Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

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> I live in Austria and cash is still used in a big way. Many smaller restaurants in the rural areas only accept cash.

Because they do tax fraud. That's why every restaurant and small business owner in the country side has a big house and a Tesla, despite the average national take home wage being 1800€. I hope the remove cash to crack down on this. It's unfair for the rest of us with jobs to foot the bill for the government expenses while others get away without declaring their full earnings due to the use of cash. Last year it made news that the tax office caught a small farmer that defrauded the government of over 3 million Euro. And that guy is just one of many that go uncaught.

>Up until recently I was in no way digitally connected for Austrian government services.

Why is everyone in Austria so backwards, conservative and against any kind of technological progress? I'm not Austrian but I have to live there unfortunately and day to day stuff is a huge pain:

Everything is cash with lines at the supermarket taking ages until every customer's coins are counted and accounted for, plus all the constat letters and paperwork is a nightmare. Very little digitalization throughout the country. Not that different than Germany, but at least Germany has a mich bigger jobs market with proper wages to make up for the discomfort.

That's why Austrian devs earn less than Estonians, Poles or Romanians. This excessive conservativism is holding Austria back massively and the gap will widen as it's just not a compelling county for tech companies to do business in. It's not as rich and big market as Germany, nor as low-tax, rich and innovative as Switzerland, nor as cheap and low-tax as Poland, Estonia or Romania, nor as progressive, innovative and low-tax as Netherlands.

Holding Austria back from what?

I’m not Austrian either, do live there and despite some factors I’m not a fan of, the lack of digitisation in society in general is a strong selling point for me.

I really do believe that excessive digitisation of society is trading personal autonomy (freedom, privacy) for some kind of perceived convenience. Personally, I think the trade off is not worth it. I do not want big business (banks) and the government able to track every location I’ve been to and every cent I’ve spent.

I’m also concerned about reliance on digital services, which can be prone to failure - not a problem with cash - and for those unfortunate people without a bank account, the inability to use cash is life damaging.

Having been through many, many hoops with the UK’s Home Office (including a 13 month Visa Appeal process, which ended up in court where the Home Office didn’t even bother to send a representative), compared to the supremely easy and face to face process in obtaining an Artikel 50 Brexit visa in Austria, I’d choose the Austrian process every time.

>I really do believe that excessive digitisation of society is trading personal autonomy (freedom, privacy) for some kind of perceived convenience.

The convenience is not perceived, it's real and measurable, that's why people in many countries love going digital voluntarily. The time saved from doing stuff off my phone or PC instead of sitting in line at government offices means more free time to do what I like. Paying contactless means lines at the supermarket last 30 seconds instead of 3 minutes or more and I can catch the train instead of missing it because 3 people in front of me are still counting their change. The gains are real, not perceived.

And what extra freedom do you have from not going digital? If the government wants to screw you, like the trucker protestors in Canada, they'll just lock your bank accounts and you loose access to all your fund including ability to pay rent, regardless if you're digital or not. So what then? How many days can you go with just the 60€ in your wallet and no acces to your bank account. Unless you're the kind of person to keep all your money under the mattress (which I doubt you are but maybe you'll surprise me) you gained absolutely nothing from that while everyone loses all the convenience. The only ones who gain are business owners commiting tax fraud or people doing other illegal activities, which I condemn, and a cash free society would make them unable to doge taxes anymore making it fair for everyone.

>Holding Austria back from what?

Holding it back from money and jobs from one of the most lucrative international business sectors in the world (why do you think SV/California is so rich?). Holding it back from technological progress generating said jobs. Holding it back from highly skilled immigrants who are looking to work in this sector and will pay high taxes which support the government and population, but instead go to work somewhere else.

Part of your attitude boils down to: I wish all these shady, ignorant people would stop living their own lives more privately because it makes my life slightly less easy. They're probably criminals anyhow.

>The only ones who gain are business owners commiting tax fraud or people doing other illegal activities, which I condemn, and a cash free society would make them unable to doge taxes anymore making it fair for everyone.

Define illegal activities. Also be aware that very random things can suddenly be made illegal for very corrupt or self-interested political reasons (australia and Canada spring to mind here more recently, so too does Russia to a much greater degree). The ability to fight back against overreach by society's single most powerful entitiy, the state, be it with cash or some other means of defiance is fundamentally a good thing and has been throughout history. At the very least small time tax dodging and grey market deals are a much less historically and fundamentally evil thing than governments overusing their powers for repressive ends.

Also, tax evasion in a fully digitized, cashless society would happen just the same, but it would now be done only by large companies and the very wealthy, who have the pull to buy their favorite laws, politicians and special exemptions. Your claimed individual, middle or lower class tax dodgers matter much less. What will matter however is the inability of normal people to keep their heads above water because they can no longer hide certain things from irresponsible tax collection or onerous regulations.

You seem to think that more easily catching a few tax dodgers and making the misery of having no escape from taxes more "fairly" distributed is a worthy gain in exchange for a total surveillance state that has the tools to control you at any time of political winds shift.

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