Japan has been in the year 2000 for the past 50 years.
Not the first time I see this, still makes me laugh
Cash is king, we shouldn’t be paying MasterCard and VISA for every purchase we make.
Case in point: when the UK left the EU, MC and VISA immediately increased their transaction fees from 0.3% to 1.5%.
Cash isn’t much use for making purchases online, which is also where an ever increasing amount of spending is done.
There’s no coin or note slot on my laptop, and contrary to the internet’s advice throwing money at my screen doesn’t seem to work either.
I used to be a big proponent of cash but with the bulk of my financial activity happening online now I can’t help it feeling a bit redundant.
Cash is needed nonetheless because when there is a downtime for whatever reason, it is not good if the only thing you have is a card.
Mullvad lets you mail them cash, but I don’t think it’s scalable nor fast enough to be widely used.
The last time I sent cash in the mail was in the early 00s when buying CDs from ebay. Wild that there is a service today that takes cash via mail.
They do it to make it as anonymous as possible
Retaining some ability to spend and use cash is vital because otherwise, all our financial transactions are totally controlled by the banks, and they are completely untrustworthy. The cost is inconvenience.
Yes that’s fair enough, cash doesn’t work online - but bitcoin is a better solution for online transactions than cards.
I mean, we haven’t even got into the subject of data tracking. If you think Facebook is bad, consider for a moment how much your card provider knows about you. Banks and card companies have learned from Facebook, and data brokerage is now a trillion dollar industry - with only 8 billion people in the world (many of whom don’t use the internet or have data being traded), that means your data is worth roughly $1,000 a year. Surely, as the manufacturer of the data, you should be getting some of that?!
Lol Bitcoin is not better than cards for online shopping, the only thing it’s better for is buying whatever you’re smoking.
Objectively, bitcoin is better for online transactions. It’s not even all that safe for buying drugs - every transaction is recorded permanently in an open ledger, so it’s actually much easier to trace (at least up to the end points where traditional currency is exchanged).
It might be less widely accepted, but that’s only because of how insidiously endemic MasterCard and VISA are.
How is bitcoin objectively better? That’s a pretty bold statement that needs some backing arguments.
They both have pros and cons, but until BTC have garanteed near instanteneous transaction confirmation, I don’t see how that would work at the grocery store for example.
Bitcoin is objectively better based on the way it works. Subjectively, with the established infrastructure behind it, traditional card payments are artificially better - purely because of convenience. But on a level playing field bitcoin works better and is less susceptible to negative influences.
The grocery store is not typically an online transaction. I did specify online transactions. For buying groceries online, bitcoin would be better - there are no fees when trading bitcoin. When trading cash, there are no fees.
When putting cash into a business account, there are fees, and as almost all businesses put their money into an account they pay these fees. These cash deposit fees and card processing fees have grown in such a way as to entrap nearly all commercial transactions.
Objectively, it’s better if there aren’t fees, particularly when the fees are not proportional to the actual service the fees are supposed to represent.
That’s a weird take. A system is better because it’s free?
I re-read your comment and I missed the fact that you said online buying, sorry about that.
One advantage of traditional CC over Bitcoin is buyer insurance against fraud. If someone gets a hold of your Bitcoin wallet, he can take out everything and you have no recourse.
If someone steal your credit card and make fraudulent purchases, the transactions will be cancelled and you won’t be left on the hook.
bitcoin is a better solution for online transactions than cards.
Aaaaaand now you’ve lost me.
Aaaaand how?
For one, Bitcoin is inefficient and energy intensive technology.
Just saw a sign in my bakery today begging people to pay by card because getting small coins from the bank is hard and expensive.
TBF here in Belgium Bancontact has a local monopoly (about 1 % flat fee, no fixed cost per transaction; that seems fair and intuitively cheaper than holding, insuring, depositing cash, dealing with employees skimming off the top, of the time lost counting bills).
Also the government heavily incentivizes electronic payments because those can’t be pocketed without paying VAT. That’s a MONUMENTAL amount of tax fraud being chipped at by the progressive disappearance of cash.
That’s the real crux, banks charge businesses to deposit cash. They do it in such a way that there’s no way to escape their ever-increasing fee percentage.
The mattress solution is more and more appealing, imo.
Also the government heavily incentivizes electronic payments because those can’t be pocketed without paying VAT. That’s a MONUMENTAL amount of tax fraud being chipped at by the progressive disappearance of cash.
