Russia has always (somewhat fairly) been vocal that since the collapse of the Warsaw pact, Nato has no reason to exist other than to defend against a potential attack from Russia.
Nato have always acted as though that's true, and have pursued expanding the alliance to countries bordering Russia, and established missile defence installations there.
The closest we ever got to nuclear war was when Russia moved missiles to Cuba, so it doesn't take a geopolitical scientist to understand that the US is very uncomfortable about threats near its borders, but expects Russia to accept it the other way round.
I'm not up to date with what the propaganda systems are belching out in Russia, but I believe the original reason was something about Nazis in Ukraine, and it would not surprise me if the narrative is shifting to be 'Nato is creeping up on us again'. Which is odd, because Russia already has borders with Nato countries, and controlling Ukraine actually brings them closer to where Nato already has a strong foothold.
A lot of what's going on in Ukraine at the moment is linked to Sevastopol, I think. Russia absolutely cannot afford to lose Sevastopol. Not sure quite what happened that triggered the full scale invasion after the annexation of the Crimea, mind.
> Which is odd, because Russia already has borders with Nato countries, and controlling Ukraine actually brings them closer to where Nato already has a strong foothold.
A couple of minutes with a globe would answer many of those questions. Not the propaganda ones, of course.
No I just mean it’s a bit of an implausible explanation and requires Russian citizens to adopt doublethink. Not that they’re not used to it, just harder in the internet age.
Because NATO did not expand. Countries decided to join NATO. You may think this is the same with other words, but it isn't.
In the first version there's only two actors in the world, who can make decisions: Russia and NATO (or rather USA, for they argue NATO is basically the USA with another name). In the second version countries are free to decide who they associate with. There wasn't some empty space that NATO moved into. The countries who were there said "hey, NATO. Russia has been attacking and oppressing us for a long time and we fear they will do it again. We'd like to join."
To answer your second question: Exactly what Russias neighbors feared is the reason. Russia is unhappy they couldn't oppress their neighbors anymore since 1990 and they want to do it again. They cannot really do it to the countries that already joined NATO, so they did it to the country that was late to the party.
>Because NATO did not expand. Countries decided to join NATO. You may think this is the same with other words, but it isn't.
In the first version
That is sort of a weird argument. Do you believe that is the case for the US as well? The US did not expand into Indian areas those areas just decided to join the US..
Just to clarify: the "we" who would like to join is a government that was installed by the USA in a coup. What kind of "attacking and oppressing" happened before the coup?
That's just being obtuse to be obtuse. You and I both understand the difference between the choices that Finland or Sweden made and the "choices" that Ukraine or Iraq made.
If a political party came to power in Finland or Sweden outside the normal electoral process and decided to align the country with Russia, would the EU and the USA call them usurpers and terrorists and start military intervention to liberate Finland or Sweden? Or would they not?
I asked about a hypothetical scenario: would the USA violently suppress a Pro-Russia Party of Finland. That seems to have caused a crash and you fell back to your default rhetoric.
> Just to clarify: the "we" who would like to join is a government that was installed by the USA in a coup. What kind of "attacking and oppressing" happened before the coup?
And the Yank said that only the US of A gets to have anything to do with geopolitics because "we are just better that's why". Oh, and "because all my life I've been told Russians are evil".
Putin is unfortunately right, you understand only one kind of argument.
Living in a country that was occupied by russians and gets constant threats by russians to be invaded again. Being in NATO and EU is the best available security guarantee.
No one needs to tell me russians are evil. It’s just something you pick up living next to russia.
Also your threat “putin was right” proves that you are, in fact, evil.
It's more about frustration with hypocrisy than being evil. When your friends kill in Gaza - "that's different", that's freedom, it's for democracy. It's not like the West shies away from cruelty when advancing its interests. You just choose to be blind to the brutality, that's all.
I don't want MY HOME to be occupied by anyone. In the last 100 years the only ones were nazis and russians. russians are doing the same again in Ukraine and are threatening to do it again in my home.
There is nothing hypocritical about not wanting my family being killed or raped by russians or anyone.
You say "your friends kill in Gaza"? Who would those be? I have said nothing about who my friends are. I said NATO and EU are protecting my home from russians. As for Gaza, Israel is not in NATO, also not in the EU.
Russia wants to control and annex its former vassals who in turn try to flee under the shield of NATO.
That is all there is to it.
Right now the west can send as much weapons as it wants to Ukraine to be used against Russia with impunity. If Ukraine was a member of NATO Russia would be completely safe.
But the US cant even be bothered to send an insignificant amount of aid to Ukraine, never mind an actual attack. Russia knew this very well and much of its strategy is based on this decreasing interest and support.
Why is it so hard to believe that the Russians don't want what they consider hostile parties on their borders?
"Russians" who have an awareness of history (who are all the Russians I know personally) understand, implicitly, that these countries did not join NATO out of hostile intent - but from the need for some level of security to protect against a neighboring country which has done, as I'm sure you must know, some pretty awful things to them in the not so distant past.
They don't love NATO by any means. But they fully get why these countries sought membership. And don't for a minute believe the hogwash put out by the current Tsar, that it was somehow "necessary" to start bombing an shooting everywhere with oblivion, and letting the bodies pile up with such an awful stink -- just to make a "point".
(I put "Russians" in quotes because only about 70 percent of the country is what one would call ethnically Russian).
We would do the exact same thing.
You're right - "we" (by which you mean the US) did in fact do a basically very similar thing, in regard to numerous countries in Latin America from about 1961-1985. To the point of establishing or supporting dictatorships that killed and tortured probably upwards of 200,000 people, on top of putting multiple generations of social development in these countries effectively on hold.
And for which we have been rightly and thoroughly condemned, by folks with a good conscience, and an awareness of basic history everywhere.
>Why is this "propaganda", and not fact? Why is it so hard to believe that the Russians don't want what they consider hostile parties on their borders? We would do the exact same thing.
I am from eastern Europe, we do not want to sacrifice our lives to invade Russia and loot their shit, we begged to enter in NATO to ensure our survival from Russia, from our history and large number of Russian invasion we understand better why we wanted it then some Westerners. Again we have no fucking intention to still Russian land or their toilets.
>What, in your opinion, is the reason?
I thin it is easy to understand, Putin grabbed Crimea in a genius move, the Western Europe were surprised and too dependent on Russia to do anything about it, the retards shoot down an airplane with civilians and EU did nothing.
And here all it starts, Putin got his ass kissed so hard by his minions that now he thought he can do again a genius blitz attack in Ukraine, Zelensky will run, the old people will pull out the communist flags and portraits of Putin and all will be glorious. Basically Putin was misinformed and stupid enough to think he can win in 3 days or 2 weeks whatever makes Rusky feel better.
And why would Putin want to grab land, steal crap? It is a Russian thing, they like to control, steal, invade etc. They always cry that they lost their sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and they accuse us Eastern Europeans of beeing Rusofobs and brainwashed by CIA.
The final plan was probably to grab as many territories as possible before this countries enter EU and NATO, this is why Ruzzia is supporting anti-EU groups in their neighbors to delay things so his army can invade.
When some Rusky or tanky will tell you that Ruzzia is just afraid of beeing invaded, use your brain and remember that Ruzzia has nuclear weapons so nobody will invade them, the danger for them is the diea that ex-USSR cuntries are prospering in EU and NATO, this idea makes itharder to keep the new generation under contrl so extreme measures were taken to brainwsh them.
