alt Hacker NewsSwiss vote places right to use cash in country's constitution
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Fantastic news. I don’t mind digital payments as an option, but without a guarantee like this, gatekeepers will always be motivated to kill off cash.
We need this in America. I am increasingly seeing stores see that they do not accept cash. But it is also in public services. For example, transit systems where the only option is to use a smart phone because they’re getting rid of the cards that you could previously get from a kiosk.
I contrast this with all then noise about megacorps passing private information to law enforcement, age verification, when discussing how (method of payment) we pay for services actually makes so much difference when facing these attempts at policing what is done online
Not mentioned - not unlike Finland's home emergency supply kits, having a cash-based backup payment system is an important part of national resilience.
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Meanwhile Canadian government funded media research organizations are tarring resistance to going cashless as conspiratorial:
They argue that digitization will enable governments to monitor financial transactions, restrict purchases, travel, and access to healthcare, freeze accounts, and punish people for exceeding their carbon limits or for dissent.
Politco makes it sound much bigger than it actually is. Only two things are now secured in the constitution:
- The franc is the national currency - The swiss national bank is responsible for the supply of cash.
This doesn't have any effect in practice, since this is straight up copy and paste from the law about currency. This change only means that a change requires a mandatory referendum rather than having to launch a referendum.
It does nothing about acceptance of cash, afaik that initiative failed to reach the neccesary support to be voted on.