Cash only in Berlin
thecritic.co.uk
thecritic.co.uk
Then he continues to discuss how "fortunately, there seems to be a grassroots pushback against such globalising trends" which I find equally weird. He comments about the existence of burger joints and ramen bars as if these are literally destroying the city's economy. How are german restaurants (which definitely exist in Berlin) and foreign restaurants mutually exclusive?
I also like to mention that many places prefer cash only in Germany for tax evasion reasons, not because of some made-up "grassroots pushback" against the big, scary globalism of.. foreign restaurants. (???)
Another obscure point is that "eager-looking under 18s try to get in [beer breweries], only to be politely turned away without any fracas." which is again, a very stupid point to make, since you are allowed to buy beer at 16 in Germany already.
Then he quotes a person of supposedly Eritrean descent saying “But the people coming now, they don’t learn German and they don’t want to work.” which sounds pretty much like your average alt-right talking point, that has been disproven over and over again.
I'm really sorry, but this person seems to know literally absolutely nothing about Berlin, Germany, or life in Germany in general. This article is mediocre at most and a farce.
> Kastanienalle Strasse
It's Kastanienallee. And as it's an Allee (an avenue lined with trees), it can't be a Straße (a street). Even if it were a Straße, it would be one word, or hyphenated. Sigh.
This article seems more like propaganda than actual journalism.
The same happens in reverse: some Europeans think America is the land of cowboys and guns and fireworks, but that's really more like just Texas, and when they go to New York they're surprised by seeing none of that.
(Not that I’d recommend going there)
(Fox, in case you're lucky enough not to know, is a minor UK celebrity best known for his provocative behaviour around race, Covid vaccines and gender/sexuality. You can easily guess the sort of thing he gets excited about, I imagine.)
In general whenever such a publication is talking about a foreign locality, the aim is always to influence the local (here British) discourse, not taking something foreign on their own merits, but using it as a mirror for the authors’s pet peeve in their own locality.
I've been flagging these ungratifying stories for a while now. Hopefully it teaches people to treat HN less like a tabloid...
> The author of this article seems to make some very obscure points here. First and foremost: "You have to work pretty hard to find a bar serving traditional Germanic beverages and food." What does the author define as "Germanic" beverages and food? As a german that has lived for some time in Berlin I'm quite sure that there are more than enough places to grab "Germanic" beverages and food at. They just don't stand out much. [EDIT: For those who don't know, Germanic doesn't mean German. Germanic means something different]
You yourself admit that these places "don't stand out much". Does this not support the authors point that he had to work hard to find these places?
> I also like to mention that many places prefer cash only in Germany for tax evasion reasons, not because of some made-up "grassroots pushback" against the big, scary globalism of.. foreign restaurants. (???)
Private payment processors (like MasterCard and Visa) can for any and no reason refuse their services. Ridiculing and dismissing the author's concern by pulling out the "big scary globalism" straw man is disingenuous.
> Another obscure point is that "eager-looking under 18s try to get in [beer breweries], only to be politely turned away without any fracas." which is again, a very stupid point to make, since you are allowed to buy beer at 16 in Germany already.
18 and older for beverages over 1.2% ABV (which is most beers).
> Then he quotes a person of supposedly Eritrean descent saying “But the people coming now, they don’t learn German and they don’t want to work.” which sounds pretty much like your average alt-right talking point, that has been disproven over and over again.
You can definitely buy beer.
> Does this not support the authors point that he had to work hard to find these places?
Just because a tourist is too ignorant to find these places doesn't mean they don't exist. There are plenty of them. They are mostly old-school and don't have big ads outside. Use google maps. There are plenty.
> Private payment processors (like MasterCard and Visa) can for any and no reason refuse their services. Ridiculing and dismissing the author's concern by pulling out the "big scary globalism" straw man is disingenuous.
If you're pushing for cash-only or card-only other than for tax evasion reasons you're pretty much ideologically tainted.
Otherwise, I'm no longer going to discuss this "journalist outlet" that is just a mouthpiece for alt-right propaganda. Especially one that can't differentiate between germanic and german.
Where did I say that you could not buy beer? Please re-read the original claim.
> Just because a tourist is too ignorant to find these places doesn't mean they don't exist. There are plenty of them. They are mostly old-school and don't have big ads outside. Use google maps. There are plenty.
Again, where did I (or the original article) claim that these places don't exist? You continue responding to imaginary claims, this is no way to communicate.
> If you're pushing for cash-only or card-only other than for tax evasion reasons you're pretty much ideologically tainted. Otherwise, I'm no longer going to discuss this "journalist outlet" that is just a mouthpiece for alt-right propaganda. Especially one that can't differentiate between germanic and german.
What a arrogant and dismissive statement. You seem to have taken offense at the author for not properly differentiating between germanic and german. Why is this so important to you?
