In China, you can’t exist without a smartphone, because for all existential things you have to do (paying bills, buying tickets etc.) , you are forced to use the almighty wechat app. Smartphones are a tool to manipulate and to spy on the population. It is a tool utilized by the ruling class, to control the masses. I hate the future and I hate “progress”.
You’re not forced to use smartphones. I happen to live in China, and there are people without them.
You can buy tickets at the counter or vending machines, you can text or call instead of sending wechat messages, you can pay bills by card or direct debit, and supermarkets all accept cards (Chinese ones, that is) or cash.
People use wechat or alipay out of convenience. Just like people in the West use whatsapp, signal, fb messenger, telegram or whatever else there is. And some of those are testing payment service integrations (whatsapp pay for example is live in India since a few months ago).
You don’t like it - don’t use it. Nobody will force you. But if it takes me 7 seconds on my phone to finish a task vs. 2h in person, guess which one I’m choosing.
Edit: Typo
Yea I also lived in China for 3 years while doing my masters and OP clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Everywhere takes cards and cash in addition to the digital payments. And no service I used was digital only.
Edit: The only requirement I encountered was a local phone number. Not a smartphone.
“Nobody will force you.” RemindMe 1 Year.
I’ve been here for 6+ years, and nobody forces me. Which point are you trying to prove?
The thing that is bothering me right now is seeing “cashless” establishments. Frankly, it’s kind of discriminatory, and I do not know how you can justify denying people goods and services if they are carrying the currency of the country they live in. That does not sit right with me.
San Francisco made it illegal for public facing businesses to be cashless. They deem it discriminatory towards people who aren’t able to get credit cards.
Is it even legal to be cashless? What happened to “this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private"?
What happened to “this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private"?
The key word is debts. When you want to buy something in a store, you owe money if you want it, but you have not incurred a debt. You can just not buy it. You and the seller start at an even place, trade goods/services for money, and end even. If you have a debt, you’re starting the transaction at a negative place and are trying to get back to even.
If one were to consume the product before getting to the register, is it then considered a debt? Asking for a friend that is going to get some beer.
No, that’s technically stealing. It would be a debt if they agreed in advance to give you an interest-free loan of the beer while in the store.
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Thats the norm in Sweden, most places these days no longer accept cash.
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If it’s a private business then that’s their choice. It’s your choice to not give them your $. I don’t see how that’s discrimination? If they have something that you really want, then you’ll choose a cashless option.
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I can’t take you to civil court if I’m claiming you won’t pay for something as you stand there waving the money in front of my face.
On this front. If you owe them money, they must accept cash. This is why people can pay thousands of pennies at tow yards. Or if you eat at a restaurant and they bring the bill, they can’t then say they’ll only take card, they must accept the cash.
Physical money is “…legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues.” Notice that purchases/private charges or trades are not included in that.
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How many have debit cards though?
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Wow, that’s pretty crazy to think that so many people can’t/won’t get a bank account. Are these people undocumented immigrants with no identification? Is this the same part of the population that is targeted by the ID laws for voting?
How are those people getting money? Is it really possible in the USA to just be paid with an envelope of cash? Or is it under the table work? Or if they are poor, is there any kind of benefit/welfare from the government? Don’t they need a bank account to receive those funds?
I’m just asking because in my country, I was able to open a bank account for free. I’ve had it for a year and I’ve never even deposited any money into it. But I have a debit card for that account. It seems impossible to me to have no access to a bank account. Even if you’re homeless, you’re still able to use your town hall as a contact address for official things.
Banks in the US are tricky business sometimes. They often want a lot of info (understandably) but someone does not have a home may not be able to provide some of it. They may not have a phone number, they may not have an address, they may not have either. Could also be undocumented individuals are part of it, I’m sure they factor in. Maybe someone decided to go “off grid” and stop using anything connected to the government they can and is now a mattress stuffer lol. Point is cash should always be acceptable outside of edge cases IMO.
Or if they are poor, is there any kind of benefit/welfare from the government?
Yes but it’s very mediocre generally unless their state/city has invested more into social programs, which is the exception and not the rule in the US. In my state unemployment insurance (welfare) is I think…237.00/wk so not even $1,000/mo (haven’t been on it in a few years now forgot exact number).
