Swiss vote places right to use cash in country's constitution
88 points
13 hours ago
| 7 comments
| politico.eu
| HN
iamnothere
7 hours ago
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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.
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nic547
3 hours ago
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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.

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Frieren
1 hour ago
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> This change only means that a change requires a mandatory referendum rather than having to launch a referendum.

This seems a way of making sure that a future with Switzerland being part of the EU requires a vote to adopt the Euro. I do not see many other situations in which Switzerland changes its central bank or currency.

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nic547
1 hour ago
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Switzerland can't join the EU without a referendum anyway, I don't think that's realistic anyway. The prevailing juristic opinion seems to be that changing away from the franc would have required a referendum because while it wasn't explicitly defined it was referenced a bunch of times.

The concern was about CBDC and "cashless", the original initiative comes from a conspiracy-adjecent group. They just kind of failed of doing anything major about it, the initiative was worded badly. The counter proposal was explicitly a symbolic copy paste with no real effect.

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7777777phil
17 minutes ago
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This is the defensive complement to what the EU is doing offensively with Wero and/or Digital Euro. Different direction but payment sovereignty is the same strategic impulse..
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SilverElfin
4 hours ago
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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.
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627467
13 hours ago
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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
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1718627440
4 hours ago
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Being able to participate in the society financially is the ultimate necessity for people. You can be searched for by law enforcement and banned from "the Internet", as long as you can trade with random people for your food, you can live. The authorities can ban the Jews(or other group) from buying things, but then can not control everyone to enforce that. With digital money they can, and they even can apply that to a single person. Modern communist dictatorships use that as a threat instead of prison, because it is far more effective. Banning you from trading is a death sentence and being able to work, but just not being allowed to is a great way of mental torture.
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bell-cot
12 hours ago
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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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usr1106
11 hours ago
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Not following Switzerland, so I don't know whether this was part of the discussion: Most cards in Europe, Apple and Google are American. With Trump treating Europe like an enemy, it's stupid to use any of those. This year I have returned to use 90% cash after having no wallet since 2021.
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1718627440
4 hours ago
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Most cards in Europe also support American systems for international trade, but you don't need this to trade domestically.
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like_any_other
7 hours ago
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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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47299410

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