And so if Musk were to be providing material support he could see Starlink placed on the export control list. Which if it happened would then open Musk up to severe criminal charges if he didn't take steps to prevent devices being used by Russia.
So I suspect he might want to do the right thing ahead of time given the US government is a pretty important customer for SpaceX.
I think he has given up on change so he's just moving on. I'd bet he has named the names elsewhere and repeatedly for some time before it came to this.
Well, I don't know what the point of this is then. The Github issue is obviously a resignation in protest and a call to action - they explicitly state that people need to be removed. And yet this call to action is impossible to pursue.
I am sure that some people know who's at fault. But this Github issue wasn't a private message to those people, it was a public one. This is a public call to action where the public has no information.
That's not true, just wishful thinking on your part.
Not all collectibles are unregistered offerings, obviously. Being a collectible also doesn't mean it can't be an unregistered offering also. This one clearly was.
No, they really have that right. Messing around with e-bike battery packs without the right tooling, and without knowing what you are doing is a large risk, much larger than other DIY risks.
I've built a 2.2 KWh pack and spent weeks preparing for the build and did that in my own house in a spot right next to a door just in case I f'd up. Which I didn't, but I was fully prepared for that. You should never do something like this in an apartment building, any more than you would start a metal welding shop or a chemical plant in your living room. The risks are not compatible with shared accommodation.
Right. But right to repair requires providing access to parts, tools, documentation and software to products. Right to repair does not actually grant the right/ability/means to individuals to tinker with their batteries and put everyone in their apartment building at risk - they already had those.
There could even be a reasonable harm reduction argument that providing proper parts, tooling and documentation would actually reduce the risk. I could see reality going either way on this.
But in any case, arguments from safety should be directed and focused on actual risks. We have laws and building regulations for this reason. As you say, you wouldn't start a melding shop in your living room, but we don't ban anyone from just buying a welding machine.
People don't generally use their welding machine inside shared accommodation, their kitchen or their living room. Guess where your average DIY person is going to try to rebuild their battery pack? Will they have their safety set up properly?
Seriously: on the scale of 1 to 10 for risky things you could do I think DIY e-bike battery repair should rank higher than parachute jumping.
I agree that DIY battery repair is quite dangerous. But my point is that we should regulate and control the danger directly, instead of indirectly and very imperfectly by just grant ebikes an exemption in right to repair laws, especially as there are plenty of none battery components that (motors, controller boards, actual control inputs, etc) do not carry nearly the same safety concern.
Finally, the degree of access required by the NY law is broadly summarized as "same level that an OEM would/does provide to dealers or authorized repairers". E-bike manufacturers could easily (and quite reasonably, based on safety concerns) limit that to whole battery packs (because for exactly the safety reasons you noted, basically no repair shop is going to want to do cell level tinkering).
I think e-bike exemptions would be acceptable to me under the condition that the manufacturer would have to supply refurbished packs (new cells) for a token fee.
The apartment building should have proper equipment to mitigate the risk, and one has the right to know it's there, or find another apartment building better suited to their concerns.
Then we should be outlawing the act of messing with a battery pack in an environment that cannot handle a disaster. Giving companies a pass to make non-repairable junk and/or charge an arm and a leg to repair or replace components is completely unnecessary and contrary to what a healthy society needs.
I don't doubt at all that you are already liable in that situation. But that doesn't mean that it is a good idea to do this. Most people that start on a project like this will have absolutely no idea of how dangerous this is. They will see the 18650's and will make all kinds of assumptions based on their experience with other batteries that have nearly the same form factor (say AA's) and think that this is equally dangerous.
There's a middle ground between "no right to repair" and "you can legally modify volatile Lithium battery packs in a multi-tenant building".
NYC has had over a dozen e-bike related fire deaths year to date, almost entirely killing bystanders. One guy was modifying battery packs in his kitchen, ran out the front door with his arms on fire and his whole family burned to death. A shop in Chinatown was letting dozens of customers charger their batteries overnight in the store and the fire killed tenants upstairs.
So we obviously need right to repair on electronics, but people questioning if we need carve outs for things like battery packs are not Unabomber luddites.
I have some home power tools that use lithium battery packs and they are extremely rugged and overpackaged for safety reasons compared to what I see on these e-bikes. That may be another avenue of regulation is simple minimum standards to thermal runaway resistance and containment in consumer grade lithium battery packs.
> A shop in Chinatown was letting dozens of customers charger their batteries overnight in the store and the fire killed tenants upstairs.
And this bit even has nothing to do with right to repair! People will do stupid shit that puts innocent bystanders at risk. That's just life. We should put into place measures that disincentivize that sort of behavior, of course. But giving companies a pass to make hermetically-sealed, unrepairable garbage is not how to do that. Ensuring that customers have detailed documentation and access to affordable, well-made parts so they have the ability and understanding of how to safely do repairs would be a good start.
You'll be downvoted, but to answer this question with all honesty:
1) Disallowing a third-party in every single transaction you make, especially as
1a) Inflation means 3k now might be quite low in 20 years
1b) Banks themselves have been shown to be scummy
1c) Banks are a rare institution to allow outsiders into.
2) Bank accounts themselves are not actually all that accessible; it's quite common for people to be ineligible for a bank account under random (but common) circumstances. -- an interesting loop you can get into is that you need to pay a utility bill in order to get a bank account, yet you can't pay a utility bill without a bank account.
3) Cash is the only fiat currency that actually exists, I know it's trendy to think that lines in a database are meaningful- but if you have physical cash you know what it's worth and it can't be hacked or seized. (though a good counterpoint is of course that you can be robbed or it can get destroyed).
I live in Sweden and we're very far down the path of "cash is dead" - there's a considerable number of stores and fast food joints that do not even accept cash. However, when I moved to this country I couldn't open a bank account and without people accepting cash at that time I would have paid exorbitant fees on each transaction.
So with that in mind I'm not in favour of restricting cash, I'm aware of the drawbacks of large fiat currency transactions; but It gives the central banks even more power than they currently have (which is a lot, which you'd know if you were on the wrong side of a policy or get into one of their loops) and we're not sure that they are going to continue to be fair into the future.
Note: you cannot hold a bank account with the central bank that actually issues currency. You are voting for a middle-man.
> Bank accounts themselves are not actually all that accessible; it's quite common for people to be ineligible for a bank account under random (but common) circumstances.
Not in the Netherlands. Any adult (18 or older) resident of the EU has the right to a bank account, by law.
> an interesting loop you can get into is that you need to pay a utility bill in order to get a bank account, yet you can't pay a utility bill without a bank account.
Why would you need to pay a utility bill to get a bank account? Those two things are completely unrelated. All you need is a valid ID (either ID card, passport or drivers license) and you are required to have that anyway.
You need proof of address too, it's not enough to have just an ID.
A passport is good, but you should also be aware that not everyone has a passport or drivers license. (for example: I didn't when I got my first bank account).
My first bank account was a deal my mother made with the bank where she acted as guarantor.
having a right to a thing is not the same as actually getting it; there is a lot of anti-fraud legislation that exists and must be complied with. The bank isn't just going to fully open an account with nothing but an ID. I can say that with absolute confidence after working in financial services (albeit briefly).
When I got a RealID-compliant driver's license a few years ago in my state in the US, an existing driver's license and passport were not sufficient. I needed some document to server as proof of my current address, such as a utility bill. I don't remember what all the options were but, yes, some people--including kids getting their first driver's license or people sharing an apartment who don't have their name on a lease--can run into issues.
