"I'm sorry Dave, but I can't let you purchase that."
-PJ
I think that a Central Bank Digital Currency could easily lead to a Social Credit System similar to the one used to control the population in China.
My only question...is there a mark or a number involved?
“where they could be continuously monitored by the forces of good. “
The forces of good.....really. Reminds me of Orwell’s 1984. We are almost there, just 40 years late.
In a world where everyone had a nine to five job for a big corporation it might be possible to exist without cash. I’m a low-end landlord. The people I deal with don’t have bank accounts. Their checks come from Walmart. They survive on the margin. You need a tree cut down? $500 cash. You need some odd job done, it’s cash. They either don’t have a steady income or they’re knitting together dozens of small jobs. Do away with cash and you instantly reduce their income by the percentage of tax and force them to increase their workload by 28%. They’re on the margin now. A few percentage points more and they fall off.
Your actions will be monitored, and you'll be rewarded or punished accordingly. The ruling elite will retain its special privileges while the ordinary folk will live in misery.
OK FReepers, this is not that hard.
Go down to the ATM. Get $100, $200, heck, get $500!
Now go use it. Don’t offer plastic. Do your part to keep cash alive.
If they force CBDC on us, we are finished as free men.
Try to use digital at a flea market or a garage sale. It won’twork. Ths is a device urged by totalitarianists who reside in apartments in large cities. They have no concept of real life!!
Authorities would never misuse information
Cute
The young will buy into this readily. It amazes me when I see people using plastic to buy a soda from a machine. Have spoken to many who tell me they never carry cash. Too bad youth is wasted on young people.
Cash may enable criminal enterprise, but a fully-monitors electronic banking system enables total government control. That is a far worse prospect.
“I am regularly amazed at the willingness of almost everybody to submit to this surveillance (which you can avoid every time you use cash).”
Cash certainly helps, but there are now other ways to track people:
1. Look up “Flock Safety Cameras”. Where I live, if you leave your driveway to get a quart of milk, your car is electronically entered into the database. That’s how they caught the second Trump assassin - they do work. So don’t drive - walk.
2. Look at your smart phone...leave it at home.
3. Look up at Walmart (or Nordstrom’s, for you NeverTrumpers) - cameras everywhere, some, I suspect, with facial recognition. Also note that the time stamp on any receipt can be checked against even the basic cameras.
There is no end.
Bottom line, we have to stop this at the BALLOT BOX and wherever else possible - and NO, the problem is Democrats, far more than RINOs.
"I'm sorry Dave, but I can't let you purchase that."
-PJ
Barter will make a big comeback. Swapping things, people doing favors for other people, no cash or digital currency involved.
Aren’t we most of the way there with digital banking anyway?
How many of you get your “paycheck” direct deposited into your bank account?
How many of you spend a lot of actual cash, currency and coins? How many of you do most of your spending with credit cards,debit cards and writing checks? All of these are booked electronically in your bank account nowadays.
When’s the last time any of you have been inside your bank? And did you go there to withdraw cash to go spend?
I suppose a cashless system could solve many problems, but I wonder if it wouldn’t create about as many. I should imagine that once the engineers of such a plan had it put into place, they likely would not be willing to return to the cash system.
MOB sarcasm
Sin is in the heart of every human, from conception onward, not in cash or any other inanimate medium of exchange
The wages of sin is death, and the threat of death is in the hands of whoever controls one's nehavior.
That is why in ancient Egypt, all the gold was in the hands of the royalty, and all the straw (and beer) was in the hands of the serfs.
Now, who was it that did all the crying?
The cashless ones, that's who.
(This is a perpetual truism, not to be ignored.)
It is the LOVE to control the medium of exchange that is the root of all injustice, not the money itself.
Internet porn is paid for in cash?
Govt graft is paid on cash?
USAID is all cash?
Freedom is paid with cash, which is why we have it.
I don’t want to eliminate cash; I only want to eliminate pennies.
Stationed in England in the 1970s, we didn’t use pennies; transactions were rounded up or down. We never, ever missed pennies. And that was 50 years ago!
I don’t like any plan to eliminate cash. If I am careful enough to save my meager funds to be able to pay for something & someone else making the same amount is always broke, who do you think they will want to examine? Each person has their own priorities for what they want to accomplish & we sure don’t need some government entity trying to micromanage us.