[HN Gopher] Cashless society in Switzerland? People to vote on k...
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Cashless society in Switzerland? People to vote on keeping cash
forever
Author : starkd
Score : 174 points
Date : 2023-02-18 15:07 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.euronews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.euronews.com)
| g0xA52A2A wrote:
| I'll offer a random anecdote. I lived in Switzerland for a couple
| of years in the early 2010's, so before contactless payment had
| become so prevalent as it is now. Most of the transactions I made
| and saw others made was via cash rather than chip and PIN (the
| norm in most Europe at the time). One of the memories that stands
| out from my time there is whilst in the queue getting some
| groceries in Denner (a lower end supermarket), the person in
| front of me paid with a 1,000 CHF note and no-one batted an eye!
| I didn't even know the denominations went that high, which is
| more a reflection of my ignorance of the place I was living
| really. I mentioned this to my work colleges the next day and was
| told it wasn't that unusual, especially with older generations.
|
| To be clear chip and PIN was widely available at this time but
| most people used cash. Even with a decade gone and a pandemic I
| still wouldn't be surprised if I were to go back to Switzerland
| tomorrow and see people paying for groceries with huge
| documentations
|
| TLDR: The Swiss like cash.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| As a person helping my mother from far ahead I understand why.
|
| The hard part is not using the card. It's setting it up: set up
| the bank application on mobile phone, setting up second factor,
| looking at notifications when they disappear after a few
| seconds (older people have slower reflexes).
|
| All the flat UI means that my mother can't tell me the
| difference between a button and a text.
|
| There's no button to see notifications, she has to use swiping,
| which is again much harder for older people, as all the timings
| were optimized for young people with young people reflexes.
|
| Without all this how does she know how much money she has?
| (with cash she can just count it).
| sportslife wrote:
| Notifications that disappear after a few seconds are a
| scourge that I've seen my surprisingly tech-literate mother
| struggle with too. I wonder if there is any work around
| accessibility and ui-notification duration or history.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Work should be about just testing everything with old
| people now that companies practically require them to use
| smartphones.
| pacifika wrote:
| How does the voting work? Is it a good reference for other
| nations?
| wereHamster wrote:
| Some info here: https://www.ch.ch/en/votes-and-elections
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think Switzerland has one of the best governments in the
| world. His model basically after the United States but
| implemented on a smaller scale where it works even better. It
| has a weaker federal system and most of the funding is
| concentrated in the states/cantons. There's also a long
| tradition of putting questions to the people in terms of a
| general vote. I think they voted on whether cow herders could
| remove the horns or not.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| It's really not all that similar. The emphasis is very much
| on the local government, more so than really anywhere else in
| the world (that I know of). There are some states where local
| governments matter. There are more where power is
| concentrated at the level of the county or state government.
|
| A (bad) way to think of it would be something along the lines
| of a New England townhall system on steroids, with several
| layers of federal/confederated associations above the local
| township (geminde).
|
| Again, not a great comparison, but it's something that at
| least a portion of the US-centric users on here would know a
| little about.
| foruhar wrote:
| I'm not sure exactly what you are asking but it may be helpful
| to know that Switzerland is a direct democracy.
|
| https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/politik-
| ge....
| [deleted]
| jerojero wrote:
| It would require some modifications I guess. Switzerland has a
| relatively long history of direct democracy and citizen
| participation in politics, and for this reason people do not
| fall prey so easily to misinformation like they would in other
| countries where referendums are held that do not have people
| prepared for it (see Colombia, the UK, Chile, or even
| California).
|
| The key to direct democracy is citizen engagement and in
| Switzerland the government actually does a lot to support
| informing citizens about what they're about to vote.
|
| I think for other nations it might be better to look into
| citizens assemblies as a next step in empowering democracies
| because citizens assemblies are very good at achieving public
| policy that aligns with the general population but in an
| environment where it's much easier to control for
| misinformation. In Ireland these were used in conjunction with
| direct democracy (referendums) as part of the process, in that,
| the assembly explored the question that would be asked in the
| referendum and gave a sort of "official opinion" on it. This
| was then widely distributed as part of the information campaign
| that the government did for the referendum. Polling suggests
| that a large part of the population that voted on the
| referendum was aware of the resolution made by the assembly,
| which is a good sign. And yeah, ultimately, the results of the
| referendum aligned with the assembly. The issue was abortion
| and it was voted in favor, consider that Ireland is a very
| religious country so it was quite a contentious issue.
| lasftew wrote:
| The Swiss are not smarter than others. We just have a system
| that keeps the misinformation by all parties in a relative
| equilibrium.
| matsemann wrote:
| While I like several aspects of cash, like little
| tracking/privacy violations, hard for someone to just cut you off
| from your money etc., I don't think I've used cash in 5+ years
| (except vacations). Absolutely every vendor in my country accepts
| cards or some kind of app payment and have for years, even girl
| scouts selling cookies.
|
| And cash is _expensive_. It 's easy to scoff about the 1-2 % fees
| on cards (but in my country "BankAxept" has a flat fee of ~0.024
| USD per transaction, so even cheaper). But having a business
| dealing with a lot of cash is also crazy expensive. You have to
| have extra security, pay someone to come and get it or yourself
| go to the bank and deposit. Then also buy rolls of change. I
| remember my dad spending a lot of hours a week dealing with this.
| So yeah, I'm all for keeping it, but I also kinda want to be able
| to not subside other's use of it. So a fee for using cash or
| something perhaps.
| dataflow wrote:
| > I also kinda want to be able to not subside other's use of
| it. So a fee for using cash or something perhaps.
