Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018)

Re:Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018) by beefield on Friday March 06, 2020 @07:24AM (#22503027)

Well, not "forcing"[1] people buying crap today makes the people creating the crap jobless and yes, that has a real cost for society. first because the jobless do not create value and second because someone needs to pay their unemployment benefits.

[1] Nobody is forcing you to do anything. You can voluntarily choose to lend your money to the bank if you agree with the interest rate. If you do not, you are free to do as you please with your money. Find someone who is willing to pay better interest rates (typically more risky)[2], buy crap, or even buy bitcoin or gold.

[2] Interesting question is, why society should guarantee you a return[3] on your investments if you do not yourself find a counterparty that is willing to pay you high enough return that you are happy with? Smells awfully lot like socialism to me.

[3] And why this guaranteed return needs to be exactly 0%? Why not 5%?

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Re:Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018) by SuoDuanDao on Friday March 06, 2020 @07:44AM (#22503127)

If it's legal to own bitcoin or gold, what good does eliminating cash do?

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Re:Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018) by beefield on Friday March 06, 2020 @09:03AM (#22503597)

Central banks do not guarantee purchasing power of gold or bitcoin.

(A note, The questions I made above are not meant to be snarky. Those are the kind of questions I struggled literally for months when I tried to get my head around negative rates and whether they make sense or not.)

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Re:Swedes rebelling against a cashless society (2018) by SuoDuanDao on Saturday March 07, 2020 @07:58AM (#22511334)

How do they guarantee the purchasing power of legal tender? Serious question, I thought the health of the economy and the need to pay taxes was all that did that.

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