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Comment by jamesblonde | Hacker News Reader

As a resident of Sweden, i can only say that this is the future for all western countries. Life is just better without cash. We don't pay the mental tax of always ensuring i have dollar bills on me to tip left, right, and center. Your phone is enough to get you through the day. The govt is still run by the people for the people here, so most people aren't worried about totalitarianism. Most beggars now have signs with their phone number to swish them cash - because nobody has cash to give them (the other form of begging is collecting plastic bottles and cans with deposits).

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No. It isn't worth it. Life isn't better, but privacy non-existent and society is ridiculously fragile from outtakes (this isn't even factoring in that the systems could be actively attacked).

Yes it is the future, but we will be much worse for it.

/ Another swede.

> Life is just better without cash.

Even if you believe that, allowing private for-profit businesses (banks, credit card companies) to skim a percentage off of every single monetary transaction to line the pockets of their shareholders is utterly grotesque. It amounts to a mandatory tax, except none of the tax is going to the benefit of the taxed.

At a minimum, a reasonable cashless society would require monetary transactions to be done at zero profit and with strong regulation requiring financial institutions to minimize the cost to the seller and buyer.

In practice, similar fees are attached to businesses that move their cash to their bank account. Many companies (including public ones - many buses don't accept cash anymore) actively stop accepting cash because it increases the risk of getting robbed, and that is an increasing pressure as fewer and fewer handle cash.

People who speak in absolute terms are always wrong.

I always have cash on me and it's extremely common here, 60 kilometres outside Stockholm, for people to not only carry cash but to actively use it.

A non-trivial amount of transactions in Sweden are still cash-based.

We don't pay the mental tax of always ensuring i have dollar bills on me to tip left, right, and center.

That has never been necessary in Sweden, or (AFAIK) most other places. I have never known anyone outside of the US who carries cash for the express purpose of tipping. To the extent that tipping even exists in Sweden, it's usually just done by rounding up whatever is owed.

As long as you are fine with companies tracking every place you go (via GPS), everything you purchase, everything you view on line, and everybody you know. Then sure, the phone can replace cash.

Often I do not want any record that I have purchased something, I will stick with cash. Thanks.

Specifically anything that anyone can or has at one point considered sinful, I would buy with cash:

- Alcohol - Cigarettes - Drugs - Condoms - Feminist literature - Anti-feminist literature - Ammunition - Guns - Bible - The Koran - Marx’s The Capital - Low cut dress

"I don't care about privacy because I have nothing to hide" = "I don't care about free speech because I have nothing to say"

People in the Nordic countries have a different expectation of privacy. Just search for the plethora of papers in economics and finance that use "Swedish/Danish/Finnish data". While anonymized, you can get a look at spending and investment of the whole population. After you move to a new place, you get a personalized onslaught of mail welcoming you the neighbourhood. Everything you do is connected to the personnummer (social security number), including loyalty cards in shops.

And what happens if you wish to opt out of relying on a phone? The consequences of total and utter dependency on a technology you don't control and which is ripe for exploit are horrifying. If it ever comes to that, it's no different than having an embedded microchip under your scalp. Thanks, but I'll bear the minor inconveniences of cash, where applicable, for the freedom such transactions still offer in this ever-digitized, tracking society.

> We don't pay the mental tax of always ensuring i have dollar bills on me to tip left, right, and center.

Is this something you were doing before?

If not, why did you bring it up? Who do you imagine is doing this?

When I moved from the bay area to Germany, I suddenly had to actively manage the cash in my wallet and intentionally bring coins -- coins, people! -- with me around town. Felt like taking a step backwards in time, really annoying.

If you use the "wrong" bill denominations or don't have the right coins, cashiers can get irked at you too. It's so backwards compared to not having to think about it.

As someone who lives in Germany I find this surprising. Yes, people expect you to have bills of the right size. But coins? Never encountered that.

Cashless is more convenient. But given how fundamental money is in our society, I would never be fine with a centralized system that controls all payments. That is simply too much power in one place. I know HN is more about startup-hackers than FOSS-hackers, but I am pretty sure everyone here understands that this is a dangerous development.

> coins? Never encountered that.

Yes, sometimes cashiers ask if I have certain coins to make giving change easier.

Also you need coins for shopping carts.

> Yes, sometimes cashiers ask if I have certain coins to make giving change easier.

You would have encountered the identical behavior in the bay area if you'd paid for things in cash. That's not because the cashier expects you to have the coins; it's an extra effort on their part to make things more convenient for you.

I always found Germans pretty accommodating about breaking notes, though I wasn't trying to spend Bin Ladens ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/500_euro_note

If you've ever been on the bad side of banks you'll dread this a lot. I merely had my credit card stolen but getting a replacement was surprisingly time-consuming and I'm glad I could still eat and travel until then.

If you get on the bad side of the banks, it's much worse. You can't get a bank account at all, or you can't keep the accounts you have.

If you had credit (overdraft or credit card), it is taken away exactly at the moment you need to use it and you're put into unauthorised debt. If that happens you may not get credit from anywhere else. Where I live, even high-interest payday loans will likely be declined at that point.

If you run out of funds, you're probably going to incur compound charges as bills continue to try to be drawn.

In a cashless world run through bank accounts, at that point your friends can't lend you a little something to help with immediate necessities like food. Anything they send is instantly absorbed by charges and/or cancelling unauthorised debt (which was authorised when you incurred it - remember you're on the bad side of banks and they took away existing credit arrangements).

So you can't buy that food, and your friends can't even give/lend you a little money to help - you'll need friends who will directly feed you.

