Why Sweden is abandoning its cashless society(uk.news.yahoo.com) |
Why Sweden is abandoning its cashless society(uk.news.yahoo.com) |
It is of great convenience to governments that digital payments require registered accounts on easily-tracked systems.
Just let people buy vegetables without becoming a cell in a Borgesian spreadsheet.
Not entirely sure if those rules were relaxed, but the state and banks with higher cash handling fees did have a fair share in pushing cash out.
Good on Sweden for going against the trend of ever increasing digitisation which is only going to be used against their citizens in bad ways.
On the one hand the disenfranchisement is real. On the other hand many of these people are able to learn lots of new technologies if properly incentivized. It's generally an opt-out of society that's enabled by workarounds being available.
Should we forego on convenience because we have a bunch of naysayers?
Forget about cash, try living life in de Randstad area without a smartphone and half a dozen apps setup, configured and tuned for you life. It's definitely possible, but you will be living at a different level of velocity than if you have all the tools at your disposal.
It wasn’t so convenient during the Iberian power blackout last year when all the electronic payment machines were out of action.
Cyberattacks on infrastructure are increasing.
National resilience/contingency is worth thinking about too.
A little too trusting believing that, no? Hairdressers are famous for cheating on their taxes, and cash is an excellent way to do it.
https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/hairdressers-evading-ta...
"An ongoing audit of the hairdressing industry that the Swedish Tax Agency is currently conducting shows that virtually all hairdressing companies audited by the authority are involved in some form of tax evasion [...] The most common tax avoidance discovered in the audits of around fifty hairdressing companies so far is undeclared income"
I don't miss cash at all, and in many ways I will be happy if I never have to carry it on me again.
It is helping a little bit, but the benefits of this kind of preparedness are overstated.
It's not a fair characterisation that cash is useless without electricity because once you have it(presumably before the electricity stops) then you can still transact with it.
Western governments have a tendency to try and change their publics rather than be changed by the public. They even have a name for it, "psychological nudging".
Nevertheless it is certainly a good idea to think about fallbacks tho.
Youtube-girl Qingyunji bought some water on remote mountain road using QR-on-cardboard and this is what I assume happened.
As you described, one click cut off from commercial transactions and in the cases of the EU sanctioning its own citizens where even helping them feed themselves or their children is an illegal act.
And most people are totally oblivious to most of these massive shifts in the fundamental assumptions of democratic society, and may even support the tyranny they presumably must believe will never be turned on them, even though no one knows more what a loathsome person a traitor is than those who the traitor has served in his betrayal.
And even in cases like Maduro who is a wanted criminal and I believe would be easily proven to have committed crimes against humanity, the lack of public indictment and backlash against the United States for bringing that piece of shit to justice discredits the ICC. It can’t be an organization where it applies universal human rights declarations only when Israel is involved. That’s stupid and that’s exactly why the organization is a failure.
If "the electronics" break down, shops usually can't accept any form of payment at all, because that would be illegal with their on-line cash registers being offline...
But if we are going to view the government as the enemy in this context and thus cash is a way to avoid “control” it also follows that the same are espousing avoidance of paying taxes and the control government and taxes have over you as well.
It’s interesting to see folks talking about the “disadvantaged” such as immigrants (presumably illegal because legal immigrants have varying levels of bank access) who of course deserve to use cash as a moral imperative against the totalitarian government but then if someone says well I disagree with and don’t want to pay taxes (give me cash) because of that same anti-totalitarian point of view they’d be labeled all sorts of negative things like being a non-contributor or something similar.
We have to align on consistent moral claims. If you want to argue well so and so is part of the totalitarian government apparatus then all you are doing is creating an “other” who uses cash to avoid “totalitarianism” and in which case the so-called “totalitarian” apparatus is justified in its hostility toward entities which seek to destroy it.
Col. Jacques Baud is living it right now. He's been cut off from his pension and bank accounts completely in Belgium and is prohibited from crossing borders.
So he can't even return to Switzerland.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/foreign-affairs/former-swiss-in...
also article you link: "It is unclear if Baud is a resident of Switzerland."
so not sure why he should be returning to switzerland
Prophecy: some people here may argue that's a good thing, and we should differentiate between a good and bad debanking.
Edit: as expected, if you want to push for more autocracy and control, you need to find the right bogeyman. And suddenly, people claiming they are liberal and pro freedom will start supporting authoritarian policies, but "just in some cases", whether those people are terrorists, "far rights" or paedophiles.
Replying to your edit: this is not a discussion about whether debanking or state control of the financial system is good or bad in general. I don't have a much opinion on such a complex topic (though I do hope that your principled opposition to state debanking also extends to muslims). What I replied to is your allegation of that he was debanked for his "opinions", which is categorically false. He was put on some sort of list, rightly or wrongly, because he had links with a far-right terrorist* who shot and killed dozens of people at a mosque. You omitting that fact and crying about authoritarianism when confronted leads me to think that you are not arguing in good faith.
