Makes it sound like some Orwellian dystopia where the inhabitants live in a form of state induced darkness. My son lives in Sweden at the moment after living in (as well as the UK) Holland, France and China and isn't reporting any form of unusual social circumstances. In fact he quite likes the way things work in the country. As it took him a few months to get the Swedish version of a social security number he's had to live in the "cash economy" during that time and didn't find it particularly restrictive - or never mentioned it if he did.

Whether the Swedes are more cashless than us or any other country can only be a matter of degree though as that's the way things have been moving for a number of decades and continue to do so. Whether this is driven by some kind of Machiavellian cabal, consumer preference or commercial pressure it is a fairly universal shift. Even "backward" countries - sub Saharan Africa, the USA etc have embraced it to some extent. For the most part it does make life on the road easier than it used to be. When I first started travelling we had to take most of our funds in cash (I never trusted travellers cheques). That was fine until one trip to Greece when the money bag fell off the bike and we lost it. It took two weeks to get money transferred from the UK. Try living in a cash economy with no cash.