If it lasts for long, you can't rent somewhere to live, and you can't get paid for decent work. (These two things are already bad - where I live a poor credit rating means rental agencies will decline a tenancy or ask for 6 or 12 months rent (and 1-2 months deposit), and people who can't get bank accounts can't take jobs that only pay wages to an account. The two are linked and it's tough to get out of.)

Don't get on the bad side of banks in a cashless, banks-only society.

So if your phone dies or is lost or stolen, how do you pay for food with no phone?

How do you even buy a replacement phone if you have no phone to pay with?

If you lose your wallet how do you pay for food with no wallet? This is a false line of argument.

With the spare cash I have at home. I don't have a spare phone at home, with a spare SIM card.

So... the logical conclusion is you would instead have a spare phone at home.

Hmm, keep $200-600 of quickly depreciating assets whose creation is a sin against our children’s enviroment when I can have five crisp linen Benjamins at home?

And do the same for car.

And the hotel room when you are travelling.

Doesn’t seem too logical.

You know I already have a spare phone at home. Cost me nothing technically since when I upgraded I just kept it instead of throwing it out.

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Y'all bitch it's ridiculous (and I ain't saying it's right or that I agree with the premise of having to do it in the first place), I'm just saying thats what people will do faced with the situation.

Which is a significantly bigger investment. An extra phone is a permanent loss of the money that went into buying it, it requires maintenance (of a sort) and needs to be replaced on a regular basis since the payment apps will presumably continue to require relatively recent operating systems. It also requires a dedicated SIM card with associated cost.

As a bonus, phones sometimes explode and set fire to things - when they're not busy getting hacked :)

You'll adjust.

Logical: perhaps. Ridiculous: definitely.

Most of life beyond the hunter/gatherer stage is ridiculous.

It's ridiculous all the way down.

SIM card is key. In the US, last I checked, networks won’t give you an extra SIM for the same line.

So you’d have to get an extra service line :S

I'd estimate dead battery and network signal problems occur two orders of magnitude more often than people losing their wallet.

Even for rarer problems like phone software freezing up, touch sensor going awry, phone memory full but can't clean it (a bug but still), and losing network access because someone didn't pay the phone bill or it's pay-as-you-go and can't afford the top-up quantum - I think I've seen all of those more often than I've seen people lose all their cash.

And then there's the cost of replacement. If you urgently have to get a new phone to replace a broken, lost or stolen one, to pay for necessities - many people don't have enough short-term funds to cover it, nor access to credit.

Some of these can be addressed, but we've a long way to go.

Plus, I’m privileged, but I’m really not more than mildly annoyed if I loose my wallet with $50-$100.

The way I see it some person will have the opportunity to do the right thing and turn it in, or I like to imagine that a homeless will have a great a day.

The only thing that bothers me is my information in my wallet, which I will pay far more than $100 to keep safe.

I have $200 in a variety of denominations in my glove box.

I have $2 000 cash at home.

Once I’m home I can write myself a cheque, and with my passport, easily withdrawal more money at any bank (or grocery store).

Also, if a natural disaster happens (earthquake, fire, flood, hurricane, Norsemen with iPhones disembark on our shores) I don’t have to rely on any network to buy something. I just pay cash, or write a cheque.

Cash is very robust. (Booze, cigarettes and gold more so, but that’s another story)

I don't. Perhaps mostly as I live in a different country.

I do have a £5 or 20 note as an emergency money in my bag and £20-40 in some drawers at home. E.g. to buy lunch if I come across a food stall that doesn't accept card payments. Rarer and rarer is it needed in the UK, and when I lived in Norway it was months between each time I needed cash.

I do however have spare debit/credit cards at home and my bag as well in case I lose my wallet. (I have never actually lost a wallet, but have left it in my coat/trousers at home etc)

With more and more stores (especially in Scandinavia as the OP details) no longer accept cash, and have not accepted cheques for decades, I am not sure your solution is a long-term solution.

[1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/08/03/paying-cash-...

[2] https://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/no-cash-sign...

The staff in the local branch of our bank know who we are without asking (no, this isn't because we're particularly good customers, just regulars)

I can just go up to the counter and ask to withdraw some of my money and (against my signature) they'll hand it over. No ID required, really handy if you've mislaid your wallet.

I realise this one can't really scale (!) but it is definitely a nice feature.

We both know the way to make this scale is visual pattern matching for identification using artificial intelligence on the blockchain.

You don't have all your paper money in your wallet with you all the time, right?

If I lose my wallet now I can go to my house and I have money to eat. If I lose my phone (or my wallet with card in a cashless society) I'm in a bigger problem in the short term

Transactions to businesses are done with cards. Transactions between individuals are done with phones. A few businesses use the phone transfers but one doesn’t use that to buy food. It’s typically done with debit cards like most other places. If my card is lost I actually don’t have any spare cash at home or similar - although it is recommended to keep some.

Naivete is abundant... Guess what happens to your ability to do anything if whatever the ID that is used to identify you is marked as invalid or even better deceased?

https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/16/9340511/perstin-experian-...

As someone who' seen both the cashless and society with cash. The cash one is better.

> The govt is still run by the people for the people here, so most people aren't worried about totalitarianism.

They should, it's just stupid not to care about democracy and your own freedom.

It is the future, but there are at the same time a lot of unsolved problems involved. Tourists not being able to pay unless they happen to have a VISA card is one, old people not understanding technology another. And the dependence on the private sector for cash that the article refers to is also a real problem.

But I do agree with the premise that it is progress in action, it just isn't the case that we are moving towards a steady state but the end goal is still constantly evolving.

I think you are confusing "without cash" with "with digital payment methods".

The vast majority of Americans rarely use cash, but that doesn't make it worthless to us.

The mental tax of having £100 in your wallet? this is hardly a serious problem for most people.

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