In the Netherlands, the government already keeps track of everyone’s address. If you move, you have to register your new address with the municipality within a certain time frame. (IIRC 2 weeks)
The US is sort of loosey-goosey partly because we're not real big on getting registered with authorities and partly because the states have their own jurisdictions. So, if you're legitimately a digital nomad you sort of would have to do one or more things that are probably in a quasi-gray legal area so you can get ID and not be considered a tax evader.
Yes, and that gets really "interesting" when you don't have a stable address of residence (e.g. because you are traveling for an extended period of time, possibly in-and-out of the country).
In some cases, you can get basically locked out of all essential services, including bank account closures, not being able to make payments (especially now with these laws), etc.
This seems like a pretty basic thing for a government to do. They need to know your address for a lot of things. For example: taxes (notification that you need to file, your returns, etc). Voting (they send your voters pass to your registered address), fines (if you get caught by a speed camera they need to know where the car’s owner lives). Reminders that you need to renew your car’s annual inspection. Etc.
How would you handle those things without the government knowing your address?
I live in the US and most of those are not a thing.
I need to file taxes but no one sends me a reminder. My town asks me to verify my address once a year but nothing (other than possibly being eventually removed from voting rolls) happens if I don't. Driver's license and registration are supposed to be your current address but again I'm not sure anything especially happens if they aren't. No one sends me anything to remind me to get my inspection updated.
So I have a supposedly current address on file with various government agencies but AFAIK there is absolutely no rule that, if I pick up and move I have to tell anyone. I do need to file taxes correctly although, as I wrote elsewhere, if I don't have a permanent address that's simultaneously perfectly legal and something of an edge case.
> How would they do that if they don't have your address?
If you need to deal with taxes, you submit your address to the tax agency.
If you need to deal with license stuff, you deal with the equivalent of the DMV.
And so on.
There's no need to just file your address with the government 'in general'.
> a decent amount of elderly don't use the internet, how would they be contacted?
Internet is kind of irrelevant. Most government agencies don't use the internet to contact people unless they specifically opt in and the agency offers that.
They would use your last known address, or wait for you to contact them.
Well, that sucks. Then again, shitty laws don't deserve to be followed.
You think Europe would have learned a thing or two from WW2 and what was going down on the continent. I guess some behaviors are just too culturally ingrained.
> You need proof of address too, it's not enough to have just an ID.
Yes, but you don’t need a bill for that, you can just get it from the municipality where you are registered.
> A passport is good, but you should also be aware that not everyone has a passport or drivers license.
Anyone age 14 and up is required by law to be able to show an ID when asked. So yeah, everyone here has an ID.
> My first bank account was a deal my mother made with the bank where she acted as guarantor.
The rules for children are different. Once you turn 18 you need to ID yourself to the bank. If you don’t do this your account will be blocked. You will be informed of this shortly before you turn 18.
> having a right to a thing is not the same as actually getting it; there is a lot of anti-fraud legislation that exists and must be complied with. The bank isn't just going to fully open an account with nothing but an ID
You have a right to a basic account, not necessarily full service. You can send/receive money and get a debit card. Anything else, credit cards, loans, etc. are of course not included.
And sure, if you’ve been convicted of fraud or anything like that, that’s an exception.
> Yes, but you don’t need a bill for that, you can just get it from the municipality where you are registered.
You can't "just" get it if you don't have a fixed address, or if the address isn't eligible for registration (the rules for that are rather strict).
Netherlands is one if the hardest countries if you end up in an "exceptional" situation; you can work around "proof of address" (not always, but frequently), but it's much harder to work around the municipal registration.
Yes, there are rules for exceptions (e.g. "briefadres") and there's stuff like https://www.basisbankrekening.nl – but in reality people are so strict with this that it might as well not exist for vast swaths of people.
If you've never been in an exceptional situation you think it's easy and works grand, and it does, right up to the point it doesn't, at which point you're pretty fucked. People are unaware because they've never experienced it, but it's really awful.
Last year it took me 5 months and a lot of proverbial "banging fist on the table" to get a bank account in the Netherlands. It took me about 2 weeks in Ireland. Just sayin'
I returned to Netherlands after many years abroad and didn't have anything set up except a tax number (BSN) like everyone. This may not sound too bad, but:
- Few people are willing to rent to you if you don't have a Dutch bank account and current registration.
- You can't get registration without a place to rent that qualifies (and many places don't).
I was earning €90k/year at the time; it wasn't a money issue.
> Yes, but you don’t need a bill for that, you can just get it from the municipality where you are registered.
I don't know how it is in Sweden or in the Netherlands, but here in France, I needed a bill or some other "proof of address" to register to vote with the town hall. I had been living in the same apartment for years, and they never seemed to require any proof before sending me the papers asking for the local taxes.
> Yes, but you don’t need a bill for that, you can just get it from the municipality where you are registered.
Yeah, that's not how it works in all European countries. Which can get really "interesting" in some cases, believe me (I've lived through that).
I've also been requested proof of employment, which is also interesting when you're unemployed. In one of the countries, they said I can just give them proof of unemployment benefits... which I don't have, because I left my job willingly.
And then they told me: "well, in that case you can get proof of unemployment from the municipality". Except... that I'm not even living in your damn country and the municipality where I live doesn't even know whether I'm working or not (why would they?!).
But this does not even compare to all the problems I've had when I've not been living in the same place stably for an extended period of time. It has been an absolute hell in some cases, because institutions (governments, banks, lawyers, etc) simply do not account for this possibility. They all assume that you have a stable address of residence.
In some countries you can't even receive some types of registered mail unless it is addressed exactly to where you are staying at that moment.
> You have a right to a basic account, not necessarily full service.
I don't think that's how it works. The governments have created a legal requirement for banks to provide minimum banking services, yes. But banks still have to comply with many other very strict requirements and customers may not be able to fulfill them, which prevents them from opening bank accounts.
>But this does not even compare to all the problems I've had where I've not been living in the same place stably for an extended period of time. It has been an absolute hell in some cases, because institutions (governments, banks, etc) simply do not account for this possibility. They all assume that you have a stable address of residence.
I haven't personally had this issue but I know someone who did in the US. No permanent address; they were doing a lot of traveling.
Nothing wrong/illegal about that. But, by the books, it means they can't get a driver's license and other important documents. So you basically have to lie. Either use a third-party digital nomad service (which I understand some states may flag) or find a trustworthy friend or relative to "live" with (who will forward important mail to you and vouch for you if needed--which is what they did). There are still potential issues with respect to things like jury duty but these can mostly work although they're almost certainly at least marginally fraudulent.
In some countries you can't even receive some types of registered mail unless it is addressed exactly to where you are staying at that moment.
This makes good sense to me in countries where you need to register you home address with the local govt. Then registered mail delivery becomes a form of ID check. This is normal in Japan and other places.
It varies wildly between banks. Proof of address isn't a systemic requirement, it's a soft credit check that unlocks profitable functions.
Many banks (Santander, HSBC just two I checked) have entry points for people who are genuinely homeless. And accepted ID can include simple government things like council tax or a driver's license, but also just a letter from your employer or school. Again these are soft checks.
> Not in the Netherlands. Any adult (18 or older) resident of the EU has the right to a bank account, by law.