*in the strictest definition of the word: openly subscribing (and self-describing) to far-right ideologies, and committing acts of terror
IMHO it's obvious that there should be a limited minimum/basic account provided by the state unconditionally, and that the current practice of using AML regulations to effectively ban people from having bank cards and bank accounts goes against the spirit of due process.
it's quite farcical that private banks are used as mandatory designated sin-eaters (scapegoats) for this. they don't want to and mostly can't comment on the specifics (because SAR - suspicious activity reporting - and the various national equivalents, usually immediately triggers the requirement to play dumb, since that's the only way to ensure that the bank cannot be later dragged in front of whatever authority for not cooperating with the investigation) but everyone knows it, since it's in the fucking news.
and the actual legal actions tend to be overturned.
all of which in total end up helping these organizations (and these politicians) to farm reputation.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/various/entry-ban-for-austrian-...
Are you really trying to point at some racist freak that advocates for ethnical cleansing via mass deportations as an example of debanking being bad?
Because you are actually convincing me of the opposite.
Brazil has Pix. Though if Bolsonaro wins the election he'll sell the financial system to the US, even though Brazilians love Pix.
These are not fringe payment systems, either. They're really big where they are.
EU is working on something similar, and I think it's launched in a couple of countries.
And before Blik most people used online direct transfers for online payments, not cards anyway. It is funny how the leapfrogging works.
The only reason I need a debit card is paying subscription to American companies. I really wish they integrated better.
E.g. in Norway, BankAxept handles 80% of in-store card payments in Norway - essentially nearly all debit card payments, despite the fact most debit cards are also Visa cards. The Visa/Mastercard part typically only gets used outside of Norway.
BankAxept is also owned by the same group of banks that owns Vipps, and MobilePay that dominate the mobile payments market in Norway and Denmark as well, with smaller user bases in Sweden and Finland.
And many of these European payment providers (including Blik and Vipps/MobilePay) are moving towards being part of the European Payments Alliance to make these systems interoperable across Europe as well, which would take Visa and Mastercard out of a significantly larger proportion of European payments. Some of those cross border payments are already in place.
Chargeback is also one of the reasons why you pay (directly or indirectly) for Visa or Mastercard.
Cash is a good backup and is easy to give to someone else e.g. I recently moved house and my brother was driving my car (while I drove the moving van). I left £60 in cash in the cubby box, so he could refill. No need to mess around with apps/bank transfers, just leave the notes/coins in the compartment.
Democratic states need to constitutionally enshrine the right to banking, if they insist on being called democratic.
Sweden hasn't seen war in more than two hundred years, it's good to be reminded what to do just in case.
I wouldn't believe any of the poltical grifters (left/right/whateveR) online when they said they are debanked/cancelled unless they show definitive proof that is what happened.
It's unfortunate that many people, including you, would support authoritarian methods and reducing of human rights like free speech, privacy, etc, as long as that is framed against "bad" people, and not "good".
Of course, that same totalitarian regime may tomorrow decide you are "bad", or at least not "good enough".
I'm not arguing about Sellner, I picked him because I knew it would provoke this kind of response.
But if he did something illegal, state should arrest him, bring him to court, and put him in jail. Legally and fine, that's why we pay taxes.
But since he is not convinced, and not jailed, harassing him because some people don't like him is pure tyranny. Approved by the people who think they are better than North Korea.
Either way these are small change, and thanks to the slow but persistent reduction, many places refuse to accept cash and/or don't even have the facilities to deal with it!
EDIT: crazybonkersai: Your comment below has been flagged (not by me), so I'll reply here: At no point have I suggested there is nothing strategic about Putins decisions - that is entirely a strawman. That does not mean there isn't reason for neighbours to be concerned for their safety. A full scale invasion of Finland or Sweden would've been unlikely even without NATO membership (not least given how Finland did last time), but Russia has an extensive and recent history of testing and probing the readiness of their neighbours, and not being concerned about infringing on their sovereignty if they believe it serves their other interests. The more likely scenario affecting Finland and Sweden would be if Putin decided he wanted to attempt going into the Baltic states, and saw a need to impose control over the Baltic Sea as part of the process.
Or are you thinking more of a "farmer" as someone selling individual artisan carrots?
It’s an insult to everyone’s intelligence with these laughable desperate lies twisting reality. It is so immoral, such primitive simplistic lies, purely tyrannical.
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/christchurch-atte...
I don't have a horse in this race and didn't even know who this noname Austrian firebrand was prior to this discussion but the evidence is not exactly hard to find. By all means feel free to deny, shoot the messenger, call me names, etc. Won't change anything, people can just fact check stuff themselves
You think that “actual legal actions tend to be overturned” is an acceptable state of affairs?? Think about what you said right there? Read it again. And then again!
It’s astonishing you would say such a thing. You think you would somehow be immune from the tyrant you support?
i am using that as support for my claim that this extralegal proscription of access to financial services would likely also not survive the courts.
my position on this is simple. if the state claims there's something illegal then they should charge him/them, if not then pressuring private parties to stop exercising their freedom of assembly and association obviously goes against the spirit of civil rights and the rule of law.
(and I know the problem is convoluted, hard and obviously a realpolitik minefield, but ... again, obviously whatever the last 20 years of elected governments were/are doing did not solve the problems.)
I had cash and zero problems. Many had no cash and many problems.
You specifically mentioned banking as a problem and I mentioned a specific solution. Based in real life, not fantasy.
I am arguing your point and you are attacking me rather than making a point of your own.
All organisations are made up.
We're literally in the middle of the election Bolsonaro is winning.