   Japanese abolish Yen for cyber-credits???
The StoryThe abolishment of cash because of deflation? I thought was it a good thing when your money increases in value. Doesn't that signal that your economy is getting better? How will people know the real value of money? Properly control interest rates?As cool as this sounds, I can't fully fathom how this will work in the real world.   
  No, deflation is generally a bad thing in an economy because it provides an incentive to not spend money. When people don't spend money, the economy shrinks.   ;  Sorry, but that is the most stupid thing I've heard in a while. Abolishing cash (or more correctly, currency) means to abolish economy.In fact, the article's headline is misleading insofar as it doesn't talk about abolishing currency, only about replacing actual currency with fake currency.So, instead of paying in "yen" you will pay in "points". Except that "yen" has a value that is in some way backed by the country (and its creditors), and "yen" has a clearly defined legal status.Mobile phone "points" or "whatever points" are entirely worthless except for the company that issues them, and don't have any legal status that money has. What if "I ownz Mobile" goes bankrupt? Where do the points go?How do you get points in the first place? Oh right, you buy them with "yen"...Moreover, If Hashimoto Inc. wants to buy 30,000 tons of iron from Tanaka Enterprises, what do you expect them to do... send 450 million SMS?   ;Quote:Original post by samothSorry, but that is the most stupid thing I've heard in a while. Abolishing cash (or more correctly, currency) means to abolish economy.In fact, the article's headline is misleading insofar as it doesn't talk about abolishing currency, only about replacing actual currency with fake currency.So, instead of paying in "yen" you will pay in "points". Except that "yen" has a value that is in some way backed by the country (and its creditors), and "yen" has a clearly defined legal status.Mobile phone "points" or "whatever points" are entirely worthless except for the company that issues them, and don't have any legal status that money has. What if "I ownz Mobile" goes bankrupt? Where do the points go?How do you get points in the first place? Oh right, you buy them with "yen"...Moreover, If Hashimoto Inc. wants to buy 30,000 tons of iron from Tanaka Enterprises, what do you expect them to do... send 450 million SMS?Did you even read the article? It doesn't suggest abolishing currency in favour of eMoney Inc. Credits or replacing the yen; it simply suggests to replace the bits of paper or metal with numbers on a server, the way most of the world economy already works. The yen would still be Japan's official currency, and the only difference would be that you'd pay by credit card or whatever instead of lugging around a useless physical representation of their value.   ;Quote:Original post by ValdermanDid you even read the article? It doesn't suggest abolishing currency in favour of eMoney Inc. Credits or replacing the yen; it simply suggests to replace the bits of paper or metal with numbers on a server, the way most of the world economy already works. The yen would still be Japan's official currency, and the only difference would be that you'd pay by credit card or whatever instead of lugging around a useless physical representation of their value.Sure did, but  replacing "bits of paper" with numbers of a server means replacing "currency" with "nothing". Numbers of a server are nothing, they mean nothing and they have no value. Currency, strictly speaking, does not have any value either, but it does have that value indirectly as the government and its creditors guarantee for it (as long as there are creditors).You can create another couple million numbers on a server every second (while that is true for coins and bills too, it is nevertheless much different, as coins and bills are regulated).If competiting company A buys company B and decides that B points are only worth 1/10.000 from tomorrow on, what will happen? You bought points that were worth 1 yen each. Except now they're worth shit, and there's not much you can do.What if company C decides that giving out 20 million of their points for promotion is a really good idea? Will this affect their value, or the value of A and B? What if some script kid uses an exploit in the SMS protocol to send 500 million fake transactions?What if company D tells you one day "sorry, but due to the high number of false points, we can no longer accept your C points"? What is the value of your "money" then? What if you ask back your yens from C because nobody will take C points, only to discover that 100,000 other people had that idea too, and C is going into receivership?There are a lot of good reasons why currency is in the hand of the government.   ;  Ah, do you know that over 90% of the world's 'money' is purely digital, right? The government still finds ways to regulate the banks that are already running on mostly digital.How is this any different than only using your bank card and nothing else?   ;  samoth, at what point did "get rid of coins" turn into "remove all control over currency and throw Japan into total anarchy"? I must be reading the wrong article.   ;Quote:Original post by samothThere are a lot of good reasons why currency is in the hand of the government.Actually, the currency is mostly in the hands of the banks. Let's say person A goes and drops off $100 at a bank in his savings account. The bank then predicts that the chances that person A will want all that money back in the near future to be very low, so will loan say $80 to person B. A still has $100 in his savings account, but most of that money is not backed by actual currency. Net effect is that the supply of money has grown by $80. Now B drops that money off in a bank somewhere and the bank then loans off some of that money to person C. Lather, rinse, repeat and that original $100 becomes four or five hundred dollars magically floating in the economy.As long as people trust in the bank to actually have their money, everything is good. Once people stop trusting the banks, and start asking for all their money back, bad things happen. Currency is like a shared consensual hallucination that you pray people never wake up from.   ;Quote:Original post by samothIf competiting company A buys company B and decides that B points are only worth 1/10.000 from tomorrow on, what will happen?Except that 'points' are simply 'Yen', and are homogeneous, assuming I'm not misunderstanding."If Lloyds TSB buys HSBC and decides that Sterling..."Doesn't happen."What if Deutsche Bank decides that giving out 20 million Euros..."That would decrease the value of the currency, yes."What if some script kid..."He'd get rich - in much the same way as you would if you hacked an ATM machine/fiddled with credit cards today."What if company D tells you..."Witness £50 and £100 notes here. The bank provides a guarantee, however - so you'd exchange them there. On the other hand, your scenario is like asking what would happen if RBS refused to take wire transfers from Santander.The proposed situation is as if you decided to forgo cash and only pay using debit/credit cards - only government mandated.;  I haven't used cash in a long long time. I only use my debit card. I haven't even carried money in my wallet in like 2 months now and even when  I did it was like 2 dollars for a vending machine.I support their decision. The same thing could be done in the United States fairly easily. I don't know of a place that doesn't accept debit.   