alt Hacker News> Most people [in Germany] definitely do trust both government and banks to a sensible degree, even if they don’t like some decisions.
The major far-right fundamentalist opposition party has built its unprecedented success on a narrative of low government trust, and has been gaining ground in both polls and elections for years and years now.
So perhaps we shouldn't dismiss the parents' perspective entirely.
> Some people like you apparently also don’t appreciate the immense freedom of SEPA transactions.
If you include the wrong words in the transaction description, your account will almost certainly be cancelled. In a truly free payment system that safeguards democratic freedoms, these descriptions would be encrypted from end to end. (Just in the same way all personal communication should be protected.) This will, of course, never happen.
> And above all else, we have a working democracy and not an oppressive regime? This whole debate often feels very disconnected and overblown in Germany.
Any data we collect will probably be misused at some point in the future. Why take a risk with German institutions if we don't have to?
Germany recently experimented with greater financial control over some parts of the population, and it wasn't a total disaster in terms of control. In terms of freedom, however, it is a disaster.
Unfortunately, the source is German-language: https://netzpolitik.org/2024/faq-was-bezahlkarten-fuer-geflu...
Despite cash being a pillar of freedom and democracy in an open society, there is still no good anonymous alternative to it that is usable by normal people on a daily basis.
> The major far-right fundamentalist opposition party has built its unprecedented success on a narrative of low government trust, and has been gaining ground in both polls and elections for years and years now.
And yet, that is very far from the majority.
> If you include the wrong words in the transaction description, your account will almost certainly be cancelled.
That isn’t true. If you put "murder contract + 2kg heroin" in the description, at most a bank clerk will call to ask you to avoid that. The description is reviewed to detect fraud, and protects a lot of people from illicit transactions. We have that for the same reason we have KYC regulations; you may disagree with it, but it protects a lot of people, right now. If you need to obfuscate the description, you’re free to use an encrypted string or a numeric reference without any trouble.
> Any data we collect will probably be misused at some point in the future. Why take a risk with German institutions if we don't have to?
There are valid arguments against widespread cash usage; money handling is one of the top expenses in retail, for example. There also is fraud potential actively being used for sure. Yet, I don’t hear anyone working on completely abolishing cash, which is just not going to happen. Still, even Germans could benefit from questioning our ways from time to time.