|
| This sounds like... a poor choice of a hill to die on? The
| people who need cash the most tend to be poorer; asking them to
| pay more would be just cruel to many of them. There are lots of
| things (like taxes in general....) where some people benefit
| more than others from them, but we ignore that and just
| distribute the burden equally as a matter of principle instead
| of asking everyone to pay proportionally to what they use.
| matsemann wrote:
| Good point, I haven't thought of that angle.
|
| Edit: But the homeless on the streets where I live that sell
| magazines etc accept mobile payment. And I've worked for the
| main government welfare agency a few years providing help to
| these people, and an assumption / basis was that they had a
| phone to be contacted on, which proved to work fine for most
| of them.
| dataflow wrote:
| This is really going on a tangent that's beside my point on
| the fees, but are you genuinely suggesting people can treat
| payments like phone calls or texts -- things that tolerate
| long delays? If someone calls you and your phone is
| unavailable for whatever reason, they can back later, even
| tomorrow or in a week. Or maybe you borrow someone's phone
| to call back. You... can't do any of this when you're
| trying to make a payment on the spot. _Especially_ when you
| 're poor.
|
| If an electronic solution is _ever_ going to work at all,
| it needs to be something that 's not powered. Like debit
| cards, not phones. But even with those, there are _so_ many
| giant problems here that I don 't have the energy to go on
| the tangent.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| In places where you can get life by with just a phone and a
| card, even poor people have phones. So perhaps this reality
| is already changing in favor of the poorer?
| fragmede wrote:
| Even in the US! one of the lesser known programs is the
| Obamaphone program, where subsidized low cost handsets were
| provided to low income individuals.
| dataflow wrote:
| I'm sure it's going in that direction but to what extent
| we'll reach that point remains to be seen. Note that people
| lose phones and have to go without them for a while (again,
| probably more for poor people than others), not to mention
| even remembering and finding the time to charge them
| constantly, so it's not as simple as giving everyone a
| phone. Bear in mind there are lots of other reasons to keep
| cash; I was just addressing the fee idea.
| nic547 wrote:
| This popular imitative doesn't mandate the acceptance of cash.
| It mandates that the federal government must ensure that there
| are enough banknotes and coins and that replacing the swiss
| franc with another currency must be done via popular vote. So
| it's not really that radical.
|
| The same organisation is already planning on another popular
| initiative that seems to go in the direction of mandating the
| acceptance of cash, but other than the title "Wer mit Bargeld
| bezahlen will, muss mit Bargeld bezahlen konnen" (roughly: if
| you want to pay with cash must be able to pay with cash) I
| can't find any details about it.
| slillibri wrote:
| A fee for using cash would be incredibly regressive because
| poor people use cash the most.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The poor already pay more for using cash. They pay the same
| amount as people using credit cards and don't get any of the
| rewards/cash back that the more affluent do
| 1_1xdev1 wrote:
| Are you trying to justify making the poor pay even more by
| suggesting they already bear the burden?
| scarface74 wrote:
| I'm not trying to justify anything. I'm saying it's naive
| to think that the poor don't already pay more.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Nobody said they don't already pay more
| mc32 wrote:
| Maybe but using CCs is even more expensive for the poor
| given their propensity to not pay their balances in full
| for multiple reasons; so from that PoV cash is cheaper.
| scarface74 wrote:
| And the poor also use pay day loans and overdraft more
| and pay overdraft fees. Even paying credit card interest
| at 20% a year is cheaper than paying a $36 overdraft fee
| when your account is $5 negative for a couple of days
| until pay day.
| ChewFarceSkunk wrote:
| [dead]
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I still use cash a lot. Many places I go to only accept cash.
|
| These places are not fully licensed which is probably why they
| don't want to accept digital but there's definitely still a
| case for it IMO.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > And cash is expensive. It's easy to scoff about the 1-2 %
| fees on cards
|
| The fee could be 100% for the vendor if the card holders uses
| chargeback. People forget that chargeback exists because they
| almost never use it but it's a real possibility.
|
| The recent OnlyFans scandal was in fact not an OnlyFans scandal
| but people charging back their credit card after the acquire
| the content provided by the creator.
|
| If something has a shot at ever replacing cash won't be cards
| but instant wire transfers between banks so that payments mde
| by citizens are both real time and impossible to chargeback.
| SEPA Instant is the closest effort but even in leader countries
| there are 40%+ banks which still don't have it.
|
| In the US it will be called FedNow but it's in its infancy
| Gare wrote:
| You mean something like Digital Euro? https://www.ecb.europa.
| eu/paym/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| SEPA already exists long time and works in these two cases
| perfectly? Digital Euro is whole different animal.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| For shopping online, I honestly wouldn't use a service where
| charging back wasn't an ultimate option. Far too many scams,
| everywhere, and inconsistent support. Something like Amazon,
| sure, but random niche shopping websites? No way am I wiring
| money with no way out if it's a scam
| acdha wrote:
| > If something has a shot at ever replacing cash won't be
| cards but instant wire transfers between banks so that
| payments mde by citizens are both real time and impossible to
| chargeback.
|
| Chargebacks are enormously popular with the public, however,
| because they provide a remedy for various scams and avenues
| for abuse by businesses, which is extremely common. I think
| it would be more likely that a successful replacement would
| refine that process rather than remove it.
| sofixa wrote:
| Are you talking about SEPA Instant? It's already here, across
| the whole eurozone, and usually free (some legacy banks
| charge a small fee).