Unfortunately I think the amount of cash tax fraud that exists is far more reasonable than the amount of straight up fraudulent, yet “legitimate”, expenditure that governments allow. See, for example, covid PPP loans.
Write offs, PPP loans, deferrals, and all the other accounting tricks that the government carved out for the primary benefit of the wealthy are definitely a bigger loss of tax revenue. One guy writing off a personal vehicle for his personal business is probably what a busy restaurant makes in 4 months of cash purchases. Suppliers and distributors are also unlikely to deal with large volumes of cash just as a matter of practicality and risk, and the fact that you can’t have a functioning business with employees that need paychecks without going through banks which go through the government, unless you’re operating with an entirely under the table staff which is just begging for trouble.
Seems like an easy fix for a business, just change their prices so that they don’t have to use coins. Make everything an integer number of dollars. If the items are too cheap to round up, encourage a three for two deal or something like that.
Sales tax doesn’t change that frequently. It’s easy for a business to predict and account for it when setting their prices.
… the euros’ lowest paper bill is 5€. 1 € and 2€ coins are bulky pieces of shit too.
And a bakery is the worst affected kind of business even if there was a 1€ paper bill. A loaf of good bread is 1.40€, if you round up it’s way too expensive and if you round down they may not even make a profit. Can’t exactly buy 3 loaves of bread either unless you got a family of 6 to feed.
Unfortunatley that won’t work, banks charge businesses a percentage for deposits.
The people insisting on using cash are the ones with a big pile of it, with origin dubious to unknown. Anti tax evasion is the best part of digital banking. Threats to privacy is the other side of that coin unfortunately…
Honestly there should be governmental electronic cash with the same advantages as cash, i.e. no fees & no traceability.
there are very easy free bank accounts to open.
Traceability is the tricky part.
The cost of a bank account has nothing to do with fees for electronic cash. Fees for electronic cash are collected per each transaction and are paid by the business you buy from. These huge fees are why businesses are slow to adopt electronic cash in Germany, they see no reason to pay 1%+ of their revenue to Mastercard or Visa or whatever.
You… are not an adult, are you?
Mastercard and VISA are not banks and don’t offer bank accounts.
Bank accounts are free. Transfers to and between banks are free.
That 1% fee you’re talking about is a processing fee from the credit card companies, which are separate financial institutions acting as middlemen to the banks.
There is no need to use their services. You can just transfer bank to bank for free, with free bank accounts. No MasterCard or VISA involved at all.
You… do not know what thread I was replying to, do you?
What is being talked about is high fees associated with each transaction done with electronic cash. Please read the comment I directly responded to again: https://lemm.ee/comment/6705330
It is necessary to use their services (or at least some other entity collecting fees) when you pay without cash in a store. You can’t go to a store and pay with direct bank transfer.
I dunno, there are good arguments for traceability. Bitcoin has complete traceability, up to its endpoints.
Here in at least the state of California (not sure if this is country wide) those bank “convenience” fees are limited to no more than $1.50 by law.
Yes cos California is little Europe and we love the modern thinking
Are you talking credit card fees or bank transaction fees?
That fee charged for simply using your debit card at a POS.
That’s more of a California thing. They’re talking about the fee charged by the CC company to the merchant, which is usually absorbed by the merchant. You’re talking about businesses charging you extra for using your credit card, which I have only seen in California.
I’ve seen it in local businesses in texas
My bank (RBC) charges me $2.50 after 10 or so free transactions, doubled if tapped.
I switched to Neo and I love it.
Re: credit card companies: you’re right, and you’re not the first to say it.
South East Asia is pissed off at them and their fees too. Starting in Thailand (but spreading) their big banks got together and made a QR code system for instant sending of money (similar to what Australia did with PayID which obfuscated bank account numbers with your own phone or email address, and stacked with Osko, a fast transfer system to bypass the slow (days) bank to bank transfers).
You will see street vendors with food carts with a QR code on it. You want to buy something? You order, they say the price, you scan the code, send the money, show your phone, get your food.
(You can have codes with the payment amount already in it, like in a bill, but since this is just a food cart on a sidewalk, they just have one generic “pay me” code)
Because they are bank to bank, it’s all fee-free.
And yes, in the USA you have Venmo and similar, which has other issues, I think.
