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Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free
- alexf95 6y agoOk but what if I wanted to shop without a smartphone, or don't own one? Don't get me wrong this is great for the current situation but like all things it doesn't only have good things about it.
- Voloskaya 6y agoFrom a business point of view you obvisously don't need to be accessible to 100% of potential customers to be viable. People without smartphones are probably less <0.5% of the population. Shops without access ramps lose probably more customers, and yet there are plenty of them.
- alexf95 6y agoI was looking more from a customers point of view but I get what you are saying. Your point about the access ramps also makes alot of sense, didn't really think about that case.
- zurn 6y agoSmartphone penetration seems to be 40-80% in industrialized countries, according to 2019 figures from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_smartphone_penetration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_smartphon...
- dagw 6y agoIn the Nordic countries it's over 90% https://www2.deloitte.com/se/sv/pages/technology-media-and-telecommunications/topics/global-mobile-consumer-survey.html https://www2.deloitte.com/se/sv/pages/technology-media-and-t...
- kzrdude 6y agoHowever, a shop without access ramp might be illegal (in Sweden), while no regulation exists for phone requirements.
- astatine 6y agoIf a area that has not had a shop for a decade can now have 80 or 90% of the population served with this method, then I believe not looking for the mythical 100% coverage is a perfectly good thing to do.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoMany grocery stores nowadays have hand scanners in addition to a smartphone app (they often had the hand scanners before a good app), so that + a payment point = problem solved.
- alexf95 6y agoAh i didn't know about that, thanks!
- twic 6y agoExactly. My local supermarket in the UK has this, including handsets for people not using the mobile app. Here's a decent overview of how it all works: https://uxdesign.cc/the-ux-of-sainsburys-smartshop-f7b94af6e154 https://uxdesign.cc/the-ux-of-sainsburys-smartshop-f7b94af6e... Sorry to disappoint aboringusername, but this is not a ploy to starve us all into carrying surveillance devices. Still, the tinfoil hat at least looks fetching.
- agustif 6y agoYesterday on Spanish local tv show they showed how in a small rural town without banks / ATM's, a pharmacy dubbed as a bank / cash retrieval service in a rural town... In another town the banks shared an office and each day of the week was for one of the banks to recieve customers lol. WeBank Could have the same but backwards, give cash, recieve e-coupon, scan e-coupon in store.
- alexf95 6y agoI see that would make a lot of sense but of course you would need to set all this up in addition.
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoWhy not just install an ATM in the pharmacy or don't Spanish banks allow their atms's to access other banks? Having a mobile bank that drives around is another solution.
- bkor 6y ago> Why not just install an ATM in the pharmacy In Netherlands we used to have ATMs in loads of places. Stores had semi-moveable ones. That stopped due to criminals blowing regular ATMs up. The explosives sometimes took out entire walls and made the entire building unsafe. Most stores removed those semi-moveable ATMs. Similarly, loads of regular ATMs were removed, especially ATMs close to a house. As Netherlands tried to do something about it the criminals started to attack the ATMs in Germany more. The criminals also often stole really quick cars, so Dutch police recently and finally have a few quick cars again. Before the quick chase cars the criminals often just outran the police. Oh, Dutch police take safety into account (try to minimize the risk for others).
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoI suspect the Spanish Police would be less gentle here :-)
- el-salvador 6y ago
- cr3ative 6y agoMany shops have a barrier/qualification to entry; membership at Costco for example. Smartphones are now cheap as dirt. The bigger problem would be having a bank account.
- el-salvador 6y agoA Swedish bank account with Swedish Bank ID. Do they have a work around for non Swedish users?
- bellyfullofbac 6y agoI'm reminded of a redditor commenting how he visited a music festival in Sweden as a foreigner, and how annoying it was for him, because all the food stands were expecting the Swedish payment system. And he couldn't even ask other visitors to buy stuff for him and take his cash, because the Swedes were very cash-averse.
- Shaanie 6y agoMost people nowadays carry very little (if any) cash. However, I really doubt it would be a problem to find someone to buy food for you if you give them cash.