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| The EU is ahead but it's not as widely availible as you
| claim. The leaders are Austria and Spain and they hover
| around 50% banks having it
|
| https://www.cpg.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/sepa-
| instant-c...
| sofixa wrote:
| Your source is from 2021, so hardly representative of
| today.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| Oh yes centuries ago indeed
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| I keep reading about charge back, but in only two cases I
| tried to do that, because I didn't receive the stuff I paid
| for, I haven't succeeded. Banks seem to side with the
| merchants, because merchants pay them, not us.
| tsol wrote:
| What about the people that do use cash regularly?
|
| >And cash is expensive.
|
| Cards are expensive, the price is just currently being
| subsidized by the industry. Do we as a society really want to
| have to rely on that? There's no guarantee credit card fees
| will not increase in the future
| morelisp wrote:
| > There's no guarantee credit card fees will not increase in
| the future
|
| What kind of guarantee can be made except strong limits
| enshrined in law, which there already are? (If you don't
| trust the laws, you can't trust cash either.)
| photonbucket wrote:
| Credit card fees should go _down_ if they remove the overhead
| of 'rewards'
| Laaas wrote:
| I imagine we'll have digital cash eventually, but the only
| sound non-blockchain solution I know of requires local quantum
| computation: https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/107
| tzs wrote:
| What do you mean by "sound"? Why doesn't David Chaum's eCash
| from 1982 [1] qualify? That's an on-line system. In 1990 he,
| Fiat, and Nairobi proposed an off-line system [2].
|
| [1] http://www.hit.bme.hu/~buttyan/courses/BMEVIHIM219/2009/C
| hau...
|
| [2]
| http://blog.koehntopp.de/uploads/chaum_fiat_naor_ecash.pdf
| Laaas wrote:
| The latter works fine if you're OK with completely trusting
| the banks. Local quantum computation gives you provably
| sound, decentralised, unprintable digital cash. Nice paper
| though, I wonder if you can make it quantum resistant.
| bagels wrote:
| Card fees are often 3% and vendors have to increase prices to
| cover this. People paying cash are already paying these same
| inflated prices to cover credit card fees.
| toastal wrote:
| Luckily not everywhere. In Thailand cash (and bank transfers)
| are king. Most places do not accept credit, and the place
| that do usually require a $15 or $30 minimum and/or you're
| going to pay that extra overhead yourself. Alternatively,
| like when I bought my monitor recently, folks will just give
| you a discount for paying via cash/transfer (high value items
| like that often end up as credit charges or interest loans
| through the bankers).
| erehweb wrote:
| Per https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-may-face-a-future-
| referen... Swiss people have $11.8K in cash on average - an
| extraordinarily high amount. [edited to insert "Swiss"]
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Whats the median, because average says nothing.
| inductive_magic wrote:
| Fwiw, consumer prices in Switzerland don't really compare to
| those in the rest of Europe or the US. Would be interesting to
| see a normalized bar chart.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Swiss people are also good at saving money, regardless if it's
| cash or investments
| sschueller wrote:
| Gets difficult when you are paying negative interest rates
| but at least that is over now. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/switzerland-exits-
| nega...
| 542458 wrote:
| I'm very very skeptical of that number... If all the US
| currency was evenly divided amongst the US's population, each
| person would hold about $6600. But almost nobody actually holds
| that much cash in the US - that cash is mostly held by criminal
| organizations, individuals that can't engage with the
| traditional banking system, and foreign governments. The Swiss
| Franc has similar utility to the USD in that regard, so I
| suspect that number is not representative of nearly all
| households.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Yeah, there's a ton of US$ cash outside of USA. Estimates
| have been between 40 and 72%
|
| https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/jp-koning/how-much-u-s-
| cur...
|
| Swiss Francs are far from a reserve currency, beyond the poor
| recognition of the notes outside of Switzerland and nearby
| countries, so I'm doubting too many are held outside of
| Switzerland. Euros or Dollars would be far better.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| In certain cases Cash takes on almost a freedom of speech
| importance. Government can just switch off the digital finances
| of any movement they don't like. Cash makes that harder.
| bogomipz wrote:
| As a topical counterpoint, governments can also just switch off
| the existing currency in favor of a new currency and create a
| cash scarcity crisis when theres not enough of the new currency
| in circulation. This is exactly the situation in Nigeria right
| now. See:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/angry-protests...
|
| Another recent example of a hard currency crisis is what's been
| happening in Lebanon, where the government simply switched off
| full access:
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/a710fa12-e7fe-4aab-8e4f-962f01add...
| galleywest200 wrote:
| I mean they could, but would a country as wealthy as
| Switzerland just break all business relations like that?
| bogomipz wrote:
| The parent I was responding to was not referring
| specifically to Switzerland, in fact they just said
| "Government" which is about as general as you can be.
| Further Nigeria is also wealthy, even if the concentration
| of wealth is in the hands of very few. Nigeria is the
| largest economy in Africa and 31st in the World by GDP.[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nigeria
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| I mean would they do that for digital then?
| dijit wrote:
| all vs some.
|
| I can disable your bank account rendering you unable to
| be personally solvent.
|
| But in order to do so with the cash you have I would have
| to basically disable _everyones_ account.
| m00dy wrote:
| except bitcoin.
| coldtea wrote:
| You can't eat bitcoin. So you have to exchange it for food.
| But unlike cash they don't accept it anywhere (and accepting
| cash everywhere is what this voting tries to keep a reality).
|
| Also you can't access it in places without internet access or
| electricity (e.g. during wartime or as a refugee on the go).
