as the existing cash. I'm not sure exactly how the ledger would be maintained in a way that both lets me go to a shop and buy something without the central bank knowing who owns the token, while at the same time offering no less visibility than the current system does in terms of larger scale transactions (e.g. if I go into a bank with a large amount of cash to deposit I'll get questions regarding money laundry etc).