So maybe you have some points in your comment, but considering you're obviously totally wrong on the private payment processors (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A...), i'd think your interpretation might be weaker.
Prompt: Summarize the contents of EU 2015/2366
Response: EU 2015/2366, also known as the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2), is a European Union directive that regulates payment services and payment service providers within the EU. It aims to increase competition and innovation in the payments industry, as well as enhance security and consumer protection. The directive requires payment service providers to implement strong customer authentication for electronic payments, and also allows for the use of third-party providers for certain payment-related services, such as account information and payment initiation. Additionally, it also includes provisions for the protection of consumer rights, such as the right to a refund in case of unauthorized payment transactions. Overall, it's a set of rules to increase safety and transparency of online payments and to foster competition between payment service providers, which ultimately should lead to better services and lower prices for consumers.
The only consumer rights mentioned are the right to refunds for unauthorized transactions. To the best of my knowledge, these companies can choose to cease doing business with you for any or no reason at all. Feel free to prove me wrong.
Berlin's cash-only culture is definitely a shock to most tourists who come there from the EU and US. Whether it's restaurants that don't advertise "cash only" anywhere, only to surprise you when you pull out your card at the end, to späti that have ridiculous card minimums like 15+ euro. A discussion on that, the reasons for it, and the implications of moving away from it would have been interesting. But instead, we got an utterly confused mess from the author.
Some do, some do it for other reasons. Especially older smaller shops are often do it for cost-reasons, or because the owners are old and don't care much for modern technology, or because they are young and hip and don't care for modern technology, which is especially in the Hipster-Areas of Berlin a real thing, which is a pretty sad thing in its own. I mean we are talking about shops who not just remain with physical cash, but where the whole shop and its vibes are oldschool, analog, without any advanced technology. At that point it's just part of the marketing and sellout-identity.
The general problem is, Cash is still the most reliable, simple and cost-efficient solution for payments. While Cashless still demands contracts and some equipment. Established Shops often have old bad contracts with high fees for cashless transfers, and prior to the pandemia, cashless was not used widely enough for them to gain a solid experience with it. This changed in the last years, but not for everyone, and old habits die hard.
I know from my own family, which is full of old and strange people, some even having smaller shops. Most of them have problem with such stuff, some are not even willing to use something like WhatsApp or a simple calculator-app. And yes, some also just don't care for tax, because this is also hard. Reasons are just manifold with that topic.
If you prefer cash you must be a criminal.
An ex girlfriend made me feel bad for paying cash at a restaurant, because people would think we're drug dealers.
A legal, government backed way to pay for good and services. Is culturally frowned upon or discouraged.
What a world
As if the drug trade slowed because they banned the note. No, the trade will continue as long as there are buyers and stuff for humans to trade.
If the claim is true, shouldn't the 100€ note also be taken out circulation? In fact, all notes? Where does one draw the line?
Perhaps money is the root of all evil. Be it digital or plastic or paper.
Drug cartels actually also use stolen artworks as currency. Which would now make an interesting study to see whether art crime actually increased since the 500€ went out of circulation ;)
In supermarkets here, the cash in the registers need to be counted every so often to make sure nobody is stealing from the company (because that has happened and will always happen). This burden and the cost of labour associated with it also generally disappears when customers pay digitally only.
Don't get me wrong, though I myself pay almost exclusively digitally these days, I'm definitely anti digital-only payments. An internet or power outage could take out the ability to pay for anything for hours or days if society goes full-digital. However, the fact that cash has many downsides to the business owners is often forgotten in these discussions.
I can imagine a future in which the risk of paying by cash is compounded by higher prices. Payment by card is already free (well, the 25 cents transaction fee is worked into the product price) but I can see the reverse happening, like a ±€2 charge for every payment for making the business run the risk of getting robbed or losing money. Kind of like how postage stamps are getting more and more expensive because nobody ever mails anything any more and the postal service needs to earn its costs back.
I bet many people will very quickly lose interest in keeping cash around when the additional cost of businesses accepting cash hits them in their wallets.
When I go to lunch with my colleagues, we might be hitting one of the restaurants that are cash-only, and every time at least one person of the group won't have any cash on them, and have to borrow some. It's incredibly annoying, given that you can pay for everything by card in neighboring countries just fine.
> Berliners are polite
Also I'm not sure Berliners have been described like that ever before.
One criminal organization alone sold cash register software that lead to an estimated $500M in tax losses.
People just prefer the option of privacy.
But if a restaurant has a sign in the door "no card payment due to technical problems" for years, it's probably neither a technical nor a cultural/ideological issue ;)
There's also the parallel EC Card system in Germany, most ePoS terminals only support normal cards, or EC card.
