Hacker News Reader

Comment by yellow_postit | Hacker News Reader

I fail to see how Sweden in this case is enforcing the cashless trends through surveillance or coercion.

The primary cited reason for the cashless trend is the security against money laundering. My government has done every policy and regulative action they can to guarantee that all money transaction is recorded and a bank liable if anything is not clean.

The primary cited reason for the cashless trend is the ability for shops to simply say no. Anti-money laundry laws trickle down from EU level.

And the most obvious reason for the cashless trend is that cashless is easier and more fruitful for buyer and seller. Buyer just touches their card/phone to the machine. Who likes dealing with cash? (Answer: Germans)

Also Greeks, Italians and most the Europeans I know. Cashless is a Northern European thing I would say.

Edit: Please comment if things are different in your non-Swedish country (considering Europe here, but curious about other countries of course).

It’s almost the same in Norway, but I think/hope it is easier for foreigners. You link your VISA to use Vipps, where you can pay is most bars, restaurants, taxi etc. One reason that Vipps (came before Swish?) is not booming in Norway could be because we have almost 0% fee on our cards. This is because all the banks have come together to make BankAxccept, just to avoid the fees that VISA and MasterCard use.

I see no need for using Vipps or ApplePay. I place my bank card on the terminal and it is paid, with no fees. If it is over $20 I have to enter the pin. Super simple.. Me and my wife actually laught when we find coins in old jackets, because we haven’t seen coins in months. Almost forgot how they look and feel.

That's mostly tax dodging though. Many EU countries have that baked in to the tax regime. If it was actually enforced (a la cashless) the entire e.g. Belgian restaurant sector would disappear overnight. Everyone there knows it. It's kinda weird.

It is worth noting that the article describes how private sector decisions are crowding out cash, how the government (specifically the central bank) is concerned about this, and considering to deliver a solution (namely digital cash issued by the central bank).

The system is still based on central bank currency in the background. What is being lost is direct consumer access to central bank currency: they must rely on private-sector intermediaries.

The first time I experienced a cashless store was Amsterdam in 2013. It was a fast food restaurant. Of course at first I was a little upset but it did get me thinking what are the advantages to the store

The store no longer has to go to the bank to get heaps of change

The store no longer has to take money to the bank

The store will have no money on premises so less of a target for robbery

The store will have no money on premises so no having to trust employees not to take some.

Nothing to account. Just read the total.

In almost every way, as long as there are enough customers it's a win for the store. Many customers love it too. Most of my western friends visiting Japan get annoyed they can't go cashless in Japan because they're used to being cashless where they are from.

I did run into my first no-cash accepted store here recently. It will be interesting to see how it goes in Japan as they are more privacy oriented.

I agree with all the issues of going cashless. It scares the crap out of me, especially when traveling. But, I can't see it not happening relatively quickly.

Japan has electronic money cards which can be bought and refilled without any identifying information, and they are widely accepted. They're in a better place for privacy than the West.

Actually, if use of cash can be denied, then yes, coercion for using cards could be established. Are Swedish businesses allowed to reject cash? I think I read they can in that article.

Coercion: "To force to act or think in a certain way by use of pressure, threats, or intimidation; compel."

So if I'm down the street and cash won't let me get on a bus, the movie tickets can't be purchased, food can't be bought etc. There's the basis for pressure. Can't buy food without card, ok you go hungry. There's the threat. I'm sure that intimidation will turn up in a lot of little ways. Public ostracism / humiliation (even at subtle levels) due to not having a card could be seen as real enough to count. The network effects of not having a card will likely cause serious inconvenience.

If "you can't do anything without a card" then you are compelled to get one.

Sounds like coercion to me.

Lots of oppressive regimes and policies throughout 20th century had large popular support too, and people opted-in to them.

Exactly, this is not stated enough. We have to grow up with our relationship with political systems, authoritarianism even dictatorship: it happens because of some population dynamics which we may or may not be currently be participating in or regularly encounter. So sure, the question of why cashless has taken off there is interesting, but maybe more importantly we need to think about the current state, what could be the next moves (the consequences), do we want to influence it and targeting what?

...

But thinking about currencies and economy in europe is always kinda doomed because the euro is double-locked. No national economic policy actually has a meaning since at most your gonna leverage some power to influence the ECB, but you're never gonna be the one to actually decide. So there is a complicated combat to do cross european countries saying ok we have to re-found the mission and the organization of the ECB, the relationship with national economies. How do we want to keep down inflation: just maintain growth in face of other world economies that actually grow or make ourselves more independent, what do we do when countries have diverging interests, how do we make sure it's regulated and we keep control on it?

I would vouch for a system where euro exists but is restricted to cross-country corporate business and easy traveling: common credit card system where you can transparently withdraw any participating national money at the current nation negociated exchange rate (eg federating by having a star topology instead of a complete graph for exchange rates: "we treat all the others the same"). Additionally the BCE should have a second decision instance (two-chamber-like) basically being the european budget commission but elected by people, not chosen by governments, to ease cross-country political action. And on a more technical/practical level we have to rethink about wire transfers. I don't know much about how SEPA works but it's probably interesting to take a look.