For immigrants or foreign workers a process of getting EU residence status may take months and sometimes require an EU bank account, so it may become an infinite loop. We have to take worst renting deals in order to get required papers, for example.
> Bank accounts themselves are not actually all that accessible
If you have a way to prove your ID(which basically everyone do in Norway) then bank accounts are very accessible and free. I don't know how many banks I have accounts at, but it's more than 15, and all you need is your ID and a couple of minutes to create an account.
> If you have a way to prove your ID(which basically everyone do in Norway)
After going through the process of moving to Norway, I can say that unfortunately things are not that straightforward for foreigners. Even after getting your work permit, getting a personnummer can take up to several months after moving, not to mention getting an appointment with UDI can also take up to several months (in the meantime you'll feel like a lesser member of society, basic things like getting a library card are not accessible without it). After all there's a reason why this kind of service exist https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mpr_sua-techfasttrack-oslo-ac...
> then bank accounts are very accessible and free. I don't know how many banks I have accounts at, but it's more than 15, and all you need is your ID and a couple of minutes to create an account.
This only works when you already have a BankID. It takes at least 1 month to open your first account. Granted after that, everything is smooth, but oh boy how much time does it take.
ID and a decent credit report. I have been through times in my life where banks wouldn't give my spouse an account at all. No bank in Oregon or credit union would give her an account. To this day she still hasn't had a bank account in the last seven years. I can't even get a card in their name.
A bank checking your credit score just because you want to create an account would be a huge invasion of privacy.
Really? How else can a bank decide how much credit to extend you? Please bear in mind that allowing someone to have a bank account is part of the credit relationship.
All banks use a credit reporting agency, a seperate one. You never discovering this just shows you and those you surround yourself with have never had to deal with it. Thats nice, but also a privliged and ignorant position.
If you think banks always check your credit score then you are just wrong, plain and simple. In Norway you'll always be notified when someone check your credit score, along with what data was provided, who requested it and when.
It sounds like we are getting a thin slice of the full story. What made your spouse's situation unusual such that she could not get a bank account. I am finding some of these posts hard to believe.
Bad credit rating and prior overdrafts is all it is. That's the complete story. Not even extensive overdrafts, like three a year before they lost their ability to get an account.
Depends on country a lot; in the Scandinavian countries there's a central identification database which links your entire identity including the registered address.
However, if I'm not from Norway/Sweden/Denmark then I'm not in that system yet.
> I live in Sweden and we're very far down the path of "cash is dead" - there's a considerable number of stores and fast food joints that do not even accept cash. However, when I moved to this country I couldn't open a bank account and without people accepting cash at that time I would have paid exorbitant fees on each transaction.
I came here to say something similar. We moved to the Netherlands in 2014 from the US and it was three or four months before our immigration stuff was far enough along that we could open a local bank account with an IBAN and get a chip and pin card (at the time, virtually no US banks would give you chip and pin cards). My partner couldn't even get paid during that time until she had a bank account. We lived off withdrawing cash from my US account at ATMs. That included paying our rent (we were lucky that our landlord, who lived in a different city, was OK with us just paying cash to their relative who lived nearby).
I think GP means “exists” as in “doesn’t require a third party to complete the value transfer.”
If you give me a $20 bill, I can immediately exchange it for a case of beer at the bodega with no extra steps. If you give me a money order for $20, I need to find someone who is willing and/or able to convert that money order into a $20 bill before I can buy my beer.
Funnily enough, paper currency originated as something akin to money orders in the first place, and merchants started accepting them directly because they were much more convenient to transport and secure than the equivalent amount of coins. That's why the formal term for paper money is "banknotes".
At least in NL there is no such thing as a 5 day hold on a transfer. Typically these are instant, at worst next business day, and if you use something like "payment request" or "tikkie" all it involves is sending the buyer a link or posting a QR code somewhere to allow them to send money directly, instantly, to your account.
No chance of making errors in the bank nr, you can pre-specify the required amount in the request. No chance of making an error counting out 3K or more in cash notes.
Within the NL banking/payment landscape I'd argue that large cash transactions are more bothersome for everyone involved. (well, unless involving a bank is bothersome to either of the parties, but if that is the case we're probably entering "dubious transaction" or "dubiously sourced money" territory..)
"Next business day" is a huge amount of time relative to the "instantly" that the value changes hands in a cash transaction. Cash also eliminates any need for prying into the background of the buyer: Their proof of ability to pay and payment itself is the stack of cash they have in their hand.
If the government wants to eliminate the requirement of accepting large amounts of cash, I can see that. If you're not equipped to handle being paid in a large cash sum, it can definitely be inconvenient. But making the exchange of large sums of cash between two consenting parties illegal is bold-faced tyranny.
How about handling a large transaction without internet access? Say you want to transact in the middle of space. What now? Wait until you get back to some connection?
As silly as it sounds, this system is not scalable.
The fact that it does not scale into a far far future where more than 0.00000000125% of the humans is in orbit/space does not mean that it is not a good system for today & the upcoming decades.
And that’s the point. If I sell you my used car and find out you paid with stolen funds, I’m not going to get cash clawed back, where I could realistically be out my car and money if someone used a digital payment.
Ease of payment? Paying with a card is much simpler and faster. Take your card, phone or watch and hold it to the terminal for one second and you're done. It's not normal for payouts to take 5 days. In Norway it's the next day.
But people usually do have a terminal to accept payment. If not, they usually just send you an invoice. Makes bookkeeping much simpler for the business too.
I have only paid in-person using NFC for nearly 10 years in Norway. I understand that the situation is different other places, but I'm literally not sure what our physical currency looks like now.
However, I walked into a store in Spain yesterday that was cash only. Now I have cash in EUR that I not only overpaid insanely for because of the ATM , but I also can't use it in Norway. If cash was no longer an option then it would be much simpler and cheaper as my bank does the currency exchange for me.
Digital payments are probably better in every way when it's the norm, except for privacy, and that's a big one.
I don’t know much about Norway, but how would you transact during a natural disaster when power or network services are down for an extended period of time?
I was visiting a place while a mild earthquake. It didn't cause any damage, but it took many locals by surprise, as it didn't take place in a seismic country.
Naturally the mobile phone network, GPRS/3G that POS devices relied on was overwhelmed. And maybe something else went wrong on the banks backend.
So international credit card transactions were hit or miss for half a day. I was happy I had got some local before the earthquake. So I was able to continue the rest of the day with no issues.
LOL. I love these kinds of posts. Ok smarty pants, you like cash. You have none in your wallet during a natural disaster. You need to buy emergency supplies. The ATM does not work. Now what?
Please do not reply to this post saying that you are a "prepper".
How much nonsense is this? Is it so hard to think ahead and go to the ATM before the disaster hits? There are various types of disasters you know, some you see coming for weeks. Many people also keep cash on hand.
All you’ve shown is you have a delayed reaction, and claim preparing for a disaster is a bad thing. I mean think about that for a second.
> ow I have cash in EUR that I not only overpaid insanely for because of the ATM , but I also can't use it in Norway
Ha, well you'll have a heart attack when you look at your visa statement and realized that visa can charge even worse rates for currency conversion than ATM's do.
Plus visa charges the vendor a fee( around 2ish%) that has to be born by the buyer and seller. Cash doesn't have this built in tax.
Now I'll admit I have no idea bout Norway, so maybe you have some special way to pay with zero transaction fees and have the cash show up instantly with no holds on the payment ever, if so, good for you guys.
