Cash society is good.
Cash society is a bad thing since when
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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.
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I really just don’t care either, Ill just pay who im forced to, 1/10th of my paycheck (it costs them pennies to make) or I could randomly die. It’s all corporate bullshit anyway. /s
I really just do not care, Ill just take out a loan I cannot afford so I can avoid dieing when hit by a driver who is on their phone, not paying attention. Its just human bullshit anyway. /s
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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.
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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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.
As soon as I could pay for things with my phone, I did. Now I’m annoyed when I can’t.
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.
And there’s no recompense or tracking if someone robs you or it gets stolen, it’s error-prone and slow (especially people who insist on giving exact fucking change…)
Because theft of money via credit cards is a thing thats never happened.
It’s much easier to roll back a fraudulent electronic transaction, than a fraudulent cash transaction.
Yeah, my credit card is just a buffer for my actual cash. I buy. Something happens, maybe a defective product, and merchant is being a piece of shit, I just disoure that shit. With cash, that’s it, you are done.
That being said, here I am, new cars in the mail because somehow it was compromised and someone wanted to buy some junk in Ohio I guess. So there’s definitely the inconvenience associated with that. But when young Dozzi92 was an idiot and lost his wallet, carda get replaced, but missing cash is missing cash.
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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.
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You don’t pay for sex? You must be a communist!
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Thank you, you too.
Watch is more convenient, it’s also insanely insecure. Watch out for NFC scanners in public.
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Sounds inconvenient! I take it back. Secure yes. Convenient no.
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.
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Use credit cards and just report fraudulent charges
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Most of those negatives sound fine to me.
…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.
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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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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
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.
Yeah, like what’s wrong with cash?
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
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.
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.
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. :|
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They have those cool blue plastic trays with rubber mats that you put your money in though. And they’re everywhere.
People still use fax machines? I wouldn’t even know where to look for a fax machine these days! Is Kinkos still a thing? I think that’s where I had to go the last time I faxed something 20 years ago lol
You can actual use the Internet to send a fax to a standard fax machine. There are websites for that.
The Australian government used faxes well into the 2000s, I think the last three faxes I sent though were through my modem
Most copiers can have a fax card added. And most businesses that need a fax machine don’t even do that. They have their VoIP phone service set up a virtual fax machine. If it even needs a physical part it’s probably a little black box in a network closet, but now most don’t even do that.
Real fun thing, did you know faxed advertisements were and are still a thing? At work we get like 3 random ads each day that come out of the machine.
When I have to check the efax and see these, I almost always save the clipart for use in inter-office memes before deleting them.
I’m pretty sure that’s the most engagement these things have got in the past 20 years.
Healthcare in the US still relies on a surprising amount of faxing.
Prescriptions need to be faxed where I’m from.
The UK National Health Service (NHS) still loves fax machines. There was supposed to be a plan to phase them all out by 2020 but it never happened.
They are still somewhat common in some B2B sectors here too, although most businesses have migrated to e-fax systems now.
Hello, fax machine? This is Germany!
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And yet they never picked up SMS messages, they just used email on their phones all the while.
Old SMS had some pretty crappy character limits so they went with the option that didn’t is basically how I see it. Now, LINE is king. I’ve only used text with like two people ever in Japan.
Old SMS was free though, it used the spare bits in a regular phone call datastream. Meanwhile, the network provider charged you 10p a pop, and far more for any kind of data.
I don’t know what the prices here in Japan were without looking it up. I’ll try to remember to ask my wife when she gets home.
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%.
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.
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.
Unfortunatley that won’t work, banks charge businesses a percentage for deposits.
… 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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Honestly there should be governmental electronic cash with the same advantages as cash, i.e. no fees & no traceability.
I dunno, there are good arguments for traceability. Bitcoin has complete traceability, up to its endpoints.
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.
Also, PS: this comment I wrote a while back: https://lemmy.world/comment/5658808
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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
My bank (RBC) charges me $2.50 after 10 or so free transactions, doubled if tapped.
I switched to Neo and I love it.
Are you talking credit card fees or bank transaction fees?
That fee charged for simply using your debit card at a POS.