In the Philippines so many people use pay-as-you-go and prepaid phone plans, and load up their account with credit, they’ve gone further. People could gift credit to other people for a long time. Now, you can actually pay for things with your phone credit there. (GCash, which confused me for a Google product for a while). There’s only two mobile/cellular phone companies in the country (all the rest are resellers), so it has some monopoly issues. But what it means is since everyone has a phone (doesn’t have to be a smart phone. A nokia style dumb phone is fine), you don’t need cash or to pay VISA/MC.
Cash is garbage. Using cash electronically is good.
Using credit card companies is dubious.
If only there was some way of federating spending in a way that would make private credit card companies obsolete. I’m still confused how no one sees any future in block chain and just say “it’s all a scam”.
Block chain has become a buzz word, just like AI or NFT’s, but they sure as hell makes some people a chunk of money before everyone realises what it actually means.
because it doesn’t work. case in point: it hasn’t. It improves on one aspect, and regresses (very very badly) in every single other aspect.
Electronic is faster, more convenient, safer, easier to track, and doesn’t need a stupid purse to carry around.
Haven’t touched cash since 2020, couldn’t be happier.
Very large amount of people end up paying fees from ATMs to get cash. And, if there weren’t card service, you bet the banks would add fees to any type of cash access, eg: all ATMs and bank withdrawals.
thats an american thing, civilized nations dont let banks do that
I’ve never had to pay a fee to withdraw cash from an ATM in the USA, unless it was from a different bank than mine. Other banks charge for the convenience of taking your money from their ATM, when you don’t have an account with their bank or affiliate.
It’s easy to avoid those fees by just going to your own bank’s ATM.
For the record - that’s generally also how it works in Europe. Or well, Germany at least. Also there are independent ATM companies (Euronet and the like) not affiliated with major banks who charge outrageous fees to everyone desperate enough to use one of their ATMs.
I’ve only touched a Euronet ATM to write “SCAM” on it, to warn those unaware of the dangers awaiting them…
Japan does, and it’s actually worse than the US bc the ATM from your own bank charges you if you use it after 5 pm or on the weekend. They also shut down some ATMs at either 5 or 9 pm.
Thats actually insane, wtf japan
Despite the facade, Japan is pretty backwards with technology. The classic way to look at it is a country of duality with bipedal robots and fax machines, although faxes are finally dying out finally. Some examples are that they still produced VCRs until 2016, many places depending where you are didn’t take credit cards up until about 5 years ago (although they seemingly mostly jumped over the credit card thing and went straight from cash to mobile pay systems), and as of 15 years ago I still saw the presence of 3.5" floppies, although those needed to be connected to computers via USB floppy drives.
I live in Europe, and when I withdraw from ATMs when traveling in Germany, I only use “trusted” ATMs like official banks (never Euronet or other “scam” ATMs), but because it’s outside of my own country, it’ll cost ~5€ per withdrawal. In my own country I don’t pay, no matter which bank’s ATM I use.
Other countries don’t have ATM fees, either. I can go to almost any cash point with any bank and withdraw for free. It’s only certain ones that charge, typically places with a captive audience eg festivals or certain retail parks.
The US is incredibly strange for charging people money to get their cash.
ATM fees do make sense if it’s not a bank owned ATM, though. A separate company owns and maintains the machines, which costs money.
Yeah, those are the only ones that might charge. Standalone ones in shops, not at a bank branch, and in particular in places where people might be out drinking.
I’ll just tell you about Japan… they will have “outside of business hours” ATM fees just because. Link to website
With the Postal Bank it is possible to carry around your passbook in place of your debit bank card to access your account. Even from an ATM that automatically records transactions in there which is kind of retro yet cool.
Edit: added link
So some ATMs don’t have fees, and some locations do have fees.
Wow, sounds exactly like how it is in the US, too!
My experience in the US is you pay fees whenever you withdraw from a bank that isn’t your own. In other countries, you don’t pay fees unless you withdraw from an independent machine, and even then many are free.
I dunno though, I had a cushy US bank with no branches of their own, so they didn’t charge fees anywhere. BoA were bastards though, and I’ve heard terrible things about Chase.
Chase has some of the best bank accounts in America.
The bank may be awful, but some of their products are among the best in the world.
I don’t pay them. The business conducting the transaction does :p
You mean, the fee is already baked into the sticker price, so you’re paying it regardless of which payment method you use.
Ya
No thanks
Why the fuck “cash society” is backside? It means they care about privacy.