- TravelPiglet 6y agoExcept for supermarkets, I don't expect any stores to actually accept cash anymore. This have lead to a growing bag of small change that is not leaving my home, so I can understand people not wanting cash :)
- Shaanie 6y agoYou don't need to be a Swede to get bankid, but you do need a national registration number which you can apply for if you intend to live in Sweden for something like a year or more. In other words, if you live in Sweden you'll likely have bankid. As a tourist or seasonal worker, not so much.
- plorntus 6y agoIf there is a need and its profitable then surely someone would provide that service?
- gumby 6y agoThis is Scandinavia. Such a situation would be extremely rare and if that were the case visiting this shop would be a minor issue by comparison.
- fogihujy 6y agoThere's plenty of older-generation people without a smart phone in the Nordics. It doesn't matter though, since the smart-phone carrying majority will be enough to keep a store running in most places.
- dageshi 6y agoI guess you've chosen to travel to a larger town and do your shopping there?
- cik 6y agoThen you've selected yourself out as not the target audience. There are plenty of shoppes that I don't patronize as I'm not the target audience. This is no different.
- raverbashing 6y agoThankfully the Swedes are not as luddites as the Germans and adopt more easily solutions that make their lives easier In fact I wouldn't be surprised if these stores were cashless, in several Scandinavian countries shop attendants handling change manually are already on their way out
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoAnd this is a 100% a good thing the Swedish central bank has floated the idea of enforcing -ve interest on accounts in the past. This drive to a cashless system has downsides for the more vulnerable, poor and elderly - it also pushes extra risks onto the customer (which is why I don't do online Banking the UK) *edit* Banking for Baking
- vybbc 6y agoYawn. Hail to user tracking and dictatorial fintech startups? No thanks.
- tchalla 6y ago> Thankfully the Swedes are not as luddites as the Germans and adopt more easily solutions that make their lives easier Germans are not luddites, they are careful with privacy. They have more than one reason to be careful with it [0, 1]. There's a tradeoff between "personal convenience" and "civil liberties" like privacy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennkarte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennkarte [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
- raverbashing 6y ago> Germans are not luddites, they are careful with privacy. Being scared of Google street view and continuing to use fax machines are not wise worries about privacy, sorry Yes I know about the historical reasons they're "worried" about privacy, but it's a misplaced worry because they don't address their real privacy shortcomings, like requiring registration of people (+ sensitive privacy info) who live in a city, using last names (and not apartment numbers) in mailboxes, limited anonymous internet access (to please the copyright lobby, etc) and their lax internet security capabilities (like the Berlin courts who were still on Windows 95) So again, if they really worry about privacy they're addressing it through the wrong angle.
- WanderPanda 6y agoLooks like a prime example of Whataboutism
- aboringusername 6y agoThen you're excluded, simple as that. We're rapidly approching the point where you're: a) Expected to have, engage with and be active on a smartphone b) Be accessible via the mobile network (have an active phone number that can get SMS) c) Be "always online", frequently checking the bank in 'real time' to verify transactions, account balance etc d) Have battery life on your device. It's no good if you have just 5% and your phone turns off, your smartphone to person uptime needs to be very very good (your phone needs to be online quite often to be a very good citizen!). e) Be verifiable to you. The make, model and other information needs to be tied to you as a person. The SIM card needs to belong to you and you need to be traceable and trackable via your smartphone at all times, 24/7. If you do not meet those requirements you WILL be locked out of some functions in society. This is already the case today and will be the case in the future. No smartphone? No digital cash? Not for you. Our phones are becoming and will eventually be a part of "us", they will be a digital heartbeat and will need to output a "pulse", if your pulse stops, so will your societal inclusion (perhaps you can't go to a place without scanning a QR code, for example). The levels of exclusion will vary depending on criteria, for example, Covid passports will likely use an "app" as most things do otherwise you'll be denied access. Eventually, it'll be a law to ensure your digital pulse is active and working 24/7, every citizen will be issued a digital ID and a personal device that will need to be kept on your person at all times, it'll talk to various networks (telephony, GPS etc), and will act like a "tag". We're not there yet but the pathway to reach that point has been made obvious during the covid pandemic. "Health passports" are the next step, various smartwatches that record health data (Apple, Fitbit) are getting into that territory. Eventually you as a human will be constantly monitored and uploaded to a server 24/7
- alexf95 6y agoIt does appear like that, I guess it just isn't very apparent to me yet how smartphone dependent we are. The change just kinda creeped up.
