__The Swiss people are likely to vote on a people’s initiative for the conservation of money and banknotes launched by the Swiss libertarian movement (Mouvement libertaire suisse).__
“Cash is freedom,” according to the initiative’s backers, making it “an absolute priority for Switzerland”. The movement fears a complete digitisation of monetary transactions. It seeks to prevent the abolition of cash by means of a constitutional guarantee so that Switzerland always has enough money and banknotes. They also propose that any move to abolish the Swiss franc would have to be approved by the people and the cantons.
The Swiss political system is characterised by a very high level of citizen participation. One of the pillars of Switzerland’s direct democracy is the principle of the people’s initiatives, which allow citizens to propose a total or partial reform of the constitution. In order to be valid, an initiative must garner at least 100,000 signatures from citizens within 18 months. It then goes to a nationwide vote.
More than 157,000 signatures have been collected so far by the libertarian movement, the Swiss-German language newspaper NZZ am Sonntag reported on Sunday. Of these, more than 111,000 have already been validated.
The authors of the initiative are concerned about the spread of electronic transactions and fear that cash will eventually be abolished. They see this trend as a risk to freedom, with increased possibilities for surveillance.
I’d vote for it because some people are in a marginal state and depends on cash to survive
I get it, how else am I supposed to pay my chrütterverkäufer?
If you wanted to build a totalitarian state, cash is one of the first things you should try to kill.
On the one hand, Datenschutz makes it necessary to have quite a drama if you set up a webcam watching your property, but on the other hand, some don’t have any issue if the last cent of expenses can be tracked.
Auch ein blindes Huhn findet mal ein Korn. That’s it with this libertarian initiative.
The question is: has anyone actually threatened to create a cashless society or is this just a false flag vote to get air time?
I was asked to sign this but I didn’t. The person who asked seemed to be a lunatic. After I told her I don’t need paper money, she started to talk about how abolishing paper money would be only the start of complete control of the people so on and so forth. Needless to say that after a while of her speaking she sounded like an crazy conspiracy theorist.
15 years ago, the traffic policemen accepted only cash for small violations (i got caught talking on the mobile). Now they carry card terminals (last spring I forgot to buy the vignette, although I was completely sure I did it).
Also I have maybe a hundred in my wallet, mainly to pay the delivery service. But delivery is also being digitalized quickly. Other than that, I don’t even use the cash.
Also, customs tax, you can pay the postman with Twint, which is a great improvement.
Don’t know the political party but I like the idea itself.
We need anti laundering processes to cope with the various traffics but deleting cash won’t solve laundering issues and will take freedom from ppl.
How anybody could be against such a proposal is beyond me. I get it, you like using digital payments. Well you can keep on doing that. Nobody will stop. But with this, your option to use cash is guaranteed
I’m all for keeping cash.
First it allows for transactions without having to diclose everything (yes, can be illegal transactions, but also just buying presents for sibling others with whome you share an account).
​
But way more importantly, currently digital transaction cost a little fee for the commerces. While it’s not a problem for big transaction, when the sum is quite small, the fee can eat quite a large part of the margin. (example, when you buy just one drink in a pub, or a chocolate/cereal bar).
​
Furthemore, many places still don’t have digital paying possibilities due to multiple reasons. Can be connection availability (in alpine huts per example), the lack of utility to set up a system (like those side of the road “take-and-pay” vegetable trailers. You can’t also expect every single village association to own card readers and pay the annual fees for them just in order to use it a the village fair.
​
Finally remember we still have a part of the population that is not big technology users or don’t have smartphones/online bank account. While it’s not a problem for commercial transactions where you can pay by card. It can become problematic when reimbursing a friend small sums. Do you really want everyone to pay individually when you go out eating? While everyone putting 20.- or 40.- on the table is so much easier for everyone.
It must be said that there are currently no project to get rid of cash in Switzerland.
You can check on the SNB website how much cash there is in circulation. Last time I checked I believe it was 81 bio. Good luck in getting this all back into the banks
The little grocery store I buy my groceries from is owned and run by a lovely 82 year old man and his wife. They only know cash. If I presented my TWINT payment ,they’d think I just landed from Mars.
As an electronics EFZ, I absolutely do not want to have an economic system 100% reliant on electronic means.
Cash is physical. Cash will survive an EMP, cash will survive a blackout. Cash will survive solar flares. Cash does not depend on the electrical grid.
Not only that but the most used current means to pay online are all private corporations we have no control over.
Privacy too. cash is not as traceable as anything online.
If we were all to use Paypal over night. The small fees paypal take don’t come back. They’re not like taxes that build bridges. That’s essentially adding inflation for no good reason but laziness.
Debit cards in an enclosed system should be fair, and true that it makes sense and is convenient to use them. However, getting completely rid of cash just because reasons is crazy.