Its easier to just accept cash. Everyone who lives there knows cash is king, and the tourists figure it out within a short span of time.
As someone who does live in Germany, things changed dramatically during Covid. So many more places accept cards now and I find myself needing to withdrawal cash a lot less frequently than I did pre-Covid. There are still a ton of places that don’t take cards but a lot converted to taking cards, and some even switched to card only after seeing the lower cost of having cash (less risk of break in, less to move around, etc.)
Taxi drivers are supposedly notorious for having terminals (which are mandatory, as far as I know) that often break – and mysteriously start working again once you reveal that you do not have any cash on you as a passenger.
When I'm in a restaurant looking around, everyone is paying with card (Except perhaps for very small amounts where putting in a PIN is a pain. Since COVID and pin-free payment ~<$50 this seems to have changed too E.g. paying at a coffee shop for coffee).
It also became illegal to add fees for using cards or refusing cards for small amounts. It's also still legally mandated to accept cash btw, although you're not obliged to offer change.
Our terminals have slowly evolved to support NFC cards and payment systems such as Apple/Google Pay, but those are rarely used here in my experience. I think it's because those systems are generally blocked here by credit card providers, plus we tend to prefer to use debit cards instead.
Source: https://economie.fgov.be/en/themes/sales/payments/obligation...
That aside, i see a stream of friends leaving berlin with me in a relatively short amount of time, everyone has his own reasons but for me it was a mixture of not being affordable anymore, being backwards and inconvenient as well as feeling unfair (i moved to a different country, this is true for all germany) Most importantly i really feel the people changed quite a bit in the last 7 years specifically, not just in my surrounding but also the vibe of people on the streets and shops, everyone feels fake and pretentious, not in the tourist sense but in the sense of looking at instagram profiles of people you dislike.
Thankfully NYC made a local law in November 2020 that prohibits businesses from declining to accept cash. I wish more cities would follow suit.
I've yet to find a retail place that wouldn't take cash payment after I'd already eaten. Usually one of the staff just puts it on their card.
But all the restaurants I visited have shifted to bringing the portable pay unit for tap-and-pay at the table, which I much prefer to leaving the card on the bill in the US and having it disappear for a moment while they ring you up at the central POS (still the standard practice in the US places I live near).
But: complaining about the trackability of digital payments while ignoring the lack of tracking built into the prominent platforms, and also decrying the overreach of digital legislation in Europe ("GDPR made things worse") feels like wanting cake and eating it too.
I never, ever use cash anymore... though I keep a few bills in the wallet for emergencies.
1. Accusations of hypocrisy is not an argument.
2. How can you claim that “the prominent platforms” lack tracking? Nobody could say for sure, except a few people, whom the rest of us can’t really trust.
3. People in Europe are also complaining about the trackability of digital payments. And those people also tend to like the GDPR.
Perhaps offtopic, but that's such a ridiculously scary concept to me. I was already nervous when in another country the person behind the register took my card to swipe it for me, I don't think I would ever let them just take my card!
I'm used to not handing out my credit card for payment like I'm used to not handing out my wallet to pay. I'd love to live in a culture where I could trust random people to take my wallet, take only what I'm due, and then not abuse that trust.
Cash doesn't have any of those issues, its amazing. That's why governments hate it! (literally!)
The capacity to not pay taxes is a very important tool of civil disobedience, just like protesting in a public street.
Sure, they'll send collections after you and get the money one way or another, but it's not like a bank account is going to make any difference there. They'll force open your door and sell your stuff if you make it hard enough for them, not sure how that's better.
I'm sure the "taxation is theft" crazies will have some legal fanfiction about how the government can't just take your money if you only use cash but in practice you're only getting yourself into trouble for no good reason if you try to commit tax fraud.
It's possible that I may have dodged a few dollars of taxes when buying crap out of China when they put a fake bill in the outside to dodge import taxes, but I don't believe there's a way for a consumer to manually pay those once the package has crossed the border undetected. These days they've changed the system, though, so I don't think it would happen again.
I will pay you 1000 dollars for the right of taking every single asset you have if at any point it is proven you haven't paid all your corresponding taxes.
This is free money for you and your sense of justice. I can send a contract as soon as today.
In Belgium since last summer you have to accept at least 1 form of digital payment now. Some places try to bypass it by only accepting some obscure creditcards.
Many European countries have made certified/financial cash registers mandatory to combat this, but I believe in Germany they are still optional.
The issue is so widespread, I remember hearing that the tax authorities fully expect some industries to only report parts of their income and have made peace with that fact. Mandatory reporting would apparently disrupt the economy too much...
What kind of example does that set for the small business people in the country?
The politicians are massively corrupt in Germany (Berlins mayor lost her doctor title because she cheated and then she became mayor).
I can understand it when small business operators also want to avoid taxes - as the banks regularly also do.