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.
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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.
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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.
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 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 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.
Adding the word “scientific” to your point doesn’t make it more believable.
In fact, it detracts from your point by making you sound like you don’t know how to use the word.
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.
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 was in China two months ago. While WeChat and AliPay are ubiquitous, it’s not true that China is cashless. You can still use cash pretty much everywhere, but expect vendors to have to rummage for a bag of cash behind the counter then panic as they don’t remember how to count money.
But honestly, it’s not that different from Europe and North America. When I’m in, say, Canada or France, I’m using a Visa credit card through Google Wallet for absolutely everything. Not sure I trust Google and Visa any more than WeChat.
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.
Elon is working on replicating it now with “X”. He’s already said he wanted something like that for the US
I only use cash at the pot store.
You can’t even open a bank account without a smartphone in China
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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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.