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Even if I accept BTC, its pretty hard for me to buy food or
| gasoline with it.
| krzyk wrote:
| In case of larger catastrophe cash is as useless as
| bitcoin. You trade food for other things, eg. tools,
| liquor, cigarettes, bicycle etc.
| akvadrako wrote:
| There's a reason we moved away from the barter system.
| Cash would still be useful if it was rare and accepted by
| the government, though you should expect massive
| inflation. But something like gold would probably be a
| good contender as a new money.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| In 2017 Russia launched the biggest cyberattack ever against
| Ukraine. It affected a big part of the county's digital
| infrastructure including banking. People were unable to transact
| electronically and unable to withdraw cash from the ATM machines.
|
| If a major conflict against 2 advanced nations ever happen I
| expect scenarios like this to play out. Cashless is great in
| times of prosperity but when shit hits the fan you need to have a
| backup plan.
| Kukumber wrote:
| cashless society is a requirement to ascend to the next
| civilization
| Yiin wrote:
| not necessarily the better one though
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| If that's the future, I'm glad I'm history.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| This can only be realized in a post-scarcity society, and even
| in a post-scarcity cashless scenario, energy and matter are
| fundamentally limiting, so people will have allocations of
| those units.
| ChewFarceSkunk wrote:
| [dead]
| Karsteski wrote:
| If the next civilization is my government having the ability to
| take my money away from me, I want to part of it
| Kukumber wrote:
| you'll be busy counting your cash on this burning planet
| while china will be a multiplanetary society
| Karsteski wrote:
| Yes society is definitely going to develop in such a
| simplistic manner. Also, do I really want to be a member of
| a society like China in its current form? The answer is no.
| I have no interest in being a slave to my government, even
| more so atleast.
|
| If those in power have absolute control of your currency,
| have fun opposing them without large numbers of deaths.
| Kukumber wrote:
| Why haven't we replaced the dying ISS? why China did?
|
| Why can't we offer universal health care? why China did?
|
| There is a lot of debatable things China did, but when it
| comes to its citizens, they are properly taken care off
| to move forward
|
| From a poor emerging country to a developed one in record
| time, you have to be a strong collective and have the
| support of your own people to achieve this feat
|
| Our model of society stagnated, we must reinvent
| ourselves to move forward, otherwise we are headed
| towards dark times
| incrudible wrote:
| Not my impression of China at all. Sounds like you reject
| western propaganda, yet you bought the communist
| propaganda wholesale.
| knewter wrote:
| Chinese workers in rural areas make less per day than any
| one of my laying hens produces in income at the current
| price of eggs.
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| Chinese don't have pension, health care, or anything
| similar. What misinformation are you partaking in?
| nmeagent wrote:
| > but when it comes to its citizens, they are properly
| taken care [of] to move forward
|
| Except for Uyghur citizens apparently, unless of course
| they have drastically mangled the meaning of 'taken care
| of' beyond all recognition. The same if you're a Falun
| Gong member, or a dissident, or said anything bad about
| Dear Leader, or complained about the wrong corrupt
| business entity, or have a low social credit score for
| whatever reason, etc. If this nightmare is 'moving
| forward', then I prefer 'dark times' thank you very much.
| abc20230215 wrote:
| I am guessing it will be a two-class society: one being able to
| cut off other's access to money when needed.
| Kukumber wrote:
| That's a risk indeed, but that shouldn't prevent us from
| doing the work in order to ascend, so we must debate and plan
| today, Switzerland's political system is unique with their
| direct democracy, so they are better prepared than the rest
| of the western world
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Not a risk; a real fact that happens.
| Kukumber wrote:
| Good, we know it's a thing, therefore we can work towards
| avoiding it ;)
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Even Star Trek had gold pressed latinum
| [deleted]
| egberts1 wrote:
| Folks in Mountainous, rugged environment knows the value of
| physical fiat and its essential exchange mechanism.
| refuse wrote:
| Yep. Power or internet goes out where I live fairly often and
| you'd have to drive at least an hour to use anything but cash.
|
| Another commenter already mentioned natural disasters, which
| happen with surprising frequency (I've been through quite a few
| myself).
|
| Cash fills in society's all-too-common edge cases.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I kinda thought those environments would be less dependent on
| emergency cash, because they'll have a week's worth of food,
| backup energy/power sources (BBQs, propane tanks, jerry cans
| of gas, woodstoves, etc.).
|
| It's people in the cities that get boned when the grid
| crashes.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Especially if them city folks put all their livelihood into
| digital cash.
| IYasha wrote:
| Cash you can save, cash you can protect, cash you can move, cash
| you can share.
|
| Digital goolag-coins you can not.
|
| Save in gold.
|
| Some mafia-related millionaire. :)
| silvestrov wrote:
| Forever is a short time in politics.
|
| Nothing stops another voting in 10 years time to swing the other
| way.
| inductive_magic wrote:
| Constitutions have a tendency to be sticky though.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Hungary, which used to be a pretty stable and all around OK
| country showed it takes one single political misstep to cause
| a landslide victory in the next election cycle - meaning
| supermajority. Then that party took the advantage to re-write
| the consitution to gerrymander and keep the power for many
| years a-coming. I think most political parties would do the
| same, regardless of country. So next time you curse a
| politician out at the other end of the political spectrum,
| also thank them, for actually existing. Nothing destroys a
| country faster than a (quasi) single-party system.
| tryptophan wrote:
| I always find it funny when people complain about
| 'Hungarian gerrymandering', as it tells me they know
| nothing about the place and just repeat what liberal rags
| screech about Hungary. The election reforms made elections
| simpler and actually reduced the inequalities between
| electoral districts.