That's done through a SEPA transfer that shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to complete, last time I paid a contractor more than 4k€ it was in their account in seconds.
There's also the fee. When I bought a used van from a private party recently, I paid $8000 cash. No point in paying an extra percentage just to use a card.
Well, you can just turn off payments on the stolen device.
As for the phone, you need to unlock the phone for larger purchases. The card requires a pin for larger purchases. The watch needs to be unlocked to after being removed from the arm.
Maybe in Norway, but there absolutely is no pin check when making large purchases through at least Apple Card via Apple Pay. I made a $9800 US purchase a few months back and it was just face ID, which apparently can be fooled easily.
Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word easily. It can be spoofed, maybe not easily. And people buy things at more than a store, like online, and phones verify those purchases just the same.
Freedom from government surveillance and potential overreach?
In reality, there’s hardly any 3,000 euros+ transaction where a business or individual will accept cash. That’s too much money to have on hand when a bank transfer is much more comfortable…still happens rarely though so I think this law is overreaching.
Disclosure: I’m not Dutch nor European so my opinion hardly matters here.
I think your second sentence/paragraph points out exactly why this restriction is needed: the only people who would ever in their right mind transact in that much cash are very likely to be either avoiding taxation (a.k.a. stealing from the common taxpayer), or keeping money off the books to hide illegal activity.
The average person isn't affected by this type of government surveillance and potential overreach because the average person doesn't buy things that are priced at over 3,000 euros per transaction. They can easily hide all their daily transactions from the scrutiny of government and surveillance capitalism just fine.
This regulation only impacts the wealthiest people and/or the organized criminal.
I purchase, restore, and sometimes sell old woodworking machinery as a side gig to subsidize my own purchase of woodworking equipment for my shop.
I have had multiple cash transactions above $3,000 every year that I've done this. Not to avoid taxes, not to keep them off the books, but because one of the parties has either the unwillingness or inability to take electronic payments. Elderly people, those located in rural or otherwise isolated areas, those with a natural distrust of government for whatever reason, or those with a distrust of banks in general. These are all valid use cases.
This law would make it nearly impossible for me to do what I do (on the side).
Yea, assuming you're in the USA, I don't think a similar restriction would be workable here in America. Too many people are unbanked or for other reasons transact mostly in cash. And even for those who do have bank accounts, we don't have the nice, bank-based money transfer solutions that are commonplace in the rest of the developed world--we're stuck with shit-tier solutions like Zelle and Venmo and PayPal.
I wouldn't say I routinely do large (>$3000) cash transactions, but I do them often enough that I guess I'd be a criminal in the Netherlands.
A mechanic we used before moving had a strict no checks policy. He had a bad check for the repair of a church bus, from a church, framed in a fancy gold-painted frame, with "IN GOD WE TRUST, ALL OTHERS PAY CASH" below it.
Considering that the last time one of my CC numbers was stolen, it was used to pay for air conditioning service, I'm sure that is also a concern for tradespeople!
Really really, it's like that here. I guess it's somehow cheaper to write off fraud than updating everything? Probably some actuary sweating the day the scale tips the other direction.
It's incredible how lax the rules are for how verified the CC information needs to be for a transaction to clear. There was a HN article about it not that long ago, w.r.t. dealing with Stripe or one of the other big processors. Stuff like the CVV can be wrong, the issued name can vary by some heuristic, etc.
I’m confused. You’re under the impression people don’t use stolen cards face to face? The sibling commented about AC service being charged to his stolen card. A credit card is easier to use than a bad check. I’ve never seen anyone take a check without ID.
Yeah, apparently people do that. I write "ASK FOR ID" in the signature area on my credit cards, and have never once been asked for ID, so it's at least been my personal experience that no one really looks at a credit card when handed one. Perhaps it's a totally unique and isolated experience :P
> The average person isn't affected by this type of government surveillance and potential overreach because the average person doesn't buy things that are priced at over 3,000 euros per transaction.
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."
> Freedom from government surveillance and potential overreach?
With all due respect, the transactions above that rough amount is exactly those I would want the government to keep an eye on, while letting me buy stuff for a few hundreds freely and without having to report it.
There is pretty much no situation whatsoever when someone buys something for more than 3k€ where the absolute requirement to use cash is not linked to some shady reasons.
Like I said to the other poster. I transact often over that amount to purchase old woodworking equipment. The people I work with often do not want to transact electronically for multiple reasons. The tax is paid, it's on the books, but they want cash.
Because a 80/20 rule is much better than having to chose between "everything is controlled" or "nothing is controlled", and that's essentially the two choices we have.
It works just fine in most of europe since a very long time, and frankly people insisting to be paid in cash and then going out of their way to fully declare the taxes and source of the money is even weirded, why not take the easier shortcut.
Of course, maybe it's linked to how strange sending money seems to still be in some circumtances in the US ? Reading about Venmo and the likes is just surprising to me, a 10 minutes SEPA wire is free here, and as good as cash.
Yeah our electronic transfer methods suck. Even between my business and personal accounts, doing a regular bank transfer, it takes several days. Literally faster to withdraw cash and drive it over.
Meanwhile, if you have to do a wire transfer for a large sum of money, and the bank screws it up, they have around 30 minutes to recall it before the wire is permanently completed.
I'm not a european but I do have an example. A few years back I purchased a project car in cash. I don't carry checks, who does anymore? And my bank would have given me grief trying to transfer an amount that large at once. I had tried before and it would trigger their fraud detection and give me headaches. Its good its there but can be a barrier when I'm just trying to buy something. So going to branch and withdrawing the cash was the most convenient option.
I'm in Denmark, and the last car I bought was from a private seller on a Sunday, we met at a coffee shop and settled the (large, cars are expensive here) payment via an instant bank transfer that I initiated from my laptop. The money immediately showed in the seller's account and we transferred the title/registration via a government online service (which is free of charge).
In the US, it’s quite possible your bank may not exist tomorrow. This just happened with two banks here. Plus during natural disasters you won’t be able to load up your laptop to transfer money for groceries, or NFC for that matter. These things still need cash.
No need for people that understand and trust the systems you used. That doesn't mean everyone understands how to do what you said, but they can count cash just fine.
This seems a US centric problem. No one in Europe has carried checks since the 90s and large bank transactions are really a non issue as they resolve within a banking day and for a small fee you can usually do real time transfers too.
Or for free. One of the reasons Venmo and similar do well in the US but have almost no equivalent (and certainly not at scale) in the UK, for example, is that free, near instant transfer of cash from retail (i.e. ordinary people) bank accounts has been free for years. If I need to pay someone, I need their bank account number and their bank identifying number, and that's it; the money will be in their bank within sixty seconds, with no fee. I've told people mine so often to get paid that I've accidentally memorised it.
Even some people who historically took cash (such as household tradesmen) now often simply have the money transferred instantly on the doorstep, rather than have to carry cash around in their pockets all day. I imagine a similar story in much of the rest of Europe.
Idk about europe, but as an American I would have used a money order for this. Unless I'm buying up a friends junker. Gotten grief lately from local DMV when we don't have a paper trail for buying up cars out of state when it comes time to get them registered here. But if I'm buying locally it's easier to just call up a Notary friend and stamp a printed bill of sale while we hand over cash.