- ghaff 6y agoThat's how most changes happen. For example, "we" didn't collectively decide one day we absolutely need to have credit cards. But if you don't have one now, there are a ton of things you can't really do.
- guerrilla 6y agoThen you're going to have an extremely difficult time in Sweden. The same system is used for online banking, paying you taxes, verifying online purchases, accessing online pharmacies and medical systems, and using online doctors. I'm sure there's a dozen more services that I'm forgetting that use BankID.
- Grustaf 6y agoThere is an offline version of BankID if you insist. At least last time I checked.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- adamcstephens 6y agoSo how will the people who would have worked in a shop like this, afford to shop for food? In Sweden this probably isn’t as big of an issue, but not every country is as socially conscious.
- EvilEy3 6y agoBecause people who would have worked in a shop like this can only work in a shop like this.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoHow many people would have worked in a small grocery store for a town of 1000? I'm no expert, but I know there's small corner shops that have just one person running them with maybe another one or two people helping them. Full rotation staff, maybe 10? That's 1% of the local workforce. I mean what do the 1000 people in the town do for a living to buy food?
- adamcstephens 6y agoLet’s extrapolate then. Assume these stores spread to an entire country, since they’re not just located in rural areas. We'll also stick with 1% of the population losing jobs. In the US that’s over 3 million people. What should those people do instead?
- alexf95 6y agoYea I see more problems with this than benefits. Sure it's nice to have during corona times but what about after it when it's not necessary anymore?
- splitbrain 6y agohow does refilling these container shops work? who does it? staff riding along on the truck? or is the entire shop replaced?
- m12k 6y agoFrom the article: "There are 24-hour surveillance cameras too, which alert the store's manager Domenica Gerlach if there's a break-in or a stock spillage. She looks after four stores in the region, usually visiting once a week to clean, stack the shelves and put together click-and-collect orders made online. Lifvs uses artificial intelligence to work out what stock to order for each store, based on the data it collects about locals' shopping habits"
- ejolto 6y ago> Lifvs uses artificial intelligence to work out what stock to order for each store The "AI" is an if test if stock < stock_threshold: buy_more(stock)
- aloisdg 6y agoYou can use statistics to determine what can of stock you should favor (e.g. winter clothes vs summer clothes) and the quantity (more Christmas food in December less after). If you have enough data from previous years or a good heuristics, you can start this one easily. Even a plain old markov chains could help.
- m12k 6y agoI'm stunned that week after week, I'll come across the same shelf, with one variant of a thing sold out by midweek, and the unpopular variant next to it virtually untouched, as always. The amount of statistics or programming required to prevent this, and balance the stock to what the market shows that it wants, is fairly trivial, and yet my local supermarket has failed to do so for several decades now.
- rglover 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48rkq90vOBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48rkq90vOBY
- SamuelAdams 6y agoI used to work at a major multi-billion dollar retailer. One of the biggest complaints from customers was waiting at the check out line, especially for small, quick orders. This is the future of grocery stores, like it or not. Employees are expensive and make mistakes, whereas machines are cheap, don't take breaks, and work pretty reliably once you set them up correctly.
- the-dude 6y agoMy favorite supermarket has regular and 'quick' checkouts. I enjoy the interaction with the employees.
- scatters 6y agoDo the employees enjoy the interaction with you, I wonder?
- dominotw 6y agoI enjoyed interacting with customers when i worked as a cashier. But i was also a young person with lots of energy. they seem (or pretend) in: costco, whole foods, trader joes not so much in: walmart, target
- da_big_ghey 6y agoYes, HEB is probably the best at this too. Maybe along with Costco.
- the-dude 6y agoIf they are not, they are pretty good at faking it. And some are greeting me outside of the store. They have no obligation to do so.
- twobitshifter 6y agoI was recently at a CVS and the cashier shouted out that she’d help us as we walked towards the self checkout. She was very friendly and wanted to talk about everything from the upcoming time change to the vaccine. Some people just crave interaction and with the current pandemic they may be too isolated.
