The first country to introduce bank notes in 1661 is about to follow the advice of one of its pop stars and replace them with cyber transactions.
According to USA Today, Bjoern Ulvaeus, former member of popular beat combo Abba, has been instrumental in lobbying the government to dump cash and move to electronic cash.
In most Swedish cities, buses don't accept cash and tickets are prepaid or bought with a mobile phone text message. Some businesses only take cards, and some bank offices have stopped handling cash altogether which means they do not have to get themselves robbed.
Of course this brave new world is not for everyone. Curt Persson, chairman of Sweden's National Pensioners' Organisation says there is a problem for elderly people in rural areas who don't have credit cards or don't know how to use them to withdraw cash. This is causing a crisis because they cannot buy food or flat pack furniture.
But, apparently, even the churches are starting to install card readers instead of the traditional collection plate.
Cash is only part of three percent of Sweden's economy, compared to an average of nine percent in the Eurozone and seven percent in the U.S.
So why is "Money, Money, Money" Ulvaeus interested in a cashless society? Well if you saw the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Sweden is a country full of guns, violence, nazis, and open sandwiches. He told CBS it was all a matter of security.
His son has been robbed three times and he wants the country to move to a digital economy much faster to make life harder for thieves.
The Swedish Bankers' Association says the shrinkage of the cash economy has caused the number of bank robberies to fall from 110 in 2008 to 16 in 2011.
Electronic transactions are also making it difficult to hide cash, bribe people, or carry out shadow economy activities.
Of course it has lead to an increase in cybercrime, but since these do not involve someone looking down the barrel of a sawn off shotgun people are less concerned.
Out with all the sovereigns (we says) an sweep them under a rota and ina skip. Besides, krona only smell of elderberries or rhubarb bål!
One’s left or right side pertains to thoughts, with the left being of past thoughts and the right being of futuristic thoughts, futuristic as in anyalysing, plotting and planning. Thoughts, being of the past or the future, are not real, reality being of the present which is beyond control or manipulation by mere humans. For example, non-thinkers like animals or infants, are always in the present. They do not have the urge or the compulsion to yak until eternity - that of impressing one’s Fame, Fortune or Immortality onto another/others in the attempt at enhancing said FFI.
As for this “News”, should it be true as related or imagined thereof, that glitzy joker is promoting singularity of existence, which, for humanity, does not exists. When every seemingly good idea or turn being the progenitor of its alterego, those who have yet to realised their true meaning will, through either their left or right thoughts, turn “Cashlessness” into “Taxation”, be it direct or indirect. This is why when there is no absoluteness of purpose or of reality, Control is merely the shadow its Abandonment hides. This is also why Stupidity is activity and Dumbness is inactivity, like it, believe it, or not. When a human is stupid, his ego inflates and when he is dumb, his superego/conditioning inflates. As for Divinity, should He exists [through She], when He acts, He creates and when He is conditional, He destroys, with the former having been done and with the latter having yet to manifest - if only to remove all the Religions & Religiosities that humans have created from their ego or conditionings.
Humanity is neither Truth, Love nor are we Intelligence because those aspects are of Divinity, our duty being to be truthfiul, loving and acting intelligently whenever the opportunity presents. Repeatedly, as in breathing, heartbeating, eating and eliminating. To enable The Bookie and His Tentacles, via Their Tag-Alongs, to control and manipulate humanity easily through dumb-stupid ideas like “Cashlessness” is to invite malevolence to waltz and glitz under the guise of benevolence. And don’t the Living-but-Dead loves a glitz and a waltz because that is how zombies come alive, through the odd spark and sparkly before reverting to their mesmerised state. Harsh words indeed but not as harsh as when all are shackled and controlled by The Malevolents who always masquerading as some clever dicky out to eliminate evil. Like “Prime Ministers”, primed to go bang when nobody is looking and all because existence within the dual-state human is about “Not Getting Caught”. The reality then is that these jokers seldom catch the odd truth, love or intelligence raining down on humanity 25/8.
The mother of Necessity should posture an intervention, if wee should be found wanting.
The Swedes have been worth their salt in money every since Saxo Grammaticus pinched a small debt of two and a half marks of silver from the legendary House of Yeungling and he's not about to give dem back!
Dem ben, dem ben, det riktigt torrt ben utan nowt en farthing i byte.
är Blinka Starköl