Every country in your system would have to use their own currency again because if banknotes are the same and (example) the German Euro is stronger than the French one (that would mean everything on Germany is cheaper than in France), the French would hoard all the Euro banknotes they can get their hands on and buy stuff in Germany. Traveling to Germany is not for everybody but there would be companies doing mass transfers of money and goods for the rest of the population. By the way, this is why the Eurozone authorities try to make every country align on debt, growth, etc, which is pretty hopeless given so many governments with different pools of voters and agendas. Like having the USA with a powerless president (who knows who's the EU president), camera and senate and governors trying to agree on everything with basically no cross country political party.

It also looks a little like those countries with their own national currency but also everyone accepting USD. Tourists can carry dollars, lose a little by unfavorable rates at every payment, maybe end up with change in the local currency to use in the next shop. I remember that on vacation in Uzbekistan.

I'm not sure i understand your scenario: germany arguably has a more powerful economy than france, so DM would have a lower exchange rate towards euro than FF towards euro. So imho things in france would actually be cheaper (as seen from germany). Anyway, for that we have customs (everyone has some sort of customs, this doesn't mean strong borders for people). And more generally i don't want any "US of europe": the ratio between in-country similarity and cross-country similarity is far to high across europe to let down economic sovereignty (different demographics, different cultures, different economies, i mean this is great but it implies some restrictions on what political structure can reasonably work). If we have a unique economic policy, this will just end up simply being the policy of some dominating nation inside EU (and that's currently the case, more or less around a strong germany), and this ends up destabilizing politically all the others. I believe that a well functioning european union should be a federation of states that eases any wanted coordination and not a single federated state enforcing unwanted coordination (which benefits no one but the nation that happens to be in a de facto power position in the federation). A wannabe strong federated state would only exacerbate power positions, thus weakening the power of the group with regard to the outside world[#].

[#] This is a well-known social/evolution dynamic: group selection. Bees suicide when attacking: individually it's a weak behavior, but globally it makes the group more resilient. The balance between cooperation and competition is a balance between individual power and group power. Europe is a group of groups, so the balance is weirder but having too strong cooperation at the top level (eg enforcing a common economic policy) will weaken countries. But only some countries because of non-homogeneity, thus destabilizing everything by lowering local national resilience (to specific local concerns, which do exist). So i believe we have to accept that we need slightly stronger countries to make the european union stick together.

Maybe the near monopoly of the payment network is the coercion?

"either use Swish or go without food/water/travel/etc" is coercion by any definition

Food is payed with VISA och Mastercard. Water is payed through the online banking service. Travel with VISA/Mastercard (even local buses accept credit cards). "Etc" is also payed with VISA or Mastercard. Swish is a mere conveniency for transferring money without having to log onto your online banking service. I use it once a month tops.

What happens if you don't have visa/mastercard or even a bank account?

What happens if you don't have cash? Answer: you get cash, because most shops won't barter.

Same thing here.

What jappens when the electricity is out? In a Katrina or Maria (hurricanes) scenario.

I think not having a bank account is unthinkable in a place like Sweden. Thanks to the strong social safety net and extremely restrictive immigration policy they don't have abject poor. At worst you're lower middle class and can get a bank account.

It does seem to be a bad deal for tourists however. I'm surprised that companies are apparently so quick to ditch traditional credit cards.

But companies aren’t ditching credit cards, we’re just using “contact less”/Apple Pay/etc. more. When Swish is used by a company (I’ve only seen a couple), they’re either super-cheap or gimmicky.

Some people would say that consumers are free to avoid vendors that don't accept cash, but in practice this "freedom" is actually a huge cost, in terms of time and mental overhead and lack of choice.

The danger is that society as a whole ends up making sub-optimal decisions because each person is (selfishly / rationally) choosing to avoid these extra costs.

Powerful entities (even those falling short of absolute monopolies) probably get away with a lot more societal harm than they would if we were more aware of this "coercion of convenience".

All regulations that are enforced are coercive by definition. The regulations that create a de facto monopoly are coercive.

I would guess some surveillance is involved in terms of audits of banks, but it might not fit the technical definition of surveillance.

In this case it's a lack of regulation though. Stores are not coerced into accepting cash, so they choose what's most practical to them.

You have a severe lack of imagination. You must be fun at parties.

There are a myriad of ways Sweden can and probably is enforcing cashless trends through surveillance and coercion. Encouraging banks and retailers to refuse cash services, as referenced in the article, is likely done by the government. This enhances their ability to track and control all monetary transactions for any number of reasons (nefarious or otherwise).

> You must be fun at parties.

Can we, as a society, just stop saying that?

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this again.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com