- konschubert 6y agoSo this is basically run on a trust basis, right? And if you steal, you will eventually get caught on video and be blocked from entering the store? I can imagine this working well in small villages. You'll get a few thieves and vandals, but eventually you can weed them out. Pretty genius.
- lbhdc 6y agoNot quite. They have your ID and banking information when you enter. You open the doors using the company's app, which works in conjunction with BankID, a secure national identification app operated by Sweden's banks.
- konschubert 6y agoOf course they have a way to identify you and prevent you from signing up again under another name. How else are they going to block you? But just because they have your BankID it doesn't mean that they have your account balance or other banking data, if that's what you're referring to.
- Grustaf 6y agoStealing is still a crime, so there is no need to have direct access to your account. At the very least you would owe the store for what you stole, just like if you're late on an electricity bill. You essentially can't escape that without emigrating.
- kalleboo 6y agoI want to add a note to people who aren't familiar - Sweden has a government debt collector[0]. Unlike the US where I'l told you can mostly dodge private debts and it just becomes a massive nuisance and credit nightmare, in Sweden the government will actually garnish your salary and repossess your stuff for private debts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Enforcement_Authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Enforcement_Authority
- DC1350 6y ago> critics warning that it would make shopping a less sociable experience This is a good thing. Small talk with cashiers who can’t walk away is borderline harassment
- mrweasel 6y agoI believe Sweden has pretty good policing, and the Swedes are just about as honest as you could ever expect a nation to be, but if this was in "rural" Denmark and someone decided to raid the store, there would be very little stopping them. Police is in many cases at least 30 minutes away, if not more, and have no resources to investigate the theft of 10L of milk. In many cases the staff is a store is just as much present to scare of any one wanting to steal. Even if we've seen gangs just walk out with massive amounts of goods, and the staff understandably choosing to not confront them.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- martindbp 6y agoPeople in rural towns are also as honest as they come, but even so I'd expect trouble by youngsters. But maybe the cameras are enough of a deterrent. I could also see a solution where you need to identify yourself in order to be let in through the doors. If you have been spotted letting someone else in who proceeds to steal or vandalize, that person could be held accountable.
- guerrilla 6y ago> I could also see a solution where you need to identify yourself in order to be let in through the doors. The article explains that it requires BankID authentication and a pre-registered banking card to enter.
- martindbp 6y agoI see, somehow I missed that. Well, then I think they have their bases covered. Looking forward to trying one out.
- mrweasel 6y agoI was thinking that, something like what Amazon has done, where you need to ID with the app on your phone, but with no security, you can just jump whatever is blocking your entry. The stores can't be to secure, people need to be able to exit safely.
- cheph 6y ago> BankID, a secure national identification app operated by Sweden's banks. Wow, that sounds pretty racist. Do better Sweden, we all remember what you did in WW2.
- williesleg 6y agoI love that, gonna grab and dash.
- random_upvoter 6y agoI worked in a supermarket for a while and there was plenty of old people who came to that shop almost daily just to interact with another human being.
- qmmmur 6y agoWhat's your point? That people should be indentured in low paying jobs to be old people's friends?
- rootsudo 6y agoPeople aren't indentured to work in Sweden. They don't have to work and have choice of where to work. It's also nice, to talk to people, instead of talking down to them.
- qmmmur 6y agoI have done plenty of jobs that are shit pay in the same tier of manual labour (stockist, hospitality) and have never met anyone in that field who didn't want to do somethinge else if possible.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoIn the Nordic countries, those manual labor jobs are union jobs. Sure, pay is lower than other jobs, but thanks to collective bargaining and the union having your back in case of unforeseen overtime, it isn't "shit pay" like it might be in, say, the United States. I worked some of those jobs when I was in uni, and many of my coworkers were older people who had decided to stay for the long haul, because it does feel like a stable, acceptable working environment.
- hellbannedguy 6y agoIn the USA, we used to have union grocery stores. It seems like every year we are loosing more union jobs than ever. Safeway has always been a hated place to work, but it used to pay their employees a decent salary with benefits. Now—they have a weird semi union status. They load up the stores with desperate people, and still manage to make them maybe the most angry workers I have seen. I overheard one manager tell an employee yesterday to drive to a store two hours away, and be there by 7:00 am! The employee just looked crushed. That kind of crap didn’t happen in union shops. I guess the future will be self checkouts, security cams everywhere, and facial recognition to track.