|
| Its also even more funny considering that the Hungarian
| election system is objectively better than the one in the
| USA, in that it is more representative.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| As someone else already wrote, Constitutions tend to be
| reinterpreted - see all the controversies in US on several
| Amendments and the lack of meaning of "not infringe" these
| days.
| _0ffh wrote:
| Constitutions are factually much less sticky than formally,
| as ultimately words require interpretation. When the law
| can't be rewritten, it will just be reinterpreted.
|
| Here's a reasonably well known monograph about the topic:
|
| John Hasnas, "The Myth of the Rule of Law", Wisconsin Law
| Review 199 (1995)
|
| https://medusa.teodesian.net/docs/liberty/MythFinalDraft.pdf
| arlort wrote:
| That's only true when they are significantly more difficult
| to amend than the ordinary legislative procedure
| sofixa wrote:
| That's not necessarily a good thing. Constitutions need to be
| able to evolve with the times - otherwise many countries
| would still be disenfranchising vast swathes of their
| population (women - and funnily, in some Swiss cantons, women
| couldn't vote until the 1990s!), or a bunch of other
| problems. It's absolutely a problem when they become
| synonymous with a deity's work and thus untouchable. One of
| the worse examples of this is the US, where with the added
| benefit of the mess that is common law (precedents and
| reinterpretations being a thing) it's just a messy vague
| situation. France was able to add abortion protections to
| their constitution, meanwhile the US relied on an
| interpretation of a vague statute to constitutionally protect
| them, and then a change of opinion in the courts changed
| that.
| languagehacker wrote:
| Switzerland has a very specific reason for preserving cash, and
| it's called money laundering
| FpUser wrote:
| Alternatively the specific reason is to protect people from
| ever more hairy government paws crawling all over and inside
| their lives.
| lasftew wrote:
| Swiss here. This is true. Buy an expensive watch and want to
| pay with credit card? We'll need to verify name and address,
| apologies Sir! Have a bag of cash? No questions asked, have a
| nice day!
| rom-antics wrote:
| How much lifting is the word "forever" doing in that headline? I
| thought all laws are forever, until they're changed or repealed,
| yet reporting doesn't usually include that word. In the future if
| someone wanted to try to change this, they could just hold
| another vote, no? How is this different?
| bigyikes wrote:
| If they omitted the word "forever", it might seem like they are
| overturning an existing law or voting against an imminent
| threat to remove cash.
| mring33621 wrote:
| Who could have predicted, Switzerland, a bastion of financial
| privacy has voted to keep cash as legal tender?
| frank_bb wrote:
| [dead]
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Government debanked the lockdown protestors in Canada. Freezing
| their bank accounts. So people started giving them cash so they
| have something for food. But imagine if you couldn't buy bread
| because government decided you shouldn't oppose their lockdown
| policy. Without cash, you are a slave to the state, and can't
| have food unless they say you can.
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| Not only a slave to the state, but a slave to private
| companies. Most electronic payments, including cards and apps
| are via companies (as opposed to govt). Who wants companies to
| have more control over their life?
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| This, and I cannot agree enough. Generally speaking,
| governments don't always have your best interests in mind.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Generally speaking, governments don't always have your best
| interests in mind
|
| Generally speaking, this a massive stretch for a democratic
| country such as Switzerland. What is the government there but
| a representation of it's citizens?
| xienze wrote:
| > What is the government there but a representation of it's
| citizens?
|
| Situations sometimes come up that the people don't exactly
| get a chance to vote on. For instance, no one in the US in
| 2018 ran on a "if there's a dangerous respiratory virus
| circulating in the future I vow to lock the country down to
| the best of my ability and mandate vaccines that have been
| fast-tracked" platform, and such a candidate likely
| wouldn't win. But here we are.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| A government's highest priority is keeping itself in power
| at all cost.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| > What is the government ...
|
| Extreme naivety or trolling?
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, but the government asked the fringers to
| leave nicely, then demanded they leave... other than amassing
| an army and arresting them all, I don't see what else they
| could have done to make them listen.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Right to assembly and protest are inalienable rights. Do you
| feel the same way towards the chinese being harsh with hong
| kong protestors? or should they simply go home when asked?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > amassing an army and arresting them all
|
| This is acceptable. Everyone should have an inalienable right
| to proof of identity and access to an electronic funds
| account, regardless of their crimes. If the government wants
| to seize funds, they can go to court and prove the crime.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, freezing their bank accounts did need
| some sort of court approval... You can't just walk into a
| bank and say "Hi, I want you to make sure this list of
| people can't continue business as usual".
|
| Edit: I don't think an army would have been the best
| solution either... Since the protest, many of those same
| people are now part of the defund police protests. Imagine
| the mess that would have happened if the police had showed
| up in military gear and arrested thousands of people...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Freezing bank accounts is not acceptable, since that is
| currently the mechanism for electronic money transfer. It
| is like taking away someone's right to own or use cash.
|
| If a crime has been committed, and there is a fine with
| the crime, and there is a conviction of the crime, then
| the government taking money from the electronic account
| as payment for the fine is OK.
|
| But the right to engage in transactions should never be
| able to be taken away.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Tell that to the government then, it's not like they held
| a referendum to ask us what our opinion was. I'm just
| saying this method was less violent than the alternative.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That was the point the government was making. They had so
| much power, they do not even need to be violent, they
| could strip their livelihood with a few clerical actions.