When I found out about all that I was honestly kinda glad my country, Germany, isn’t the only one that’s in the past in terms of bureaucracy and digitalization of services.
But cash is a weird point to add. A society without cash would kinda be dystopian ngl
Without cash, you can’t have privacy. All card or contactless payments are logged and probably sold to advertisers or anyone with enough cash who wants that info.
Very true. But those advertisers and data brokers (and governments) have convinced most people that the convenience is worth it, and that only criminals desire that level of privacy.
They can’t stop me from using cash if I want to though. It is legal tender for all debts, public and private.
Debts, yes. But businesses don’t have to accept cash if you pay before the service is rendered or the product is purchased.
Businesses in the USA, especially regions with a higher proportion of black or hispanic residents, will go out of business if they stop accepting cash. It’s not going to happen.
It is legal tender, but you can’t force people to accept cash in their own businesses. Before you walk into a store, they can say we do not accept cash. By walking in and buying, you agree to not use cash
Yeah but that doesn’t happen. Cash payment is the default standard that backs up the other forms of payment that depend on Internet / phone infrastructure and electricity.
No business that I have ever patronized has refused cash, but many have been cash only and were not able to accept cards or contactless payment. Power outages, Internet outages, etc all can bring down payment systems’ infrastructure.
That’s how it is in the USA, and it’s a good system. Cash is reliable and puts the entire monetary purchasing power into the literal hand of the citizens, versus cards and other digital payment systems that can be controlled by authorities to deny your access to your own money.
It does around here (Norway). I’ve never even seen how our cash looks like since the late 00s.
The US is a shit system made for fucking the average tax player in the ass
Sounds like you don’t know what you’re talking about. This all works fine in the USA for us, it’s not a bad system at all.
I have ALL options available to me - cards, contactless payment, cash, credit, whatever. I celebrate the fact that cash is an option that lets me avoid having every data-hoarding entity collect records of my purchases.
Taxes aren’t fucking me anywhere, I pay them and I get government services and infrastructure in return. Taxes aren’t hurting me at all in fact.
I’m an immigrant in Germany and kind of had to laugh at this, because the cash thing is so hard for foreigners here. Since the pandemic it’s been better, but I had multiple moments before it where a grocery store or gas station only accepted cash with zero warning.
I didn’t like having much cash on me at first, because I was worried about losing it or having stolen. After about a year, I did lose my wallet, but the found things bureau at town hall called me to return it, cash still inside it. They charged 10% (iirc) and split it wiith the person who found it.
Edit: name of town hall changed for clarity
I’m currently in Scotland and have experienced the exact opposite xd I was kinda shocked when certain shops and stalls at festivals only offered card payment. Like just a few days ago I went into town and saw that the Christmas market was already up and running so I thought I might as well buy myself a mulled wine. At the stall I realized I didn’t have that much cash on me (especially since mulled wine is extremely expensive in Scotland for some reason. Borderline scam lol) and asked if card payment would be okay thinking they would refuse since it’s just a stall on a Christmas market so why would they be able to accept card payments right? The clerk answered “Oh yeah we only accept card anyway”. I was kinda shocked a bit but I got my mulled wine so all’s good :D
Why should the town charge you?
They provide a service, why wouldn’t they? As a student, I didn’t pay any taxes, but I still benefit from the service. If I had had my rent payment in the wallet or hadn’t been able to afford it, I might have tried to cap it, but it was like 60€ total (for a payment of 6€, not a payment of 60€), so I wasn’t bothered.
Because its a public service funded by taxes? Ok now I understand if you didnt pay any
I’m not sure if it’s partially funded by taxes or just the profit from the found things, because I’ve only dealt with them the once. I’d assume it’s at least partially funded by taxes, because they’d need to find a lot of lost things otherwise. I don’t know if a taxpayer still has to pay a fee, but I suspect so, based on how things generally work here (though they’re also generally sympathetic, in the case that someone does have their rent or something that they can’t afford to pay in the wallet, though there probably is a cap on how much someone would have to pay).
I think of it basically as a deductible for the lost item insurance.
Edit: I realized the problem. The found things bureau called me, I just felt like that was a weird translation so said town hall. Sorry lol
Most of those negatives sound fine to me.
Yeah, like what’s wrong with cash?