Mom and Pop store shouldn’t be forced to pay for a cash register and a safe. Nor face an increase possibility of robbery looking for cash.
Now, instead of homeless hanging out by the entrance/exit begging for change, they can hang out and beg a customer to take their $2 cash to buy them water.
They’re not being banned from buying something they might need. They just need to be more creative.
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Of course you don’t like an example that goes against your bs narrative.
Many places around the globe have been moving toward cashless purchasing. Hell, you can walk into some Whole Foods and walk out without any type of transaction. If you don’t think that level of interaction will become more wide spread… you seriously need to pull your head out of the sand.
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Bottom line is IMO it certainly isn’t discrimination. Homeless person with enough cash for a bottle of water that only has a cashless option can try to exchange their cash for someone to make the purchase. Now, if they have a hard time finding someone, you could argue that individual people that won’t help are being discriminatory.
Homeless people usually only have cash. The kinds of places that are cashless usually don’t have goods at prices a homeless person would be purchasing something at but you can see how it’s a concerning trend. And I’m sure privacy minded individuals would prefer to use cash when possible
Alright, everything you said makes sense. That might even be how it is supposed to work. But I don’t like it regardless that legal tender won’t be accepted by a merchant. It feels like a corporation having a chokehold on what you buy and from where, and instant knowledge of people’s spending habits.
My kid’s school just implemented an app-based pickup process this year.
You have to download an app and register your phone and email and child, then when you get in the line to pickup your child you have to press a button in the app.
I literally cannot retrieve my child from school without a smartphone.
I literally cannot retrieve my child from school without a smartphone.
I’m positive there is a backup method; did you ask about one, or did you simply install the app?
I would not be so positive. Schools aren’t well known for thinking policies through completely. Good chance this person lives in an area that has high enough income that they would just tell poor people to not be poor and get the app.
There are reasons besides “being poor” for not have smart phone access at pickup time. I assure you the answer won’t be “I guess this kid is spending the night here”.
There is a backup method.
Edit: minor rewording for clarity.
Obviously they will figure out how to get a kid to their parents are not going to kidnap a child. I’m also aware that there are reasons other than being poor to not have a cellphone. Again, you are thinking logically and not like a school administration. It is my experience that school administrators can be quite illogical. If you don’t want to use a phone, you are 100% going to end up fighting with school staff. They’re not going to like exceptions to their processes for any reason. They will fight you to get you to conform. It’s a school after all.
To be fair, I’d say that’s a fight worth fighting
You seem to be under the impression that school administration are an exception and not the rule.
They will fight you to get you to conform.
Stripping out the somewhat bizarre manipulative language, yes, of course any organization is going to want you to use their systems to streamline their processes; it’s far more efficient to have everyone using the same the system than for it to be a hodgepodge of different methods to achieve the same goal. Does that really strike you as odd?
No it is not odd. I’m not even sure why you are disagreeing with me at this point. I made an off the cuff comment you felt compelled to “correct.” I picked one population potentially impacted by a stupid policy. I did not say it was the only population potentially impacted by a policy. I’m simply speaking colloquially more than anything. Why you feel compelled to read so much into that, I do not know.
It is my experience that school administrators can be quite illogical.
This is the part of your comment I should have quoted, sorry. This gives the impression that school administrators are somehow set apart from the general population’s propensity to being illogical.
Yeah, realistically what happens here is car pulls up to person with walkie, shows ID, kid gets sent down for pickup. Or person maybe has to go into the office for sign out depending on staffing. Idk what everyone else is on about but clearly they’ve never worked in school, lol. Staff just want to go home and can’t do that until kids are safely dismissed.
Are you familiar with unthinking unfeeling unseeing american school administrators?
You didn’t add anything new to the discussion. I understand that sometimes bureaucracies-- like the public school system-- can implement poorly thought out policies, but again, I assure you that there will be a way to pick up that hypothetical kid without an app or smart phone. Because, again, the alternative is that the kid doesn’t get picked up and… what? Stays at the school?
There will be a backup method. The guy I initially responded to probably just did like most of us would do and installed the app without question.
Something happened in QC a few weeks ago like this. A IIRC 60yo person who donated blood all his life, went to a donor center, there was a lot of empty seats so he wanted to do like he has done for 40 years, take a seat and give blood, but no, nurses told him he has to register and make an appointment on the application. So he left.