In NL, all transactions above 10k are monitored and tracked, if you want to collect larger than x-k from your bank in cash it is monitored and tracked (depends on the bank, usually less than 3k). Depositing large cash transactions is monitored as well. If you are staying within the law there is no real way to get around it since hardly any legal employer will pay you in cash.
If the banks actually track it or not is another question. Every now and then a report comes out mentioning a banks failure to do so.
To be clear, the ~10k USD cash limit before reporting is standard in all highly advanced countries for global money laundering agreements. You see these same restrictions when travelling internationally.
In the US banking system, that's called structuring. Which means that transactions of $10,000 or more are legally suspicious, and transactions under $10,000 are legally suspicious.
Logicians, please simplify the previous statement.
You are incorrect: "Transactions under $10k" are not legally suspicious, but rather, multiple transactions that are very large but under $10k but when added together are more than $10k. It's not that easy to end up under scrutiny for structuring unless you're running a cash heavy business without declaring it. Moreover, 99% of the time, the "scrutiny" is "fill out this paperwork"
I stand by my statement. Are banks required to scrutinize $10K+ transactions? Yes. Are banks required to scrutinize <$10K transactions to determine whether they're really $10K+ transactions? Yes.
Compare: in the US, you can be detained for driving over the speed limit. You can also be detained for driving under the speed limit, if police believe either that your slow speed is dangerous, or that you are driving slowly to avoid being detained. In all but the most egregious cases of abuse, a driver will have little reason to complain that they shouldn't have been pulled over.
You’ve got it backwards. You need a reason to restrict freedom, not to improve it. So, the questions are which problem is this solving, is there any other way to solve it, and is it worth it. In most places, this is done without real discussion and people don’t care because they “don’t use cash”. “Lol terrorism” is not the most convincing argument.
And you clearly want to carry 3000+ EUR in your pocket than paying by card? Europe is safe, but I will definitely not walk around with that much cash on my person.
> And you clearly want to carry 3000+ EUR in your pocket than paying by card? Europe is safe, but I will definitely not walk around with that much cash on my person.
I'd also rather pay the Macbook by card due to practicality, but I don't understand your second sentence. Why would you walk around with a Macbook worth 3k but not with 3k in cash? Nobody knows that you have 3k in cash with you, whereas everybody can see you walking out of the Apple Store with the Macbook.
You're arguing that it should be illegal for him just because you don't personally want to do it? We wouldn't be allowed to do very many things if "I don't personally want to do that today" was a good reason to outlaw something.
It's my choice, my money, and I want to keep my freedom to engage in legal business with my property without going through an intermediate party. This is an arbitrary restriction that gives way more power to the government than it provides safety for the individual.
Well yeah, why not? I’ve been mugged in the day exactly zero times (and don’t carry cash in night clubs, where I did get mugged once). It’s not exactly conspicuous, there is no way to know what’s in your bag or wallet.
I don’t do it often; last time was when I moved to the UK without a British bank account and did not want to pay any transfer fees, which are quite expensive for larger sums (I had to carry enough to live one month and pay a first month’s rent before getting my first pay check). Another one was when I had to buy a computer after having reach the 7-days ceiling in my debit card (now you can increase it on the bank’s app; it used to be more complicated).
It's not a problem. I regularly pay for four-figure items in cash. Lots of places offer cash discounts at that price point (no CC fees or risk of chargeback). I paid a doctor $5000 in cash once.
The first time, it feels a little odd, but then you realize that nobody at the bank bats an eye at you withdrawing a few grand, and $3k in 100s is about the size of a phone in your pocket.
Since nobody carries cash, nobody thinks that other people are carrying cash, so it doesn't make you a target. And I'm not anymore likely to lose my wallet with $500 in cash in it than I am my $1000 phone.
Well this works well until it doesn’t. My elderly father doesn’t carry cash, only card, but yet it would look like he has a large wad of cash in his front pocket. It is in fact a legally concealed handgun however.
And anything that doesn’t look like a wallet probably won’t trigger a response. You would be safer to just wad up money and shove it in your pocket than to carry it around in a wallet.
This post is hysterical. Where and why did you pay a doctor 5k (I assume USD/EUR)? Any one from a highly advanced democracy is laughing to themself about paying so much for medical care. I can only assume US or expat in undeveloped country.
Speculating and then attacking where an individual comes from instead of engaging in the actual conversation is an interesting take and seems like you may have the wrong tab open (HN, not Reddit). There is a word for this. It's called Xenophobia.
I've been on this site for a long time, and as far as I can recall this isn't accepted.
Europe is not America, and they generally provide better services to their poor people. Someone else above pointed out a certain country has onramps into banking explicitly for homeless people.
The people I know going around spending cash for large purchases tend to not be people that are struggling. They just prefer using cash. It doesn't get any simpler than using cash.
When I was 20, my bank has a daily limit on what I can spend out of my own account electronically because of reasons that I was told were related to account protection. I do not trust cash transfer apps at all and will never link them to my identity. I like to keep a small target surface.
Why should I not be able to spend my own money how I feel? It's mine.
Used cars, rent, nicer computers, there's all sorts of relatively large purchases that could be reasonably paid in a stack of large bills. Cash has a nice permanence to the transaction, where I as a seller don't need to be too concerned with the purchaser's background, as their proof of payment is the physical payment itself.
Privacy? I don't necessarily want my bank and/or the state to know that I blew up 3k€ on PrettyOlgaBlueEyes in a night of loneliness, or that my hobby is to buy & restore old cars, or whatever else.
because my transaction is a legitimate one until proven otherwise (innocent until proven guilty principle), and i have the right to buy something without letting my bank know what or where i bough it.
I could or could not disclose that payment to my government depending on the laws and if there are fiscal benefits, it is my choice.
I should not be forced to use a middle man for those payments, even if this means i am open to be scammed or victim of fraud.
now, as other mentioned, what are some good reasons to FORCE ONLY electronic payments above 3000€ ?
I would flip the script and say why is it a good idea to let the government have that much influence in your life without probable cause and a warrant to know what your financial transactions are?
Why would you not accept legal tender over a certain amount? This isn't credit, it's physical money the government created. It should never be outlawed
I just recently bought a car for around 4000€ in cash. I even went to a ATM to withdraw money first.
Cash is, after all, the only instant and feeless transaction method. Why would I want to pay % fee or wait up to several days for a transaction like that?
Imagine I bought the car on Friday afternoon. The seller would get the money earliest on Monday. Why would the seller simply trust me? So how would I buy a car on a Friday afternoon otherwise?
> Cash is, after all, the only instant and feeless transaction method.
Bank transfers in the EU are instant, and there are no fees for personal accounts.
> Imagine I bought the car on Friday afternoon. The seller would get the money earliest on Monday.
No, the seller would get the money before they could even blink.
I have accounts at 2 unrelated banks. I have my online banking apps set up that whenever I get a deposit over a certain amount I get a push notification. When I use my online banking app to transfer money from my account at bank A to my account at bank B, I get an alert from bank B’s app to inform me of the money appearing in my account before the app from bank A has even shown me the confirmation screen that the transfer request was received.
Well Switzerland has SEPA but realtime SEPA transactions are usually only available within the same bank. And I havent heard of any bank solving any Sepa transactions on the weekend here
Banks are not obliged to open accounts to everyone. So there are people who can't use banks, even if they want to.
You must accept plenty of agreements between bank and you, and there are only so many banks, so it's very possible for some people to find bank terms to be unacceptable for them.