America doesn’t really have a functional system for this yet either. It’s a lot easier to just tap your phone on a brick and be done with it, but currently the tap method is pretty hit or miss. And bank transfers are atrocious - why do we pay venmo to do something that Korean banks just straight up do for everyone? In Korea you can just give someone your deposit number and with a couple buttons you send money easily/instantly.
You don’t even have to go that far, Canada has interac e-transfers where you can send money by email. Directly accessible through the standard bank app/site. I haven’t handled cash in years
Ew email does not sound like the place for cash transactions.
But yeah, most countries these days have instant bank transfers. The US is ancient when it comes to payments, “cashing your payslip” isn’t a thing in much of the rest of the world.
In Australia you can send money via phone number or email (called payid) but it’s not sent in an email or SMS, it’s just that your number/email address is used as a unique identifier linked to your bank account. When someone pays you via either of those, the money gets directed into that account instantly.
And yes, being paid directly into your bank account is standard here and I would say really the only option for most jobs. I’m 35 and have never had a job that doesn’t pay you direct to your account.
They likely mean their bank uses email as an identifier. So the bank asks you the registered email you’d like to send money to. Not that you’re emailing cash or something like that.
Similar to zelle, a third party that fills the gap.
The email is like an id for your account. You can use your phone number. AFAIK if you link it email or phone number to your bank and someone sends you money to that email or phone number it doesn’t actually text or email you. The money will be directly deposited into your account.
In Australia you can send money bank to bank for free, with practically instant transfers (though large amounts and first transfers from you to someone get a 24hr hold)
And you can use the person’s phone number as the transaction target (instead of bank branch number and account number)
It’s pretty nice, good for small business too, especially trades
Re: Australia: be aware that all normal bank to bank transfers are still min 1 working day transfer. Its FAST and Osko which bypass that with their own new network (up to $1000).
Not every bank is with Osko or FAST, and some are with one and not the other. Though I think FAST is fading away with Osko being dominant.
Re: phone number: or email address! It’s great, especially if you have your own domain name. You can make different PayID email addresses for each account you have if you want.
Me and my mate have sent money to each other for kitty balancing on fishing trips, this year (about an hour ago) he sent me his share (high hundreds) and it was instant
We don’t use phone number since we have had each other’s bank details for ages
Osko/FAST: are fast BSB/Acct# transfers.
PayID: is an easy way to reference a BSB/Acct#.
Together, they are fast and easy, but they are not the same thing and are not required for one to be used to use the other.
Also, “high hundreds” is less than $1000 :-P
Theoretically the situation with bank to bank money transfers should be improving - the replacement for the ancient, slow ACH system went live a few months ago. Of course it will likely take several centuries for a critical mass of banks to support it, but there has been some progress at least.
Same in Brazil, i can send i think 10k to anyone in my contact using PIX that was created by the goverment and is opensource, i can pay with it too, there is other way too, but PIX is the easier, just need a internet connection
you can send using ramdom nunber, cellphone number, CPF, qr code, email, just need to configure the key that you want in you bank or bank app, and it just work without fees
I don’t know much about Korea. Do they have laws limiting how much you can be tracked and marketed to?
My bank still sends me a text message and has no other means of 2FA options.
You’d think they’d be way more up to date on this “digital security practices” stuff. :|
I have a really slim wallet, which is only possible because I never have to use cash. Also cash is dirty. I can wash my phone once a week to keep it clean but I can’t do that with cash (well I can but what’s the point, and I’ll get accused of money laundering /j). It’s inefficient since you have to count your coins and bills and the cashier needs to do the same and then you have to check if you got the right change. You can also misplace cash, especially coins.
Meanwhile I haven’t had to handle cash for like 6 years now except for extremely rare circumstances and it just feels way better.
It’s not even accurate anymore. Cards are accepted in a lot of places.
It was absolutely true 10 years ago, though. It’s inconvenient always needing to think about how much cash you need to bring, and having a pocket full of change because it’s significant denominations.
Also, their banks are only open on weekdays and close super early. Bank lines were (are?) massive because everyone had to go at the same time due to work hours.
Annoying to deal with
…how? The only acceptable one (Even though I personally don’t like it) is cash.
Fax sucks ass and should have been put in the grave LONG ago, Flash drives are superior to Floppy in every way and fuck paper filing, digitized paperwork is far superior.