| Which means due process and all that is just a formality,
| that can apparently be ignored when politically
| convenient.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I'm not sure if you are aware. But the government
| resorted to the "alternative" violence to end the protest
| anyway. There's videos on youtube of the mass arrests
| (crackdown) if you're curious. A grandma gets trampled by
| a police horse, and some arrested are battered with
| batons in Ottawa.
|
| In Windsor they used tow trucks from Michigan to clear
| out the protestors trucks. Which if you think about it,
| Canada government used foreign aid to end a protest
| against itself.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| You are mistaken. Since Trudeau invoked the Emergency Act
| he didn't need a court order to freeze bank accounts. The
| feds literally went on record stating that freezing bank
| accounts was used as a deterrent from people protesting.
| There was no judicial or legislative process involved in
| unilaterally cutting off people from all of their funds.
|
| You can read more here:
| https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/bureaucrats-who-
| froze...
| sofixa wrote:
| And there was a review after the fact if the emergency
| powers were used appropriately, and that review just
| finished and said that yes, Trudeau was in his right and
| didn't abuse the emergency powers.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| A review which found that Trudeau was justified does not
| change anything I said. I personally haven't read the
| entire report so I wont comment on whether or not I
| believe the actions were justified.
|
| The reality is that it is legal for the Canadian state to
| extrajudicially suppress protests, hence why it is
| important to have cash around because of these laws.
|
| Also what if the use of the Emergency Act is found to NOT
| be justified in a report a year later? How are you going
| to make those who had their bank accounts frozen whole
| again? A report in one years time in the future is not
| going to help you buy food or pay for shelter today.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Sounds like the banks asked the court anyways.
| https://globalnews.ca/news/8615490/td-bank-freezes-
| accounts-...
| ChewFarceSkunk wrote:
| [dead]
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| At least if you capture someone you have to feed them. But if
| you freeze their money? That's hell
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| Doesn't really seem like due process.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| most people who have never experienced real hunger do not
| understand this
| mr90210 wrote:
| I sometimes think that something similar might happen with ICE
| vehicles in the EU.
| grahar64 wrote:
| Having just come from the cyclone ravaged Gisborne region in New
| Zealand, where internet and communications have been down now for
| 5 days. The first thing we did was count all the cash we had,
| because it is the only way we could buy food and fuel.
|
| Cash works when there is no power or communication.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| This is my core concern really. So far, most outages I
| experienced here in Germany were mildly annoying, mostly due to
| the fact that cash is still King here and I had enough around
| the house to cover a couple days, but everytime it happens I
| think of what it would be like if we were as cashless as for
| example China. I'm not against all those modern payment
| methods, but I seriously think it should be mandatory for
| stores offering the basic necessities to accept cash.
| efitz wrote:
| My major concerns are about surveillance and control.
|
| The USA is mow requiring banks to report all transactions
| over $600 to the federal government; the credit card
| companies are adding category based tracking to transactions
| at businesses in unfavored industries like gun stores, and
| banks and credit card companies are denying service to
| specific individuals due to online speech that had nothing to
| do with the financial institutions themselves. Canada is "de-
| banking" protesters. At a macro scale the US government and
| others are using the SWIFT system to interdict transactions
| by unfavored individuals, and are electronically "seizing"
| accounts of such people, usually without a warrant.
|
| We need cash to prevent totalitarianism.
| opportune wrote:
| The problem with cash is that a lot of commerce occurs over
| the Internet these days. And cash can be controlled or
| abused by the government. Even if cash is never technically
| banned, banks can limit withdrawals to low amounts, any
| limits can be kept and functionally eroded over time due to
| inflation, and with enough effort it can be tracked just as
| well as digital payments.
|
| Personally I see this as the (probably only) actual-use-
| case for crypto: permissionless payments
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| I upvoted this because I agree with most of it. It is not
| all transactions that need to be reported, however. Only
| transactions through 'third party' payment systems like
| Venmo, Cash App, Paypal, etc... Additionally, they have
| delayed this rule until next year.
| kqr wrote:
| Yup, this is my stance as well. I switched to a cash-friendly
| bank, I always carry a few bills on me, and I prefer to shop
| at stores that do take cash. (This is in a region of the
| world that's virtually cashless in everyday business.)
|
| When people hear this they assume I must be anti-electronic
| payment but that's far from true. I love the convenience.
|
| I just think it's really, really important we retain the
| option of physical cash, and hope that we rarely have to
| exercise it. It's worth the additional investment to achieve
| resilience.
| krzyk wrote:
| You had a power outage that lasted few days?
|
| BTW. For short outage batteries in terminal is enough, and
| BTSes have UPS that last quite long. Basically when my
| neighborhood has power outage (once a year maybe) for max 2-4
| hours, cell service still works (a bit slower because
| everyone switched to it).
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Long power outages can hit even developed areas if weather
| gets nasty.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American
| _...
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| When superstorm Sandy hit New York in 2012 I lost power for
| 2 weeks. Local stores/gas stations/restaurants were without
| power for about a week. This was in a densely populated
| suburb, not a backwater.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| https://hackaday.com/2022/05/30/expired-certificate-
| causes-g...
|
| This took two and a half days iirc and just so happened to
| affect the two closest supermarkets.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| that's not a power outage
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| I never said there were any
| toast0 wrote:
| I regularly get power outages of several hours in the
| pacific northwest [1]. My local cell towers go about 2-4
| hours before dropping off. The telco DSL drops immediately,
| not sure about the cable company. Gotta make sure you've
| got offline entertainment or you're gonna be real bored.
|
| [1] mostly from trees falling into lines; the same soil
| conditions that make undergrounding lines very expensive
| also contribute to trees having shallow roots, saturated
| soil and high winds strongly implies no power. Also, local
| regulation requires the power company to pass costs of most
| undergrounding along to the affected customers and they
| have to approve the work; most people don't want to spend
| their money on undergrounding, so it's not typically done.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Works great if your country isn't at war.
| lghjcrhbcl wrote:
| Natural disasters. In the early 90s a blizzard knocked out
| power on the US eastern seaboard for weeks in some areas.
| Two years ago Texas's grid was compromised for nearly a
| week during the ice storm, and even cell service was down.
|
| I'm sure there are other examples. How long was power out
| in New Orleans after Katrina? Puerto Rico after Maria?