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I’ve seen it in local businesses in texas
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”.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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’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…
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.
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
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.
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.
Heh, they’re in the UK now too? Cool. Yeah, the UK has some pretty shitty bank accounts from what little I’ve seen, so this helps.
Chase are still pricks though, to be clear. Bunch of bell-ends.
Japan has been in the year 2000 for the past 50 years.
Not the first time I see this, still makes me laugh
- regressive drug laws
still not so up to date LGBTQIA+ laws
This is the one that really baffles me. With how much Japanese media fucks with gender and sexuality, you’d think the laws would keep up.
weirdly enough, transidentity is not that badly seen, but if you’re japanese, you’ll be considered your desired gender if you do the surgery.
edit: idk about public opinion about it, tho
but if you’re homosexual and your partner is violent with you, the police won’t do anything about these violence or something like that. needs to be checked but it’s what I remembered reading on Wikipedia
80 hour work weeks
And their website design…
A/B testing clean, minimalist, modern designs common in the West against modern Japanese designs always shows better results for the Japanese designs amongst Japanese consumers. I don’t think they’re going to cater to the 2.5% of foreign residents and others that might use Japanese sites (though I often wish they would)
Fax machines are definitely being phased out.
Floppy disks? How old is this meme? In the nearly twenty years I’ve been in Japan, I’ve never even seen a floppy disk.
Paper filing is an option if you want it.
And as for cash, electronic payments have really taken off in the last year. I still value my privacy though. So I stick it out in the slow line up.
All in all, there’s a kernel of truth to the meme. What the outside sees as a Blade Runner society drenched in neon, the reality is more “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” kinda place.
What privacy from cash? Do you use an ATM or bank account to get your cash?
Then you’re either on the business security cam or the local police network cam. There is no privacy even with cash.
All your shopping behaviour and more can be tracked easily by card purchases. Cash purchases are much harder to track.
At least that’s how I see the advantage of cash here. Maybe I do miss something though
Carry a cellphone? Then your habits are easily tracked and sold to businesses.
You can list 100 other forms of tracking if you’d like to, but the point the person is trying to make is they specifically don’t want tracking on their exact purchases.
Buy something on a credit card and the CC company knows exactly what you bought, where you bought it, when you bought it etc. Unless you’re a really high profile target, no company is going out of their way to get all that info when you buy something in cash.
Your argument basically amounts to “why would anyone put a lock on their front door when someone can climb their fence, smash a window and climb through?”
Point is people freak about privacy to make lame excuses about stupid shit like using cash. I don’t even go to businesses that are “cash only”. It’s incredibly dumb.
to make lame excuses about stupid shit like using cash
I don’t think anyone is making (or needs) an “excuse” to use cash. They’re simply stating why they do it and for some reason you feel the need to explain how they’re somehow “wrong”.
I swear, people on this website will try to convince you that your favorite flavor of ice cream is wrong.
Cash is wrong and vanilla ice cream is bland & stupid.
The CC company knows exactly what you bought
No they don’t. They know when, where, to whom, and how much you paid tho
Really depends. I have two cards that basically show me a receipt when I view the details of the transaction
Floppies are still a huge thing in heavy industry. Many of those machines are still being used and you have to enter code somehow.
Fax machines are definitely being phased out.
NTT East, at least as of a little over two years ago, hard requires a fax to set up internet still. It’s infuriating.
Also in the US the medical industry still does a ton of faxing.
Yep. Having worked in the industry for a long time, including trying to transition to EMR and such, I get this. In Japan, one of the reason fax machines are still important that is not often talked about is that they generally have a bank of pre-programmed numbers. This is seen as a way to reduce the chance of exposing PII to others by accident. This is not wrong, but the same could be implemented for other systems such as email (or the host of EDI that exist). I literally just had a training that said we should not even send a fax ourselves, but have someone observe that we hit the correct pre-programmed button for it.
All of those apply to Germany as well. Except floppies …
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.
I’m not from the original “developed” nations but imo occupation is a pretty big factor in one’s identity.
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.
If it ain’t broken…
Live in Japan. Plenty of things are quite broken :/
Hate that philosophy. If you actually apply it, we should never improve anything. How awful that would be.