If people actually upgraded from FAX, I would have completely agreed. What we have today is an abomination which doesn’t work. Not even a week ago I had an issue with some paperwork where tax office required me to fill some form in PDF, then print it, then sign it, scan it and send it to them. I have a phone with a pen, so I did all of that and skipped few steps. Signed the document on screen. No no no no no. They didn’t want that. They want my signature on paper which I never have to send them but my signature signed through screen is not good enough.
FAX is basically all of this with fewer steps and I can easily see why they wouldn’t want to move away from it. It it works, don’t fix it mentality. Luckily this trend is slowly going away, but damn. Not to mention same IRS office required me to generate a certificate which I can use to digitally sign documents. But I couldn’t do this either, since they accept that only on some documents. A mystery.
As far as floppy disks are concerned, this is mainly for industrial machines. They are still a huge user. Those machines are not replaced every 2 years as they are more robust and made to last. So having a machine older than 30 years still working in industry is nothing new and considering upgrade costs literally millions, it’s simply not worth paying that much money to upgrade to USB.
Lots of those floppy drives in industrial and lab applications (as well as the retro computing enthusiast space) are being replaced by things like GoTek devices, which are essentially floppy emulators with flash memory.
In some places, yes. But many are still not doing the upgrade as it would require technical person to do so, provide tech support, etc. All of that costs money. Whole industry is becoming very specialized place. Siemens still sells laptops with DB9 and other serial connectors just so you can access and program PLCs. And new USB based adapters to serial simply don’t work. Sometimes they do, but most of the time they have issues with these specialized devices.
Floppy drives are the brontosaurus among these, excusive paper filing sucks too, but cash society and fax telecom is not that bad.
I mean these things can’t be that bad, Japan compete well on the world stage so whatever they’re doing is working fine. Can it be improved, probably. Does it need to be? Not yet
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We use fax in the USA more than you’d think. I’d call that a wash.
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Paper in your filing cabinet will never be messed with by a ransomware attack. Ransomware attacks seem to happen to businesses and hospitals just about daily here. I’m actually watching a news story on a hospital ransomware attack as I write this.
Floppy drives? Yeesh that one is a bit weird.
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Yeah honestly living there for a while, I came around a bit on doing things by paper.
It’s slower, certainly. But the Japanese are scary efficient at it, and there is a lot of infrastructure to support it.
And in the case where things go wrong or are confusing, at least you can take the forms and actually go and talk to someone, rather than staring at a computer screen that offers nothing.
Cash society is a bad thing since when
Germany is the same but without the bullet trains and the robots wiping your ass.
I think someday we will look back and consider if taking everything digital was ever the right choice. Friend always uses the term, “high tech downgrade.” The more I interact with the internet the more I learn how it pushes the limits of our society in not so great directions.
I think the opposite can be said too. t’s pushed society forward in so many great places as well.
I’m not saying there should be no internet. I am only saying maybe some restraint would be advantageous for everyone.
Thing is, the Internet at its core is just a vastly interconnected network. That’s it. All the effects of the Internet are direct consequences of that fundamental property, and time.
The technological architecture that supports the complexity of modern civilization? The direct consequence of interconnectivity × time. QAnon? The direct consequence of interconnectivity × time.
You can’t restrain the bad without crippling the good.
the Internet at its core is just a vastly interconnected network.
Nothing about what you said invalides my point.
Not every human transaction has to be made over the internet. Other technology’s are sufficient and do not cripple society.
You can’t restrain the bad without crippling the good
That part. “People should…” is an impotent sentiment. How do you incentivize, or force, a regression to “sufficient” technology? How do you do so without affecting beneficial network technology?
By learning from the past. See, in your mind you’ve already established all technological advancement is beneficial.
I think you might be misinterpreting my point.
Everything evolves as a wave of extremes and eventually finds some sort of equilibrium, trying to contain that is a fool’s errand.
Sounds like your own personal philosophy
Or a new normal… paved roads and cars in the US was once pretty extreme, until it became normal. Did you be it’s grownup and tell it to go to bed on time, did you make a futile effort to stunt its growth or did you roll over. Story of the frog in boiling water.
Ever notice how some roads aren’t paved?
I agree.
Nah
Ok… good talk.
Why are you responding to me on the internet?
… why don’t you have reading comprehension?
Maybe it’s the Internet. You should show some “restraint”.
because Reductio ad absurdum is easier than confronting hard truths they don’t want to accept and possibly risk firing off a dreadful thing called a “thought” in that inert mass of jello they call a brain.
Digitizing some things, like medical records and rare texts, have been extremely useful.
