For this reason it’s important we start using cash again, and not attend shops and restaurants that don’t take it. Nowadays we have brutal armed robberies like never before, but using non-traceable currency is important for freedom.

Plenty of small businesses in London are still cash only. My local hairdresser for example.

Cherish it!

Source? I would have thought “brutal armed robberies” were way down from historical highs.

Sweden has dramatically changed in the last 20 years and I would guess most here have the old homogenous Sweden in mind.

Like many other countries have had before (such as USA), we are now living with brutal gangs grouped together per ethnicity, except for native Swedes, Finns, and Sami people though. The worst of the new wave of robberies we call “humiliation robberies” (förnedringsrån, you can search with Google Translate) where the victim (mostly natives) is not only forced to withdraw from the ATM, but tortured, forced to undress, pissed upon, forced to say humiliating things, or raped (also men and boys).

The last of many examples to make headlines, where the perpetrators were found, was two young guys in Solna who were forced onto a church yard at night where they were beaten, raped, tortured and robbed. Mainstream media in Sweden does not publish details so I’ll link you one mainstream media article, and one independent blogger - again you might want to use a translation service to read it

https://petterssonsblogg.se/2021/01/07/ali-och-amin-doms-for...

https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/solna-man-misshandlade-pa-k...

Young Swedes today know where not to walk after dark in a way their parents never thought about.

If my personal account, the example, or a search into “förnedringsrån” isn’t what you’re looking for, please let me know! You are absolutely right to want to verify claims.

Here is one source about robberies being roughly twice (maybe 1.7-1.9x) as common in 2019 as the period 2006-2015: The graph says "Percentage (of population being) victim of robbery": https://www.bra.se/statistik/statistik-utifran-brottstyper/r...

I have a theory that as the intelligence of solutions preventing crime increases some forms of criminality will become more violent in order to defeat the crime prevention - for example car jacking as a way to get cars because breaking into cars became too difficult for common criminals due to alarms etc.

Spread what risk? They are already making money of you. The risk they take is really small compared to what kind of money they are making...

Keyword: track. As in the privacy concern of the government having direct insight into all your financial transactions.

Sure, they already have the opportunity to demand that information from Swedish commercial banks and other financial institutions, but it's not as convenient as the direct control they have with a centrally managed digital currency.

The really nice thing with fungible physical goods like paper currency or similar is they are not in any shape or form tied to my identity. That's a feature.

I agree with you that cash is the best choice given that privacy is the main concern, even better than bitcoin or any other crypto with a visible blockchain. Banks already tie the money you spend to your identity. I would like to own digital currency, like i own the cash in my wallet. Banks would not like that, since when they would like to own it and lend it to me.

And I believe the Swedish central bank has thought about you you could apply -ve interest rates to bank accounts as Sweden is so massively a non cash society.

I wonder about that. In theory it means you can have interest rates that are well below 0% (think of -2% or worse). The idea behind negative interest rates is that there is work to be done that cannot be financed at a 0% interest rate and that the interest rate has to be even lower.

If you assume 2% bank fees and a -3% interest rate it would be possible for banks to hand out -1% loans and that would allow financially insecure consumers to acquire loans because you cannot default by definition. Your principal will shrink even if you do nothing.

Will this work? I feel like it could work but it could also have unintended consequences.

>because you cannot default by definition. Your principal will shrink even if you do nothing.

That's not what default means. If you stop making monthly payments, you're in default. From wikipedia:

> Default may refer to: Default (finance), failure to satisfy the terms of a loan obligation or failure to pay back a loan

No they where talking about taking the -ve interest from the bank accounts

What does "heading towards a Japanese situation" mean?

I was thinking of the long period of slow economic growth, long period of low interest rates, "chronic deflation", and few tools left by central banks to stimulate the economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan)#Legacy

A deflationary situation where, to put it in one way, the value of money increases as time passes (as opposed to inflation where the value of money erodes over time). Central banks would then try to set negative interest rates so that any (digital) money one holds can be continuously reduced to incentivize spending rather than saving.

<2 children per woman I would guess, I.e. a lot of old people but few young. Or maybe they mean the high government debt but low real stock market growth?