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| FWIW one of the bottle shop reopened while storm was ongoing
| using a generator and was taking payments for some cards
| offline, tho my card wasn't enabled for that. I had cash, but
| that's NZ for you - first to implement paywave but now there's
| surcharge's everywhere. I was completely cashless/wallet-less
| in europe.
| robocat wrote:
| Here is a news video partly about a queue at a cash machine:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=I6gVliTmPGA
|
| NZ translations: Spark == ATT, kai == food, munted == fucked,
| Gisbourne == town of 40000 in the wop-wops (I loved the place
| when I last visited there!)
|
| Off topic, but I would be interested to know what people from
| the US think of NZ reporting compared to US reporting.
| Clubber wrote:
| Also cash isn't easily trackable. This is nice if you are
| uneasy with all the tracking and surveillance going on today.
| wongarsu wrote:
| It's also really hard to stop people from using their cash.
| Of course governments see this as a weakness, but everyone
| concerned about government overreach should appreciate how
| your cards and bank accounts can be frozen, but your cash is
| yours (as long as you have physical control over it).
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Cops just straight up take people's cash in some parts of
| the world
| Clubber wrote:
| They do that in the US. It's called civil asset
| forfeiture, and the federal government supports it and
| takes a cut. No due process needed.
|
| https://jalopnik.com/heres-another-reminder-that-the-
| police-...
| shortcake27 wrote:
| This is always brought up as an argument against cashless. I
| don't get it. I'm quite passionate about tracking,
| collection, and use of personal data. But I really couldn't
| care less about my day to day purchases. My bank knows that I
| buy a coffee every morning and lunch from a local vendor, and
| some groceries or dinner in the evening. My bank won't use
| this for any kind of targeted advertising and I trust them to
| keep it secure. This data seems so unimportant compared to
| the frustration of cash. The second I step foot in a cash
| economy I start having issues with large bills (do you have a
| smaller note etc), losing change, having to keep on visiting
| ATMs. It's extremely irritating once you've gotten used to
| cashless. What is everyone buying on a daily basis with cash
| that is so secret the banks and governments must not know?
| notdang wrote:
| All good and convenient untill some governmental agency
| decides that you cannot use the cashless methods and by
| that time cash is not available because no one protested
| since it was so convenient.
| nicolinox wrote:
| Revolut has already of few million users in Switzerland. It looks
| like swiss citizens and foreign immigrants being taken for a ride
| in fees by the swiss banks are now fed up and have
| alternatives...
| sschueller wrote:
| No, Revolut has ~250,000 customers in Switzerland.
|
| Additionally people have had some serious issues with how
| Revolut operates including their complete lack of support
| system. There are several stories of people loosing large sums.
|
| People used Revolut because it made thing easy and quick but
| now there are Swiss alternatives available like Neon[1] or
| Zak[2] with the backing of a Swiss bank license providing
| deposit guarantees.
|
| [1] https://www.neon-free.ch/en/
|
| [2] https://www.cler.ch/de/info/zak
| seydor wrote:
| Does this mean that the digital equivalent of cash in the form of
| an appropriate cryptocurrency is officially also mandated by law?
| rom-antics wrote:
| No, the vote is about banknotes and coins (as the headline
| states)
| seydor wrote:
| What if i print private keys in qr codes and call them
| banknotes
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| In the United States, at least, they wouldn't be "legal
| tender", which means that every entity (person, government,
| whatever) is required to accept them in payment for a debt.
| I believe most other countries have similar rules for their
| official currencies, likely including Switzerland.
|
| Note that the "debt" part is important. You can refuse to
| take cash for a new transaction, but not one where the
| other party already owes you money.
|
| I believe there have even been court cases that held that
| the type of restaurant that requires you to pay before
| getting your food can refuse to take cash, while the type
| of restaurant that lets you pay after you've eaten cannot
| (because that makes it a debt you owe). Don't quote me on
| that, though.
| rom-antics wrote:
| The word "banknotes" has a specific legal meaning. You can
| print anything and call it anything you want, but that
| doesn't mean anyone will take you seriously or you'll get
| legal recognition. You're venturing into sovcit territory.
| [deleted]
| WhatsName wrote:
| Properies of hard cash: - almost untraceable - works offline -
| easy to understand
|
| Doesn't matter how you turn it, cryptocurrency is never
| replacing cash. Digital currency, maybe, but I would always
| take cash for any inperson transaction.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I think few people are seriously suggesting _replacement._
|
| The better way to consider: There are arguably favorable
| properties that ARE in cash, that are NOT in mainstream bank-
| led digital payments, and that ARE in cryptocurrency. Some
| people have already discovered this and use it for these
| purposes. Now, it is also true that the cryptocurrency space
| is a breeding ground for scammy behavior.