Right now those people have cash as an alternative. Making it illegal removes some freedom from those people.
because you don’t want the government to be able to delete you from the economy? do you use signal? what’s the difference between strong privacy for your text messages and strong privacy for your financial transactions?
Even when there are limit's its tough to enforce. A better strategy is to remove legal tender above $20. It makes makes hoarding cash a logistical problem for criminals.
If a million dollars in $100 fits in a briefcase, Then it's a suitcase or more for $20 etc. And then banking that money becomes tedious as well.
Anyway, without enforcement it's really just tokenism.
they famously called the 500 euro bills -bin ladens- for how hard they became to secure since all the unofficial transactions where mostly done with those high denomination bills
They seem to be of most use to rich people who want to hide assets from the tax man by carrying the cash across the border to Switzerland. Probably doesn't work as well as it used to anymore though. A few years back I talked to a guy from norther Italy who said most people had a second bank account in Switzerland to hide money from the government.
The libertarian-minded tend to think that this kind of freedom is necessary to prevent government overreach and oppression, but in reality the bulk of the people making large cash transactions are either avoiding taxes (ripping off you, the taxpayer) or participating in organized crime (human trafficking, weapons/drugs/counterfeit black markets, etc).
I would also argue that the only people making cash transactions that large are probably way wealthier than the average person and, again, are looking to launder their money.
Think about it seriously: in what scenario would you choose to use physical cash to make a transaction amounting in the thousands of dollars?
That's so insanely risky. You'd be a walking target. You could lose the money, someone could steal the money, it could be physically damaged.
It even puts you at risk during the transaction: why would the other party sell you the good when the money is right there ready to be robbed from you? There is no recourse because it's all under the table. I can't stop a check or have a paper trail to take to court if you just take my cash.
There is no situation I would be comfortable making a transaction with that much cash (unless I was in so insanely wealthy that this amount of money meant nothing to me).
> There is no situation I would be comfortable making a transaction with that much cash (unless I was in so insanely wealthy that this amount of money meant nothing to me)
That’s fine for you but why does that mean it should be illegal for everyone else?
Specifically the state likes to say "We need access to encryption private keys because of terrorists or to save the kids. If you don't have anything to hide, there's no reason you'd oppose this". [0]
So if a lot of bad people pay for things with big sums of cash, then why would you oppose this limit, unless you're a bad person. Meh.
Like taxes are fair... You have the freelancers and small business struggling badly in my country, yet the goverment spends millions on nonsensical programs.
My uncle used to save 5 cent guilder coins (stuivers in Dutch). I don't know why, maybe he wanted to be a copper Scrooge McDuck it was an obsession of his, always ask people if he could change some money with him. After a while he had many of those plastic drum barrels full of coins in the attic. The problem was that the ceiling under the attic started to visibly bulge, so they decided to bring them to the bank. He said that all the work was worth it to see the expression on the bank tellers face when they rolled those barrels in the bank.
Wow, as someone from the US I always thought the $1 notes were far superior to the equivalent coins in other countries. I dislike having coins in my pocket, but already have a note or 2. Adding a couple more adds negligent space.
You ruin notes if you put them in your pocket. Coins you can just drop in the coin pocket on jeans. I wish the 1USD coin was more than a legal tender collector item. Maybe up to 2USD would be nice.
Maybe some notes, but $1 bills are pretty durable. And most places will take them in nearly any condition, although, I did have a merchant in Ocean City, NJ recently that wouldn't take a $1 with a small tear, and I hear merchants overseas do want pristine USD.
More andecdotes but I've had british pound coins that were minted in the early 60's still in passable condition; nearly every dollar bill I've had in the US has been grimy and darkened and felt like it was three seconds from falling apart.
(ok, hyperbole, but I've had a few like that)
The US note was printed after 2001, that's a considerable time difference.
Though your $20 notes are usually in excellent condition for some reason compared to the british equivalent.
> nearly every dollar bill I've had in the US has been grimy and darkened and felt like it was three seconds from falling apart.
Yeah, that's how they are, but feeling like they're going to fall apart and actually falling appart are two different things.
> Though your $20 notes are usually in excellent condition for some reason compared to the british equivalent.
$20 bills tend to get picked up at the bank, spent at a merchant, and deposited at a bank. Banks will send worn notes to be retired. Many businesses don't take bills larger than $20, so don't use $20s to make change. It's uncommon to pay vendors and employees in cash, so merchants end up with a surplus of $20s that need to be deposited.
$1 bills are used in change, so they tend to get exchanged frequently. Few consumers will deal with $1s at a bank, and many businesses won't ever deposit them, but may need to make withdrawls in $1s so they can make change. They tend to pass through many hands before they get back to a bank where their condition can be checked.
I was recently in El Salvador, which uses the USD as an official currency (alongside BTC lol). Despite using dollars, the $1 coins are used instead of notes almost exclusively for that denomination (mostly presidential dollars and some silver Susan B Anthony dollars). I was curious and did a bit of research, apparently the reason is that because day-to-day transactions are done almost entirely in small amounts of cash the paper notes have a very short lifespan (apparently <1yr) there, while coins will last decades.
Yeah, that makes sense. Coins are clearly more durable, and for denominations that are handled frequently in places without access to federal reserve replacement, durability wins over preference / aggregate weight and volume.
In mainland US, preference for paper $1s isn't unduly burdensome. As a merchant, deposit the worst of the $1s and use the rest as change, no big deal. As a consumer, if someone doesn't take your grimy, half torn $1, try it a couple more places and then take it to a bank (perhaps even your bank). But it's unsurprising that doesn't really work for El Salvador.
Definitely not the only one, an entire country decided that durability is important for the $1 denomination, I'll copy what I posted above:
I was recently in El Salvador, which uses the USD as an official currency (alongside BTC lol). Despite using dollars, the $1 coins are used instead of notes almost exclusively for that denomination (mostly presidential dollars and some silver Susan B Anthony dollars). I was curious and did a bit of research, apparently the reason is that because day-to-day transactions are done almost entirely in small amounts of cash the paper notes have a very short lifespan (apparently <1yr) there, while coins will last decades.
YMMV. I can slip a few bills in with my credit cards. If I can't really just ignore coins like I generally do in the US (not that I use much cash in the US at this point), I need some separate pouch to carry them. I dislike ~$1+ coins because you pretty much have to use them if you're paying and getting change in cash.
$1 coins have flopped whenever they've been tried in more or less living memory in the US.
In the US, a lot of places won't readily (or at all) take $100 bills. The US is sort of in bill and coinage denomination stasis (denominations are essentially the same as they were over 50 years ago) though it's probably largely academic at this point given that many people basically don't use cash.
Fully agreed about $100 bills - even $50 bills are often rejected at places with lots of counterfeiting risk and/or mostly small purchases.
Many people in the US basically don’t use cash, quite true - but in some parts of the country like NYC, many restaurants and convenience stores are cash-only or only accept cards with a higher price or a minimum purchase amount. So cash is still very commonly carried in NYC and similar cities. The pandemic made it rarer than before for cards not to be accepted at all, but it still happens, as do minimums and price differences.
In case you’re wondering about legality: the policies I describe above can be legal or illegal depending on the specifics, but both legal and illegal versions of them are commonly seen in practice.
Minimums used to be forbidden by many merchant agreements, but due to the federal Dodd-Frank Act from 2010, merchants can set credit card minimums up to no more than $10, as long as they set the same minimum for all types of credit cards they accept. This applies nationwide including NYC. Higher minimums are indeed still illegal, though that doesn’t mean you won’t still see them sometimes.