I’m the opposite; coming from a more digital society my worry isn’t that we’ll all use smartphones, but that people don’t have access to digital initiatives and will be left behind. I also am concerned with how some things don’t have more regulatory oversight.
In short, smartphones good, unregulated big tech, bad. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The real issue is the concentration of power. WeChat is the gatekeeper and moderator of basically everything in China. They decide what apps and services are allowed to be successful. If they see something doing well, they have the data and the control to make a copy of it and replace the original with it. Sort of like Amazon does in the retail space.
Lets not forget another scenario, if there is some large scale issue - massive internet outage for whatever reason, you are done in cashless society… You cant buy basic stuff…
And such scenario is not out of a scifi, it happened in 1859 - Carrington event - a solar eruption so large, it completely crippled the whole telegraph system, which is much more resilient than our current electronic age… And its not a question if it happens again, but when…
But we dont even need to go that far, just look at Hawaii - large part of it is out of service due to current fires…
Thats why I would never abandon physical money completely…
So we stay stuck in the past because of the fear of a disaster, is that what you’re saying? The communities here can be such a strange mix of ludditeness and technology purism.
We can use new technologies, but we always should have a fallback option, in this case cash, otherwise quite bad things usually happen if the technology fails. Planes also have multiple backup systems, many even systems which can work during total electrical system failure. One would expect similar levels of redundancy in other crucial systems, but somehow this is not really the case.
unregulated big tech, bad.
Who should regulate big tech in the interest of the people? The corporatist state???
I mean, you already do. Everything is digital, and most stuff is centralised anyhow (payment is controlled by a duopoly, Visa and Mastercard, and you gotta pay almost everything with them)
Yes and no. I can still pay with cash and live a normal live without owning a smartphone. I can still buy paper train tickets etc.
UK & EU loves this stuff though, so they won’t mandate you have to use a single phone app for everything, but they will slowly remove your ability to do anything without your phone. You’ll just end up with a shittier version of China’s system with a billion shitty apps.
I was visiting Berlin last week. So many pubs are cashless now. And so many more cafés have this infuriating QR code menu-card. Meanwhile in Stuttgart, many reataurants are cash-only, which is almost as annoying.
I honestly think the US is at that point. I need a phone to clock in, you can’t find price checkers anymore, physically paying bills just doesn’t happen anymore, checks are becoming obsolete. Stores are downsizing in favor of online markets, banks are closing lobbies in favor of digital. We love in a digital world and while it’s technically possible without it still, very difficult to do so.
My grandmother doesn’t have a cell phone or computer and gets around just fine. The US definitely accommodates people without those abilities or who have disabilities. Yes it’s way slower and inconvenient but always possible
yeah and the problem here would be that it all would happen in one app? Seriously? It would only be a problem if google or Microsoft owned and controlled it and ran it rampantly for their own profit, not if it’s handled as a public utility as such things should. That’s why WeChat-like apps are progress and the future.
No, centralized applications should never be the future. Of course technology that connects us is the future. But I’d prefer to see a federated system for that, similar to lemmy
In some applications centralisation is the only feasible solution. Decentralisation and cynical fear of centralisation is never the excuse to create and accept shit.
We live in the age of information. Data is power. So centralization of data is centralization of power. I prefer the power to be distributed a bit more equally than it is nowadays.
I agree that sometimes centralization is the only feasible solution. But those cases should be kept to a minimum, regulated and closely monitored
I hate the future and I hate “progress”.
Cool, so get off the internet and quit annoying the rest of us.
lol. this guy thinks the internet is “the future” and “progress” it was both of these things 30 years ago. now it’s just a heap of old shit.
Google and Meta walled gardens are the cancer of the internet, not the internet itself.
Average people are actually the cancer of the internet for giving them too much power & being ignorant
Sorry, but the scientific truth about smartphones and AI manipulation is free to read for everybody. Stop denying reality.
You mean ‘objective’ m8. And stop hyperfocusing on one issue, and start seeing the forest for the trees. Technological advancement is good except for the humans that use it to control the majority - this literally the basic message in Dune, and is proven by reality.
More science deniers who love to be slaves. Doesn’t make sense to talk with you.
Free to read? Where? Without links your arguments are just as good as a flat earther’s “do your own research”.