|
| The only question is -- to what extent might cryptocurrency
| get more popular for "legit" purposes.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| To a greater extend than any other cashless payment system
| since it isn't controlled by a single entity and has by now
| proven it is censorship resistent. People are getting more
| and more educated on censorship issues and the UX continues
| to get better and better.
|
| Like for many things before, gaming is likely to lead the
| path for more adoption, the tokenomy has been a thing for
| many years there now and crypto nicely provides the
| infrastructure for building a token system on that already.
| networks with low fees are there and smart contracts can
| even be written in JavaScript, with companies providing
| transaction gateways etc etc etc.
|
| At this point anyone doubting crypto has continuously be
| gaining legit adoption must be blind or in denial.
|
| Developer tooling and ecosystem getting better and better,
| the whole crypto crashes aren't putting a dent to that.
|
| All it takes is more absurdity from a government for a
| spike in adoption. See Argentina and Nigeria.
|
| It is already popular for legit purposes, except that the
| news rarely report it, it makes better title to say some
| group is laundering crime money using Bitcoin.
| bluepoint wrote:
| I don't think so, unless it is the only official currency.
| phreeza wrote:
| This website seems like really low quality blogspam. Higher
| quality source: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-may-face-a-
| future-referen...
| Laaas wrote:
| Euronews was recently bought apparently:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euronews#Alpac_Capital
| beebeepka wrote:
| They've been thrash for as long as I can remember. I visit
| their site every couple of years and content doesn't match
| their name at all. "Euro" "news"
| elkos wrote:
| In the 90s we had EuronewsTV broadcasted over the air for
| free in Greece. It was fairly ok-ish. I had the chance to
| interact with some reporters of Euronews in 2017 and it was
| fairly ok but keep in mind that it was about a news story
| amongst hundreds within a day.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Sure. Could you do me a favour and check how many news
| about Greece they've had over the last few months?
|
| Just the site.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Cashless society is utopia, not practical actualy. Imagine
| homeless people. You wouldn't be able to give them money. Imagine
| trade in place without data connection. Imagine misery in case of
| battery failure. Imagine chaos in case of bank system failure.
|
| Of course total surveillance of state is main concern.
| Unfortunately WEF propose and EU make slow steps to limit cash as
| possible. Ie by advantages and bonuses in case of paying by card.
| Banks limiting cash withdraw amount...
|
| https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022...
|
| Interesting documentary about one digital currency and digital
| ID, State of control (2022):
| https://player.vimeo.com/video/769876604
|
| Czech senate recently refused to make cash as constitutional
| righ.
|
| https://www.epochtimes.cz/2023/02/15/navrh-zahrnout-do-ustav...
| jdhn wrote:
| >Imagine homeless people. You wouldn't be able to give them
| money.
|
| I've seen homeless people with QR codes and chip readers.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| What a beautiful dystopia we live in
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| In the modern day, digital continuity of identity is -almost-
| more important than physical, and being a "cyborg" (constantly
| in contact with your phone/portal to Internet) is increasingly
| critical. And we live in an increasingly climate-hostile world.
| Low tech is underappreciated by many, not just the usual crowd
| here.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Sure, cash is eco friendly!
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| I'm not sure I would explicitly call it "eco friendly". A
| lot goes into making paper bills. But the end result, the
| paper bill, is "low tech".
| shortcake27 wrote:
| > Imagine homeless people. You wouldn't be able to give them
| money.
|
| This is incorrect on all levels. Electronic payments between
| bank accounts have existed for decades. Banks in many countries
| now support instant payments using email/phone numbers. There
| are QR based payment methods which do the same thing. There has
| even been a special jacket invented to accept contactless:
|
| https://www.tsip.co.uk/blog/2019/2/19/introducing-helping-he...
|
| > Imagine trade in place without data connection.
|
| What, like an airplane? Where many airlines no longer even
| accept cash on the plane?
| l0b0 wrote:
| > This is incorrect on all levels. Electronic payments
| between bank accounts have existed for decades. Banks in many
| countries now support instant payments using email/phone
| numbers. There are QR based payment methods which do the same
| thing. There has even been a special jacket invented to
| accept contactless:
|
| Is this in Silicon Valley or something? That's the most tech
| utopian statement I've seen on HN for a while, where even
| homeless people _obviously_ have access to electronic
| banking.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Currently those require a bank, a (smart) phone, and a data
| service. All of which aren't impossible but they're also not
| exactly universal. There's still about 5% of the US that
| doesn't even have a bank account in their household, a number
| highly correlated with income.
| replicanteven wrote:
| Homeless people are often unbanked, and it's very difficult
| to open a new account without a credit score and permanent
| address.
|
| Recent immigrants have difficulty opening accounts for a
| similar reason - only US credit counts. Political activists
| are also often denied accounts out of an abundance of caution
| on the bank's part, e.g. with the Occupy Wall St protests.
| anonym29 wrote:
| I don't see this as a valorization of physical currency so much
| as a hedge against the threat of complete loss of financial
| privacy & autonomy that comes built-in with state-mandated
| CBDC's.
| occamrazor wrote:
| To add some context: the group that promoted this initiative is a
| fringe ultraconservative one. Among other things, in 2020 they
| were denying the existence of Covid and in 2021 they did an anti
| 5G campaign.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| Far-right extremism is surprisingly common in the German-
| speaking world if you look beyond Western Germany and Berlin.
|
| Eastern Germany (excluding Berlin) is one big racist hellscape
| where refugee homes get firebombed and Putin is worshipped as
| the second coming of Jesus.
|
| Switzerland and Austria are not that bad yet but judging by
| social media trends they both have a significant far-right
| problem.
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