Digitization of records in general is extremely useful.
I think the problem was that technological advances were faster than social ones. We ended with new ways to control people, and new forms of inequality.
Many of our problems with technology are rooted in a company abusing from their power. Even the troubled ways we communcate online today are a product of how bigh tech manipulated social networks.
The Internet is great. It connects people. I learned so many things even I lived in a small town in a third-world country.
But ads, scam, and 15-second videos are bad. The current Internet is nasty and not as beautiful as it was.
Two sides of a coin, I suppose.
Guess I’m the only one in the thread that hates cash. It’s filthy and messy. Much better to just beep my watch and move along
The one thing I don’t like about digital payments is that so far, they’ve all been owned/controlled by various major card processors, like Visa. That control really gives those processors a dominant position and basically free money.
This. I love how much easier it is to manage digital make-believe numbers, than tons of leaflets and pucks that represent make-believe numbers.
I just wish the system that handled it was more… democratic? Instead of corporate feudalism with credit scores…
You mean like a cryptographic, decentralized, digital currency?
Loved the idea behind satoshis. Even tried it out. Even made a little money and got out before it all crashed.
It was an interesting concept until all the mega-grifters showed up to make it yet another speculative commodity to fuel their insatiable gambling addictions.
I consider myself pretty knowledgable in lots of computing topics but even I felt very shakey at the sheer paranoia required to keep digital currency safe. (Assuming it doesn’t suddenly become worthless overnight on its own).
I can’t imagine normies navigating that. And using paypal or a bank or something put you right back at “not your coins” anyway.
Personlly, dumping 100% of it all at once purged a LOT of anxiety.
Plus, accounts are readily trackable on public ledgers. Not very private as soon as various means are deployed to know your public account.
The thing that saddened me most was seeing how much freaking energy and technology was thrown on the pyre of make-believe numbers. The “metaverse”, web3, the fact NFTs even happened. Hardware shortages whenever some new coin figured out how to store a hash on it. Super sophisticated scams everywhere…
If anything it was definitely a psychological experiment to see what intangible nonsense even entire nation-states would devote massive resources to instead of feeding or housing people.
Not to mention the huge mess with constantly changing laws and taxes from officials who struggle to send emails.
Plus, and finally, it was supposed to democratize money unlike fiat currency, but it was worth fiat currency, so the a-holes hoarding all the fiat currency just gobbled up all the digital ones too and tried to sell it back to us.
Maybe we’ll get something better in the future.
As opposed to using debit or credit, which is also owned and controlled by all of the major credit card companies.
No, as opposed to using cash.
Cash should always be available and accepted, but personally I absolutely avoid it unless absolutely necessary.
I can’t remember the last time I used cash too buy something.
I only use cash to buy things from people in my area.
Oh yeah. Maybe it’s because I’m still in the just-got-my-first-credit-card phase, but damn I love that little piece of plastic. I’m clumsy and suck at using cash, but I feel so graceful with a card.
What is this comment? Who talks like this?
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Because theft of money via credit cards is a thing thats never happened.
As soon as I could pay for things with my phone, I did. Now I’m annoyed when I can’t.
Agreed. I think cash should always be there as a fallback. But 9/10, I prefer to use card because cash is so dirty, and is harder to keep track of.
If I go to my bank app. I know exactly how much I have. Whereas if I keep cash in my wallet, I have to count it all out and keep track of it in my head. I don’t like that. It’s just more awkward for me.
Yes but how do you pay your prostitute? I’m surely not in the mood to explain my wife what’s that $200 transaction on my card from a MELINDA TEEN at midnight that day I was supposed to be late at work.
the fuck is wrong with you
You don’t pay for sex? You must be a communist!
Fuck off troll
Thank you, you too.
Watch is more convenient, it’s also insanely insecure. Watch out for NFC scanners in public.
In my experience with my Apple Watch you have to activate the wallet functionality in order to pay for something by clicking the side button twice, which should make it harder for somebody to just walk around with a terminal charging random people. Phones usually need to be unlocked to make payments too. In theory NFC credit cards could be scanned like this, and if you’re worried about that you can look into NFC blocking wallets… I’m not super worried about it, though, because usually you wouldn’t be on the hook for such a fraudulent charge.