I want to underline that I want cash as a backup system regardless what other system we use. And not force people to use cash or digital means and let them choose.
But I do think we should be able to switch to a cash only system in a reasonable amount of time should things go south. This implies having reserves and « wasting » money in that.
good move
The irony of a libertarian movement trying to keep state-mandated legal tender.
Smart people.
Why should cash not survive?
Just this saturday my Twint app has locked me out (some login issue – it’s resolved as of today morning), which I needed for parking (QR codes by Parking Pay)- but thankfully I had some cash to pay for it. Yesterday I was at an event where I could buy CD’s with cash, which I did, he also offered twint, but I was locked out, so I could only spend cash.
I love that we are able to chose and have backups. I hate that we try to eliminate anything that isn’t used as much as we wish it would be used.
funny enough, when I read their site like two months ago, it reads like an Ad for Bitcoin, just no Bitcoin.
This is a cool idea, and I’m sure in no small part fueled by the fear/hate of the WEF. To be fair, they’ve been talking about programmable money that can be used a la China’s social credit score, so the threat is somewhat real.
LET ME PAY IN CASH IF I WANT !
The end 🙂
I hate how the hipsters on /r/de hate on cash. I‘m with the supposed libertarians on this one, although I thought libertarians loved the cashless society idea
There are many great comments both on marginalised people needing cash, and totalitarian governments wanting to eliminate cash as a method of control. I propose also that cash is the ultimate defence against cyber attack, under which the electronic financial system would be severely impacted or totally paralysed. Cash would indeed be king in this case.
It’s vital to keep cash as a viable medium of exchange far into the future.
while i dont think you can resonably abolish cash, i do support the notion of making it a safe bet that you can not. My concern is more the stores i have seen that only take cashless transactions right now
For a peek into the future of a “cashless” society, visit Oslo, Norway.
Try to pay the 30 NOK (~3 CHF) “garderobe” at the club with coins, and they’ll tell you “that’s suspicious”. Every drink order will have to be rounded up by 40-50 NOK, because there’s no change in the bar. Beggars in the street have card-terminals, because nobody has coins anymore. And waive around the equivalent of a 100 CHF note (1000 NOK) and somebody will probably call the police.
Cards are great and all, but there are many obvious problems, already mentioned elsewhere in this tread (And that’s even before we get started on CBDC). Keeping cash not only as a theoretical legal tender, but also practical in day-to-day use is important. It looks like Norway is already past the point of no return on that.
26 comments
__The Swiss people are likely to vote on a people’s initiative for the conservation of money and banknotes launched by the Swiss libertarian movement (Mouvement libertaire suisse).__
“Cash is freedom,” according to the initiative’s backers, making it “an absolute priority for Switzerland”. The movement fears a complete digitisation of monetary transactions. It seeks to prevent the abolition of cash by means of a constitutional guarantee so that Switzerland always has enough money and banknotes. They also propose that any move to abolish the Swiss franc would have to be approved by the people and the cantons.
The Swiss political system is characterised by a very high level of citizen participation. One of the pillars of Switzerland’s direct democracy is the principle of the people’s initiatives, which allow citizens to propose a total or partial reform of the constitution. In order to be valid, an initiative must garner at least 100,000 signatures from citizens within 18 months. It then goes to a nationwide vote.
More than 157,000 signatures have been collected so far by the libertarian movement, the Swiss-German language newspaper NZZ am Sonntag reported on Sunday. Of these, more than 111,000 have already been validated.
The authors of the initiative are concerned about the spread of electronic transactions and fear that cash will eventually be abolished. They see this trend as a risk to freedom, with increased possibilities for surveillance.
I’d vote for it because some people are in a marginal state and depends on cash to survive
I get it, how else am I supposed to pay my chrütterverkäufer?
If you wanted to build a totalitarian state, cash is one of the first things you should try to kill.
On the one hand, Datenschutz makes it necessary to have quite a drama if you set up a webcam watching your property, but on the other hand, some don’t have any issue if the last cent of expenses can be tracked.
Auch ein blindes Huhn findet mal ein Korn. That’s it with this libertarian initiative.
The question is: has anyone actually threatened to create a cashless society or is this just a false flag vote to get air time?
I was asked to sign this but I didn’t. The person who asked seemed to be a lunatic. After I told her I don’t need paper money, she started to talk about how abolishing paper money would be only the start of complete control of the people so on and so forth. Needless to say that after a while of her speaking she sounded like an crazy conspiracy theorist.
15 years ago, the traffic policemen accepted only cash for small violations (i got caught talking on the mobile). Now they carry card terminals (last spring I forgot to buy the vignette, although I was completely sure I did it).
Also I have maybe a hundred in my wallet, mainly to pay the delivery service. But delivery is also being digitalized quickly. Other than that, I don’t even use the cash.
Also, customs tax, you can pay the postman with Twint, which is a great improvement.
