Duality of Japan

I see cash as an absolute win

45

As someone who worked in shops for many years, cash is disgusting and should be burned!

16
- Think about how digital movies and games are routinely locked and blocked. Do you want the government to be able to do that to all of your liquid cash?
  
  14
- https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/jun/24/you-cant-pay-cash-here-how-cashless-society-harms-most-vulnerable
  
  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/19/cashless-society-con-big-finance-banks-closing-atms
  
  8

Permanently Deleted

45

That one guy still selling floppies will be so happy.

10
Dude I went and bought a wide screen 1080i CRT.

Games look much better on it than any LCD.

7
I yearn for solarpunk cassette futurism.

3
- Every device needs...
  
  A potentiometer dial. Big, with a thumb depression or folding winding arm.
  
  <8in CRT display. Preferably with indecypherable graphs. Yes, the lawnmower, too.
  
  A full tape deck with record because you might hear that one bop on the radio and all you have is your hairdryer.
  
  3.14in floppy drive or some form of microdisk if the device is too small.
  
  Beige or steel-gray. Options for accents of black, white, or red.
  
  Boxy, injection-molded shell.
  
  Antennae.
  
  3

I used to work in manufacturing. One place used the Japanese standard of manufacturing with paper based progress gates and faxing copies to other sections. They also paid cash for any outside contracts. The whole system worked flawlessly. Those negatives are not as bad as they seem.

38

That’s incredible that business contracts are paid in cash. Did they just waltz in with a suitcase filled with cash and count everything together?

14
- Pretty common in China too. I'd regularly make deposits and people would come in with cases of cash and deposit alongside the rest of us.
  
  Sometimes they'd use the cash deposit ATMs, and the rest of us online would be like f****** okay just take 10 minutes there inserting stack after stack of cash. cool of you
  
  9
- Cash can also include checks and other negotiable instruments
  
  5

Why is cash society a bad thing???

24

I'm not against cash, but being cash only would be a nightmare.

Cash is filthy, and it takes time to have to look through and work out (for all stakeholders). It costs money to secure it as well. It wears out over time and has to be minted.

20

Believe me, these are the least of Japan's problems.

21

What's wrong with paper filling or cash society?

19

Eh paper filing is meh imo. Cash is great though!!!

11
Paper filing is a nightmare. Imagine filling forms manually, stamping them over and over again for a simple contract that could have been e-signed.

Also on a higher level, digitization of records is a huge plus.

2

Cash society is better than a card one for homeless people

18

30 years ago, Japan was a glimpse into what life would be like in 20 years.

Now, Japan is a glimpse into what life was like 20 years ago.

17

Things here are ahead in some ways, but not in the (very publicly visible) ways they used to be. Robotics, particularly as relates to manufacturing and elder care, comes to mind.

10
- How is robotics used in elder care there?
  
  2

Deutsche:

16

Oh yea we hate cash society here. We all really want the corporations to know exactly what we use all our money for, it's great!

13

Also racism and misogyny.

13

Excluding bullet trains, these are just bazinga-brained Disney world attractions. Could have put mixed use zoning on the front, and toxic grindset work culture on the back.

11

Do people outside Hexbear know what "bazinga brained" means? I kinda don't think they do.

8
- Probably not, but it's also shorthand for something everybody understands, even the bazinga-brained, so it's not hard to clarify
  
  6
- I got what it meant the first time I heard it so I figured it was fine to use.
  
  6
- barzoople brain
  
  4
If you're gonna put mixed zoning, put tearing down houses after 20 years on the other.

5

war crime denial

8

Unit 731 intensifies

Btw don’t look that up unless you got a stomach for actual torture, rape, murder, cruelty, and dehumanization of men, women, and kids.

6
- dehumanization of men, women, and kids
  
  Do you mean logs?
  
  2

The cash thing is becoming way less true. The toilets are legit magic though.

8

True, but considering the amount of data leaks recently, sometimes old tech is more secure.

7

They really still use floppy disks?

7

No, not publicly. The last manufacturer of diskettes in Japan (Sony, I believe) shut down production several years ago.

Conversely, there is still infrastructure In America that requires 5" floppies and Windows 3.11 installs or else some critical system will fail.

Society at large in both countries no longer uses them.

13
- What kind of infrastructure is like that in the US? I worked in IT for one of the largest power companies in the country and the worst we had was win2000 in one location that was being decommissioned anyway.
  
  2

Tbh I’d say they’re way less cash-based than believe to be. Obviously just my experience but most places take visa or Suica from Tokyo to Hiroshima to Kanazawa and everything in between.

4

But a lot of small Japanese business, particularly in food/drinks, do not. PayPay and such are making some inroads in that space, but I know bar owners here who got rid of it as it wasn't worth their take/fees.

5

People in the US still don't believe me that there are DVD rental stores everywhere in Japan. Although the wildest low tech thing I've seen though is one time I had to go to a rural post office out in Gifu prefecture and the workers there had honest to goodness abacuses instead of cash registers.

The use of hanko seals also kinda baffles me.

4

Also sme of the the most abhorrent working conditions in any industrialized country

1