Use credit cards and just report fraudulent charges
Everyone who is saying there is nothing wrong with cash is right. However, there is one major drawback to cash which is no longer a big problem in societies which are mostly cashless. Namely, if your wallet gets stolen and you have $300 in it, you’ve lost that $300 forever. If your wallet gets stolen and they get your cards, you can just cancel them and aren’t even charged for fraudulent purchases.
I realize that means less privacy, but I can’t afford to lose that kind of money just walking to the supermarket to buy groceries.
You put paper filing and cash society on the “bad” list. It’s like it’s wrong for people without an internet connection or privacy conscious people to file stuff. “Pls use our brand-spanking new web UI that loads a shit ton of Javascript and steals your data on top of it!” Oh and cash society. No, why would anyone want to pay in a privacy-conscious way. Naw man, pay with a card…
As a German -Homer disappears in hedge
As someone who filled out multiple copies of the same contract by hand to buy a house recently, which had to be stamped with my seal and not signed, AHHHHHHHHHHghgghhg. On average, I only have to fax something once every several years. NTT, the main telecoms provider, STILL requires that you fax paperwork to get internet (at least for NTT East as of two years ago).
Using cash is great (except for my airline miles account), but one of the biggest banks in Japan is notorious for outages. ATMs here also, until very recently, had business days and hours. That’s finally mostly gone, at least. They can still run out of money at the year-end holiday season as everyone is home with family and they’re not always restocked in some locations, but more ATMs also helped to solve this. The problem with things transitioning to electronic payment is also those payment processors take a cut. We have all kinds of payment apps here, but many small businesses I know hate using it. The ones I know that use it most generally have larger foreign customer bases (anecdotal to business owners I know; may not be generally true in all of Tokyo/Japan).
FAX machines is still a thing in 2023!
America’s healthcare system still lives off of fax machines
I take pity on Japan as the only nation on Earth to fully internalize grind culture as their source of existential meaning to an even more toxic degree than the United States.
If they didn’t exist, I probably would deem such a thing unsustainably improbable, but there it is.
To be clear, I’m not referring to places where the poor are exploited to work even longer hours at more physically brutal jobs for basic survival, I’m talking about self proclaimed “developed” nations whose citizens are indoctrinated to proudly jump into the productivity volcano as some kind of honor/life’s purpose/sense of identity in itself, and who wouldn’t have it any other way.
South Korea is more the first case than the second, no?
Completely fair.
That said, when there was a proposal to increase standard work hours in South Korea recently, the people rejected it loudly. There is a desire in SK by many to achieve work life balance, which would be something of a slur in Japan.
Everything I’ve ever seen of Japanese culture would indicate so much as speaking against something like that would get you ostracized by the vast majority.
I’m not from the original “developed” nations but imo occupation is a pretty big factor in one’s identity.
What’s bad about cash?
Cash is fucking awesome
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Change / coins are pretty annoying imho
i think the issue is more that people don’t really understand what is good about cash and what is bad about the alternative
and the economic and societal reasons why cash is vastly preferable.
Nothing. It must be great. My weed dealer accepts nothing else!
It stresses me out giving the cashier a math problem to solve. I know they can a calculator, but still.
That’s specifically a USA problem only. In the rest of the world, the price you see is the price you pay (not inc. restaurant service fees, etc, which are more BS exported from the US)
There is zero reason that the price sticker on a shelf or menu shouldn’t be what you actually pay. It’s not like online shopping where they need to calculate shipping based on distance, or tax based on state of the receiver. And there is no reason they couldn’t even put both prices on the sticker.
But in America, they do it for one reason: capitalism. It’s a marketing scheme. Makes you think you’re getting a better deal and paying less while you shop, so shoppers tend to spend more.
It’s why fuel costs $2.19 ^99/100
Because that’s seen as cheaper than $2.20.
Sorry, but they’re not going to be rounding that final price down to save you 1¢.
In short: you’re as much a victim as everyone else.
it’s because taxes vary per state. I don’t think it’s a good one, but it is a reason
Taxes don’t vary inside a store, you idiot. There are no physical stores that straddle state lines and charge you different amounts depending on which checkout you use.
I’m going to guess you’re both an idiot and you didn’t read my second paragraph where I mentioned this specifically.
I’ve worked at a till long ago. You ring up the customer then type in how much they gave you then the machine tells you how much change to give.
It’s not a million dollar problem, it’s a few cents issue. You’ll be fine
There was a movie about this, how a few cents of rounding error moved into an account generated a lot of money. Office space.
