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Comment by plufz | Hacker News Reader

Atleast 99% of my payments in sweden are with a totally normal credit card, the rest with swish. I only use paper money to give to homeless people, can’t remember when I bought something with bills and coins. I think it’s great, I’m more worried about tax evasion than my government knowing what I buy. I’m more interested in my speech being free than my purchases, even though I can see the problem in non-functioning democracies and dictatorships.

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Its not just the government that has this data, but every intermediary in the non-cash payment chain. Mastercard for example sells its payment data to Google, who uses it to correlate online ad viewing with in store purchases. There is no way to opt out of this if you use Mastercard, and other intermediaries do similar shady things with your data.

IF you can’t opt out of this in EU then it goes against GDPR (actually they must let you opt in). It would be interesting to dig deeper here.

You actually can opt out. There is a hidden online form, I saw it once.

but such purchase is untraceable to you as PII. neither google nor mastercard learns the linkage details to the data the other holds, they just learn that data is linked.

you can opt out by not using your gmail account as an addres on your mastercard.

and i believe there’s an explicit opt out as well.

this measures conversion but in a privacy safe way, so it’s actually good thing.

the google implementation that is. i guarantee anyone else doing this (i haven’t heard of such though) is leaking data like crazy

Ooo nasty...

Just today I went to a concert in Malmø where the bar is cash only. This is a medium sized place.

You can withdraw cash by credit card at the ticket desk, to take to the bar and pay for drinks. It's annoying for people like me, occasional visitors from Denmark.

I don't know why they don't have the chip and pin terminal at the bar.

They would have to pay commission on every transaction to whoever owns the terminal and the network.

Actually they pay about the same commission for cash (yes!) when they take it to the bank.

You have to pay someone to take away the cash and its often slower than tapping your card on a reader.

I have not said that it is not worth it. But it really depends on the business and the arrangement. Some banks charge you a fixed minimum rate making small purchases relatively more expensive for the seller.

But receiving cash also carries a lot of cost

People tip a lot more when paying in cash. Also, they can pocket some of the cash payments and avoid taxes.

How do you even buy a surprise gift for your wife? Or something she does not "need" to know about?

Not being snarky, but there are homeless people in Sweden? In the US we're regaled with tales of the Scandanavian social safety nets. We're told everyone is taken care of. That's not the case?

Those that want help can get it — you can’t force help on everyone, and you need to be a legal citizen. Some are visiting from other EU countries.

And some from non EU countries.

Some men from Macedonia slept opposite my apartment in Copenhagen for a while in the summer. They get enough donations from passers by to keep them supplied with alcohol, and somehow avoid being deported (or return soon after?).

People may also beg even though they have a home.

Interesting that they can't force people into help. Some Western democracies have provisions for forcing people into help: UK with the previous ASBO laws, US with wards of the state, and even San Francisco targeting 100 "most hopeless homeless" to be forced into help.

It's very odd to me that you need to be a citizen to get benefits. California takes care of everyone -- citizen or not.

I’m sorry for the irony in the following paragraphs, but here is how i read this post:

Thanks to the world renowned U.S social saftey net everyone get looked after!

This is why you for example never see any homeless people in SF or LA. If you happen to stumble upon a rare occurence of a person sleeping on the steets, you can be sure it’s at least a US citizen.

<\irony>

No, but seriously, it is true that Sweden (and social _democracy_ in general) is a way of forbidding citizens to live in extreme poverty, to the benefit of everyone.

This is not imposed on the citizens themselves but rather the state.

We do this by having the state make sure there are provisions in place to TRY to take care of everyone. You might have to be able to navigate the society to some extent though, something that can be especially hard for individuals with mental illnesses or drug addiction (in many ways these are ofc connected).

It can also be true if you are actually not a citizen.

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