Just scroll through my post history, if you are truly interested in links. Its not that hard.
That’s exactly the same language transphobes use to justify their bigotry. Doesn’t exactly make you sound credible.
Take it from the lens of the average Chinese person, and they will tell you it’s awesome, simple and convenient. Pros and cons basically.
You are talking to people who some refuse to download Facebook, Instagram, tiktok, and some being degoogled and running GrapheneOS. And some who opt for self hosting over trusting companies with cloud.
When those people don’t even see eye to eye with the average person from their country I sure don’t think they are going to care about people overseas not caring about privacy. Especially if they are not pro government surveillance to begin with, and some even hating their government and being suspicious of them.
The average Chinese person has no concept of protecting their personal privacy from the government. They accept the government to invade their privacy (being brainwashed by propaganda since birth).
Or too afraid to speak up about issues
They’ll speak up about a bunch of issues when it’s on an individual level - but organising is risky. Funnily enough Americans and other westerners are individualistic even without an all powerful state leaning over them.
The lens of the average person is currently under 6 feet of mud and water after having been victimised by an authoritarian government and system that prioritised fast progress over safe progress. It’s hard to even find news about this because the machine systematically cuts internet access of people who try to bring light on the floods.
Try and access your US tax records online without a contract cell phone and see how far you get.
My go to answer is to say that I don’t have a mobile phone. Actually, I have one, but it’s only for personal contacts, not for institutions. When a clerk asks me for my phone number, I answer: sure, give me your phone number, I’ll text you my contact.
Same for administrations and my employer: my boss has my phone numbers but not HR in my company.
The only institution that has my phone number is my bank, and i’m seriously considering using an alternate authentication method for 2FA at my bank.
If enough of us do that, it won’t happen.
Maybe we should step away from China for a moment given their government has a very strong motivation to keep tabs on its citizens and the fact their very mention is biasing the conversation and look at another country which has a strong smartphone presence and I often see posted on here as an example of privacy - Norway
We’re effectively cashless (I don’t think I’ve even handled cash since they swapped the banknotes over) and I think most people do their banking from bills to petty transfers on their phone. You can’t get a physical bus card, because that’s on your phone, or the ticket is attached to your bank card. We don’t have an all encompassing WeChat or even like, any homegrown social media. I’m not exactly sure which aspect of WeChat you’re honing in on so I can’t say Norway does that too, but we do an awful lot via our phones. I do have some gripes about how some things are set up, but they’re complaints that aren’t actually exclusive to this specific system.
Sweden is pretty much the same. Most places even refuse to take cash. I haven’t even seen the new bank notes and they were changed back in 2015.
Elon is working on replicating it now with “X”. He’s already said he wanted something like that for the US
This will happen and marginalized groups like illegal immigrants, the homeless, and the disabled will be effectively excluded. Poor people are going to have their finances controlled even more. This will cause deaths.
Every generation needs to adopt new technologies if they want to live in society. For some it was cars, for others it was phones, faxes or the internet. We also stop using older technology… for example, I’ve never sent a fax in my life. It probably sucks for people who still want to send faxes, but now you scan and email or take a picture and send it via your favourite app. Today you need internet and a phone. It is what it is… like every generation you either keep up or get left behind.
Yes, smartphones can be used to manipulate and spy. You can also use them to learn, to be entertained, to drive to places you had no idea how to reach, keep in touch with people, and so on. I’m not being “controlled” by anyone when I pick my phone and make a video call to a friend or watch a tutorial about something I want to do. You’re only focusing on the bad aspects, so it’s not a surprise that phones are so evil for you. Plus, some people prefer to have all their tickets, cards, etc, inside an app instead of carrying coins and cards around… it’s not bad for everyone.
Regarding China, yes, some countries will be like them. Some won’t. There’s a lot of stuff that have nothing to do with phones that could have be done by other countries, but haven’t because things are different. Governments want to control people, but you probably don’t need a permit to travel from one side of your country to the other like they do in China or used to to in the Soviet Union. Maybe I’m being naive, but I don’t see why every country must become very controlling surveillance states. It’s possible, but there are other possible outcomes too.
I think it’s good to be aware about the negative aspects of technology, but to “hate the future” just because it may (or not) be worse than today doesn’t make sense to me. I’ll deal with the problem when and if it appears.
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