this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
1154 points (95.5% liked)

memes

10702 readers
2880 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/AdsNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

Sister communities

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 191 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Japan has been in the year 2000 for the past 50 years.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

Not the first time I see this, still makes me laugh

[–] [email protected] 116 points 1 year ago (37 children)

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%.

[–] thehatfox 51 points 1 year ago (18 children)

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.

load more comments (18 replies)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Honestly there should be governmental electronic cash with the same advantages as cash, i.e. no fees & no traceability.

load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (34 replies)
[–] uis 89 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Why the fuck "cash society" is backside? It means they care about privacy.

[–] Delphia 74 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Not taking cash = backwards.

Not taking digital payments = also backwards.

load more comments (11 replies)
[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (23 children)

The post isn't about privacy, if it was, faxing wouldn't be on there. I'd wager a strong guess it's about convenience on one hand while choosing to be inconvenient on the other.

Edit: or maybe it's more about high tech in some sectors and low tech in others, still not about privacy.

load more comments (23 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)
[–] Vrtrx 85 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] RaoulDook 59 points 1 year ago (8 children)

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.

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

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

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Cash society is a bad thing since when

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Psyop to make people think that electronic is superior.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] SomeKindaName 59 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Most of those negatives sound fine to me.

[–] LemmyNameMyself 41 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Yeah, like what's wrong with cash?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (13 children)

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.

load more comments (13 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] cm0002 25 points 1 year ago (6 children)

...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.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Germany is the same but without the bullet trains and the robots wiping your ass.

load more comments (11 replies)
[–] Daft_ish 55 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

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.

[–] big_slap 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the opposite can be said too. t's pushed society forward in so many great places as well.

[–] Daft_ish 22 points 1 year ago (34 children)

I'm not saying there should be no internet. I am only saying maybe some restraint would be advantageous for everyone.

load more comments (34 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] thorbot 52 points 1 year ago (24 children)

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

[–] Katana314 23 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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...

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (23 replies)
[–] FlyingSquid 50 points 1 year ago (34 children)

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.

[–] herrwoland 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They solved that problem by having no thieves lol

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I was just in Japan and how safe it was blew my mind.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (33 replies)
[–] hackris 37 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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...

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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).

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] AllonzeeLV 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As a German -Homer disappears in hedge

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] neonred 30 points 1 year ago (12 children)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

Cash is fucking awesome

[–] Akinzekeel 17 points 1 year ago

Change / coins are pretty annoying imho

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] Isthisreddit 28 points 1 year ago (12 children)

I'd argue using cash, paper, floppies is fucking advanced and the right move.

Source - I work on tech

[–] uis 33 points 1 year ago (7 children)
load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

I would love if we kept the floppy form factor but with SSD flash on the inside.

I loved the solid feeling of disks and that "kachunk" of the drives.

They were also easy to label!

load more comments (10 replies)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

Cash Society isn't a bad thing imo.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

That's what I'm saying for a long time after being in Japan a couple of times.

30 years ago, Japan was 20 years in the future, and they liked it so much, they never changed since.

[–] creditCrazy 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

I find it pretty funny seeing people talk about how Japan is not as advanced as people think. Meanwhile my home state the majority of people don't have Internet. I've been getting pretty convinced that most places use fax machines due to how few places have Internet. Anyplace that has any amount of beurocracy uses paper files. There are a considerable amount of places were cell signals simply don't work. The only way reason I know of public transport busses is because of movies. VHS player are common place for house holds. Many work vehicles were made in the 60s and we still use buckets to collect sap when sugaring. Card readers are rare so some gas stations require you to pay with cash. All around the only advanced tech things Vermont has to offer are our winter cars and the f13s that occasionally blow peoples ear drums out.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (18 children)

Okay but Vermont is basically a white people nature preserve, isn't it?

load more comments (18 replies)
load more comments (11 replies)
[–] AWittyUsername 21 points 1 year ago

Cash society is good.

[–] Matriks404 17 points 1 year ago (5 children)

There's nothing wrong with having/paying by cash though.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›