Don’t know the political party but I like the idea itself.
We need anti laundering processes to cope with the various traffics but deleting cash won’t solve laundering issues and will take freedom from ppl.
How anybody could be against such a proposal is beyond me. I get it, you like using digital payments. Well you can keep on doing that. Nobody will stop. But with this, your option to use cash is guaranteed
I’m all for keeping cash.
First it allows for transactions without having to diclose everything (yes, can be illegal transactions, but also just buying presents for sibling others with whome you share an account).
​
But way more importantly, currently digital transaction cost a little fee for the commerces. While it’s not a problem for big transaction, when the sum is quite small, the fee can eat quite a large part of the margin. (example, when you buy just one drink in a pub, or a chocolate/cereal bar).
​
Furthemore, many places still don’t have digital paying possibilities due to multiple reasons. Can be connection availability (in alpine huts per example), the lack of utility to set up a system (like those side of the road “take-and-pay” vegetable trailers. You can’t also expect every single village association to own card readers and pay the annual fees for them just in order to use it a the village fair.
​
Finally remember we still have a part of the population that is not big technology users or don’t have smartphones/online bank account. While it’s not a problem for commercial transactions where you can pay by card. It can become problematic when reimbursing a friend small sums. Do you really want everyone to pay individually when you go out eating? While everyone putting 20.- or 40.- on the table is so much easier for everyone.
It must be said that there are currently no project to get rid of cash in Switzerland.
You can check on the SNB website how much cash there is in circulation. Last time I checked I believe it was 81 bio. Good luck in getting this all back into the banks
The little grocery store I buy my groceries from is owned and run by a lovely 82 year old man and his wife. They only know cash. If I presented my TWINT payment ,they’d think I just landed from Mars.
As an electronics EFZ, I absolutely do not want to have an economic system 100% reliant on electronic means.
Cash is physical. Cash will survive an EMP, cash will survive a blackout. Cash will survive solar flares. Cash does not depend on the electrical grid.
Not only that but the most used current means to pay online are all private corporations we have no control over.
Privacy too. cash is not as traceable as anything online.
If we were all to use Paypal over night. The small fees paypal take don’t come back. They’re not like taxes that build bridges. That’s essentially adding inflation for no good reason but laziness.
Debit cards in an enclosed system should be fair, and true that it makes sense and is convenient to use them. However, getting completely rid of cash just because reasons is crazy.
I want to underline that I want cash as a backup system regardless what other system we use. And not force people to use cash or digital means and let them choose.
But I do think we should be able to switch to a cash only system in a reasonable amount of time should things go south. This implies having reserves and « wasting » money in that.
good move
The irony of a libertarian movement trying to keep state-mandated legal tender.
Smart people.
Why should cash not survive?
Just this saturday my Twint app has locked me out (some login issue – it’s resolved as of today morning), which I needed for parking (QR codes by Parking Pay)- but thankfully I had some cash to pay for it. Yesterday I was at an event where I could buy CD’s with cash, which I did, he also offered twint, but I was locked out, so I could only spend cash.
I love that we are able to chose and have backups. I hate that we try to eliminate anything that isn’t used as much as we wish it would be used.
funny enough, when I read their site like two months ago, it reads like an Ad for Bitcoin, just no Bitcoin.
This is a cool idea, and I’m sure in no small part fueled by the fear/hate of the WEF. To be fair, they’ve been talking about programmable money that can be used a la China’s social credit score, so the threat is somewhat real.
LET ME PAY IN CASH IF I WANT !
The end 🙂
I hate how the hipsters on /r/de hate on cash. I‘m with the supposed libertarians on this one, although I thought libertarians loved the cashless society idea
There are many great comments both on marginalised people needing cash, and totalitarian governments wanting to eliminate cash as a method of control. I propose also that cash is the ultimate defence against cyber attack, under which the electronic financial system would be severely impacted or totally paralysed. Cash would indeed be king in this case.
It’s vital to keep cash as a viable medium of exchange far into the future.
while i dont think you can resonably abolish cash, i do support the notion of making it a safe bet that you can not. My concern is more the stores i have seen that only take cashless transactions right now
For a peek into the future of a “cashless” society, visit Oslo, Norway.
Try to pay the 30 NOK (~3 CHF) “garderobe” at the club with coins, and they’ll tell you “that’s suspicious”. Every drink order will have to be rounded up by 40-50 NOK, because there’s no change in the bar. Beggars in the street have card-terminals, because nobody has coins anymore. And waive around the equivalent of a 100 CHF note (1000 NOK) and somebody will probably call the police.
Cards are great and all, but there are many obvious problems, already mentioned elsewhere in this tread (And that’s even before we get started on CBDC). Keeping cash not only as a theoretical legal tender, but also practical in day-to-day use is important. It looks like Norway is already past the point of no return on that.
Cash is King! Change my Mind.