- Proven 6y agoBut the wage is $15/hour! Take that, capitalist swines!
- xen2xen1 6y agoI'm waiting on Automats to come back, esp. in a complex firm. Basically a bunch of little windows with stuff. Half expected the article to be about that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat
- dalbasal 6y agoThis is potentially interesting... maybe. A lot of retail has a trade off between small convenient stores and bing inconvenient ones. One is convenient. The other is better stocked, better priced, etc. Software is eating the inconvenient stores. Better stocked, Better priced. Hard to beat. Maybe robots eat convenient stores. Depending on how these scale and what price economics are like, this might work well.
- kebman 6y agoI remember visiting a fully automated store already in the 90's in Tromsø, Norway. It was like an extended vendoring machine. It was quite fun watching the robot hand go up and down based on your order. I believe such stores were already common in Japan at the time. The shop didn't make it, though, and was discontinued after a year or two. Today automated checkouts are popping up in more and more shops in Norway, though they're not present in all stores yet. You simply do your shopping as normal, but instead of having a shop clerk beep them for you, you have to do it yourself. It's pretty straightforward, and no app is needed. Sometimes there will be a guard overseeing the terminals, but mostly you're left to your own devices. Otherwise there's usually a normal teller on hand for questions or for products that don't scan. Or if you simply want to pay with legal tender, which Norwegian shops are still obliged to accept per law.
- fasteddie31003 6y agoEnvious of Sweden. If that store were in America everything would have been stolen the first day.
- elindbe3 6y agoThey have Amazon stores in the US. There's one I know of in downtown Chicago. I don't know if it did particularly well but it wasn't robbed bare every day.
- renewiltord 6y agoThe Amazon Go stores in Seattle and (even before full auto was outlawed) in SF are more heavily staffed than a normal store. This makes sense since they're not "in full prod" so to speak, unless that's changed.
- Bostonian 6y agoAdvocates of much higher minimum wages should understand that the eventual consequence will be automating many jobs out of existence, not just people doing the same jobs but for more pay.
- bkor 6y ago> Advocates of much higher minimum wages should understand that the eventual consequence will be automating many jobs out of existence That's been proven not to be the correlated in various studies. Similarly, there's a huge discussion regarding minimum wage in the US, while actually minimum wage adjusted for inflation went down significantly over the last few decades. Automation happens in any case, especially with technology continuously getting cheaper. Anecdotal: In e.g. Netherlands the minimum wage is lower if you're 15 until 21. Different amount until you're 21 or so. As a result supermarkets often fire anyone over 18 while pretending it isn't about the age. The minimum wage is already extremely low for 15-18, raising it would encourage more people to work in supermarkets instead of the current situation. Further, supermarkets are fully focussing on self-checkout. Despite the super low minimum wages.
- vages 6y agoThere will be a market for both automated and manned grocery stores in the future. Until we have developed artificial general intelligence, I wouldn't trust a computer to recommend a cheese to with a certain kind of crackers. In stores with a reasonably wide selection of goods, I usually have to ask for the location of at least one thing. Although locating stuff _could_ be solved by looking it up with an app, I would rather pay the markup. And I'm quite certain that a lot of other people will, because as opposed to with a lot of other goods, you're often low on time when shopping for groceries. I guess the urgency of shopping is why online grocery shopping hasn't taken off as much as even I would have predicted a few years ago.
- throwaway6734 6y agoCouldn't this be replace with roaming alexa style bots on r even something stationary at the end of each aisle?