This provision of the Dodd-Frank Act does not cover debit cards, and I believe merchant agreements still prohibit minimums for debit cards. This prohibition is widely violated. I have no idea whether this prohibition is officially applicable to debit cards when they are processed as credit cards (which usually means no PIN for most US cards) - I’ve heard people say it’s not - but it definitely covers debit cards when they are processed as debit cards (which again for most US cards is always the case if a PIN is input).
As for NY’s current rules on price differences for credit cards vs cash and debit cards vs cash and the required disclosures, those are a bit complex, so I’ll just link an official explanation here:
But the TL;DR is, yes different pricing is legal if worded and disclosed correctly. To nobody’s surprise, illegal implementations remain common as well.
Maybe it's illegal or maybe it's against the store's merchant card agreement. In any case, in practice, retailers/restaurants/etc. can do pretty much whatever they want and probably get away with it so long as it's not too egregious.
The rules in Spain apply for business transactions, i.e.: Business <-> Business and Individual <-> Business, NOT between individuals. The funny thing about it is that in the hypothetical case you would be caught, whichever party reports it first, before getting caught, would not be penalised.
You cannot enter any EU state with more than the equivalent of 10,000 Euro cash unless you declare the amount at the point of entrance.
If border controls finds you with more than 10,000 Euro you will have to pay a fine.
Then you can walk with any amount of money, but when you pay for something there is a limit (500 in Greece, 1,000 in Spain, 5,000 in Italy (was 2,000 in 2022), no limits in Germany, etc.) to any single payment in cash.
And there is usually a provision prohibiting "artificial fractioning" of payment, i.e. in theory if you buy something worth 1,200 and the limit is 1,000 you cannot pay that with two invoices/receipts 600 Euro each.
> And there is usually a provision prohibiting "artificial fractioning" of payment, i.e. in theory if you buy something worth 1,200 and the limit is 1,000 you cannot pay that with two invoices/receipts 600 Euro each.
Lawnmower, motorcycle, four wheeler, tractor, excavator, specialty tools, toolboxes, computers, phones, safes, firearms are some big ticket things I and those around me have paid for in cash, all used.
I am curious about the status of legal tender in such regions.
If someone were to owe a business a debt above €5,000, does the fact that they legally cannot accept payment in cash mean that they could legally refuse all proffered forms of payment ("sorry, we don't accept X"), and get that person declared a bad debtor for failure to pay?
The incredibly important thing about legal tender in the form of cash is that, if it is refused as a means of payment, the debt is declared void. It effectively cannot be refused.
Wow Greece has a limit of 500 euro, but: "There is no cash limit for car purchases"
wth?
EDIT:
Also this something that I didn't know about the UK
> With regard to the change, there are unlimited payments of £ 5, £ 2 and £ 1. Coins with a face value of 50p, 25p and 20p can pay amounts up to £ 10, with 10p and 5p up to £ 5 and with 2p and 1p up to 20p.
The most corrupt countries tend to have the worst limits. In greece for example real estate sellers will try to officially declare a price much lower than the real one to the taxman, taking the rest in cash under the table. That's why there are government-appraised, official "objective" prices according to which real estate is taxed
Also common for car purchases. Put lower amount on documents to pay less tax.
Which often causes problem when the cars is defective and seller goes "sure, I will pay you back in full, the amount that is on documents". And buyer got no recourse for that.
Because the decision as to whether to engage in a transaction with any particular customer is generally (short certain types of outright bigotry like "no Blacks or Irish") entirely up to the seller, it generally doesn't matter.
Suppose I try to pay for this £12 crate of Coke cans with twenty four 50 pence pieces. The rule you quoted says that won't work, but it totally will in most cases especially at larger stores or if it's obvious I don't have any other money.
On the other hand suppose I try to buy five £1 packs of Harribo bear candy with a hundred five pence pieces from the grumpy corner store guy who knows perfectly well I have a credit card. He's going to tell me to fuck off, and perhaps rightly so.
That's because a lot of used car sales p2p, and in cash. Reason being, normal people usually do not have terminals to pay by card (which has limits as well), and doing a wire transfer is somewhat risky. Either because the seller is left without money nor a car if the wire transfer is stopped by the buyer, or the buyer is left without a car and money, if the wire transfer goes through but zhe car doesn't show up. Sure, that can be resolved, but it is a major pain. Exchanging cash for keys and papers so is saver for everyone involved. And depending om zhe car, the amoints can he pretty high.
Those UK limits are for what is considered legal tender—that is, if someone has offered you 20 pennies to settle a 20p debt, you can't sue them for non-payment, but if they offered you 200 pennies to settle a £2 debt then you could.
Cash isn't great, but some people don't use online banking - and in a private sale, only a fool would hand over their car keys to a stranger in exchange for a cheque.
(Of course, this was a much bigger issue 15 years ago - these days we have faster payments, and the vast majority of people can make payments from their phone.)
It's not trivially easy to do large payments to another random individual in the US via bank transfers.
The check issue is solved by concluding the transaction at the buyer's bank. A cashier's check can be issued by that bank to the seller. Since that check is backed up by the bank's own accounts, not subject to the buyer's whims (e.g., they can't stop payment, and the bank will have confirmed that buyer has that amount in their account and debit it immediately), it's as good as cash (well, unless the bank itself is unsound) but safer to carry around.
>Cash isn't great, but some people don't use online banking
This is the US version of the events. I don't know all EU member states in detail, but I can't think of one where it's possible to receive salary/pension in cash.
Cheques have not been a thing for 20y+, I wonder if they are still issued.
It's always interesting to watch any EU-specific topic come up on HN and see people on one end of the EU assume that their lives, local laws, and customs are exactly the same as the lives, local laws, and customs on the other end of the EU. And then when a deviation comes up, they assume it's an American thing.
It seems like people in the EU should explore their neighboring countries more. Or at least stop assuming that the EU is one homogenous society modeled after their own personal experiences.
Like mentioned I have not seen any cheques in use for 20 or so years. I have not seen 'personal' cheque books since the Euro has been introduced.
>Or at least stop assuming that the EU is one homogenous society modeled after their own personal experiences.
How was the assuming - "I don't know all EU member states in detail". I have lived (as in years) in several EU member states. Visited (travel) across most of them too.
My wife, currently in southern France, was given a check last week, and tells me she's glad that she brought cash with her.
As I stated, your experiences are not the only experiences. And again, you just assumed that any deviation from your expectations makes it an American aberration. This is simply not true, and speaks to your limited experience and biases.
By far the most common method of receiving income from an employer in the US is direct deposit. For people who refuse, the fallback position is typically a card (essentially a refillable gift card).
Checks still do exist, but primarily for one-off payments where the payer and payee don't have much of a relationship.
totally different set of criminals, also bank accounts are generally much, much harder to take over. The money is easy to track, and it can be reimbursed.
Facebook Marketplace seems to have totally replaced Craiglist as well, where I live, for buying/selling. Facebook Messenger took over e.g. MSN for a lot of people, the News Feed replaced a dedicated news site for a lot of people, and so forth. Events replaced Evite I think (or similar?), FB Photos basically replaced Flickr back in the day...
MySpace? Most of the other pre-Facebook social media sites too. It's not about being an exact copy, but sharing enough features that it can subsume those roles.
