The cashless society

I spent most of the last week in Stockholm at an anthropology conference. It was the first time I have ever been to a foreign country and not bothered to take out any of the local currency in cash. A few days before leaving for Sweden I had read that paying digitally was becoming such a part of life that people in Sweden have even begun paying with their digits themselves, though implants in their hands https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/sj-rail-train-tickets-hand-implant-microchip-biometric-sweden-a7793641.html.

I bought a ticket on the bus from the airport with my credit card, the same with good in the supermarket, and drinks at a restaurant. Not that different from the UK perhaps, though I doubt that I could have paid directly on the bus with a credit card in the UK. It was on the bus that I found the lack of acceptance of cash became slightly problematic, myself and two friends had to take a ten to fifteen minute walk to the nearest metro station from the university to be buy a bus ticket to be able to board a bus, since tickets could not be bought on or anywhere near the bus in any form (cash or otherwise). 

When I spoke to Swedes about the cashless economy they expressed a mixture of irritation at the difficulty of disposing of cash and suspicion of the reasons for why cash was being phased out. A Swedish friend told me that after friends of hers visiting Sweden had left Swedish Krona with her she had had great difficulty finding anywhere to spend them because even bars and restaurants that she went to now accepted only electronic payment. After buying some sweets from a stall on the street, and paying with my credit card (which would be slightly unusual in the UK) I asked the stall owner how long it had been that Sweden had been almost cashless. She said that this had come in in the last couple of years, and was suspicious of the reasons why. "It's the state. The government wants to control everybody, to know what everybody is doing and where they are going", she told me. "They know where you park your car, if you go to the cinema, if I go to visit my boyfriend, they know everything about you."

After this I had a brief walk of the Old Town, during which I stood for ten minutes listening to an excellent jazz trio busking. Though they received a few coins from passers by (not nearly as much as their performance warranted), I wondered whether they ought to invest in a card reader for the convenience of modern Swedes. (They could take a leaf out of the book of this London beggar http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2911249/Beggar-rakes-cash-outside-swanky-Mayfair-restaurant-using-chip-pin-machine-spends-holidays-iPad-whinges-Cowell-gave-20.html.)

On the way back to my hostel to pick up my suitcase before taking my flight back to the UK in one of the main streets in the centre of Stockholm I passed a middle-aged man listening to something on earphones and stood holding a sign which read "The state is torturing me for 5 1/2 years with remote controlled equipment in my body".  I asked the man what his story was. He told me that he had been in a dispute with some businessmen, who had then paid doctors to insert microchips into his wrists and ears and that these doctors were screaming at him, directly into his ears.
This reminded me of the story a friend had told me about how he had once got an ant stuck in his head after it had crawled in while he had been asleep on the grass. He could hear footsteps inside his head and he was sure that this was how people went mad. He eventually got it out by tipping his head to one side and banging the other ear until the ant had had enough and walked out the other side.
Back to the man in the street with the sign, he had a paper cup by his feet, presumably in the hope that passers-by would give him money (it wasn't clear to me from my conversation with him how this would have helped him cope with the problem of the screaming in his ears), but Sweden being a cashless society I didn't have any to give him. I wished him well, and was on my way.