- have_faith 6y agoGiven the quality and scope of most state of the art chat bots and personal assistants I can only imagine this being an immensely frustrating experience.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago> Until we have developed artificial general intelligence, I wouldn't trust a computer to recommend a cheese to with a certain kind of crackers. Supermarket employees, if you can find one around, have no clue about this and can indeed at most tell you the location of a type of item. > In stores with a reasonably wide selection of goods, I usually have to ask for the location of at least one thing. Which is easily doable through an app on your phone or touchscreen in store. The reality is that as soon as the technology is there, and we seem to be very close, many supermarkets' staff will become redundant across the board. Having real people providing real service will still be a thing, I think, but more of a luxury experience. To take a British example: There won't be many staff left at Tesco but there will still be at Harrod's.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
- null_object 6y agoI'm hoping this can have even wider implications for society and the way people interact. In rural Sweden the last decade all the small local village stores have totally disappeared. This means that when people who are spread around the countryside could previously just cycle a few kilometers to a nearby shop, they now need to take their car and drive (say) 25 kilometers to the nearest town - which also has usually built an out-of-town shopping area that sprawls enormous car-parking over land that might previously have been forest or farmland. The roads are therefore constantly clogged by speeding cars, and have become seriously bike-hostile, discouraging local interactions even more. I think these small stores could actually become a focus for local activity again - even without staff.
- Ceezy 6y agoWhat happened to Sweden anti-confinement stance? Finland, Norway, Danmark are all below 1000 death from COVID total. Sweden is above 10 000 death...
- cromulent 6y agoAt least until a few years ago there were some unlocked open stores in rural Finland, where you just took what you needed and left the cash. The owner just turned up once a day or so to restock and take the money. They may all be gone now, it doesn't take much to destroy that level of local trust.
- tpmx 6y agoThe BankID service seems to trip up many people here. Swedish residents have a personal identity number issued at birth or immigration. Format: YYYYMMDD-NNNN. More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity_number_(Sweden) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity_number_(Swed... BankID is a service run by the Swedish banks that interfaces with the banks, individuals and third parties (like this chain of unmanned stores). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankID The banks know the identities (personal identify number) of their customers via their physical offices. BankID offers an app to individuals and an online API to paying/approved third-party services. Third-party services are able to offer BankID authentication in websites and apps. In the end the third party receives an authenticated personal identity number. There is growing awareness that this service should not be run by private companies/banks.
- smhg 6y agoSame thing happened in Belgium in the last few years where it is called 'Itsme'. Including government openly promoting it in their messaging and services. There is sadly little awareness of it being a private joint venture between banking and telecom. I don't know if it is realistic to expect governments to come up/run this, but when they promote it, I think it should at least be open source.
- NicoJuicy 6y agoI don't think it should be open source. But it's very expensive to integrate it and it's Ogone all over again ( most expensive option = the Belgian one) ~3€ / user/year for the most complete option for ( what is basically) a login verification.
- cambaceres 6y ago> There is growing awareness that this service should not be run by private companies/banks. I don't agree. I'm a Swede too (as I assume you are), and I have basically never heard anyone complain of BankID being owned by the banks. I am really happy that our government does not own BankID, since they suck badly at developing software.
- msoad 6y agoThis makes Amazon Go look like an over-engineered solution!
- tengbretson 6y agoCan we just skip this step and go directly to auto-dispensing kibble bowls?
- dehrmann 6y agoWhere's my rural, 24/7, unstaffed Systembolaget?
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoThis change is being sped up by the fact employees don't actually deter anything anymore. If there is shoplifting they just call the police. In fact, intervening will usually get them in trouble.
- Ericson2314 6y ago- Retail jobs suck, so this is good. - warehouses and public dispensaries are content-address-based networking for the physical world. - I don't really care about purchases being deanonymized because money itself a public good. - I do care about the private sector having the data, because they will surely do terrible things with it. Back to the networking analogy, the post is classic local-address-based networking for the physical realm. Just as we have a state-run post service utility, we should have a state-run warehouse-and-store utility. Even all you free market types: the point is of the free market is that the transacting agents are independent, not that the market itself is. Running the marketplace and goods distribution utility as a public good is perfect fine "market socialism". The only thing to be mindful of is that there is a standard and fair procedure for new sellers to have their goods stocked and distributed to bootstrap the demand.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoNot only Sweden is cash-free but also cash usage is seen with a lot of skepticism.
- Animats 6y agoThis could be the future of charging stations. A parking lot with chargers, and an automated convenience store.
- specialist 6y agoPrivacy (encrypt data at rest) requires global identifiers like BankID, RealID, or equiv. It's a counter intuitive conclusion. cite: Translucent Databases source: worked on medical records and voter privacy stuff