Posted on 08/31/2022 6:05:12 AM PDT by Heartlander
Fewer Americans are using cash. In 2019, almost a third of Americans said they never used cash to make purchases. More recently, only 16 percent of U.S. consumers said they carried cash, with 58 percent of respondents saying they planned to stop using cash completely. Cash, it appears, is no longer king.
The death of cash comes at the same time as the death of banks. Last year, U.S. banks closed a record number of branches—nearly 4,000 in total. Since 2012, the rate of branch closures has been doubling every three years; at this rate, all U.S. bank branches could be closed by 2034. Rejoice, some may say—banks have too much power, anyway.
In truth, though, banks themselves aren’t going anywhere. More and more banks are closing their physical doors, but that’s because we’re moving into a more digitalized world. The centralized power enjoyed and exercised by banks isn’t going away; in fact, their power will likely increase. Yes, cash will almost certainly disappear, but the influence of banks won’t. We are hurtling towards a cashless society, almost entirely digital in nature. Who stands to benefit from this transition?
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication—known as SWIFT—is a payment system that’s governed by the G-10 central banks (Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States, Switzerland, and Sweden), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the National Bank of Belgium. An influential network, SWIFT has 11,000 member banks in 200 different countries and territories. SWIFT made headlines earlier this year when it sanctioned a number of Russian banks, effectively isolating them from the international financial system.
Around the very same time that it hit the Kremlin with sanctions, SWIFT announced that it was collaborating with Capgemini, a global leader in digital technologies, to work on central bank digital currencies. Commonly referred to as CBDCs, these government-backed digital currenciesare being positioned as the future of finance. Ninety percent of the world’s central banks are currently working on CBDCs. In the U.S,, members of Congress are pressuring the Federal Reserve to create a digital dollar, a fully functional CBDC. A digital currency replacing the greenback would overturn the entire way we conceptualize and use money. Cash would truly disappear.
Though adopting a digital dollar could have some benefits (convenience, for example), a cashless society brings a whole host of new, potentially devastating dangers. A cashless society, by default, becomes a more surveilled society. Moreover, as the financial guru Nir Netzer speculated, it is “possible that gentrification through cash exclusion ultimately drives out the bottom of the pyramid.” The sociopolitical implications of a digital monetary system are staggering, because mapping a Chinese-style social credit score onto the structure of individual digital bank accounts would be not only easy—it would be the obvious next step. CBDCs make both authoritarianism and censorship easier and more likely.
The World Economic Forum (WEF), the international organization that promotes SWIFT and the Great Reset, recently published its Future Focus 2025 report. The authors call for the mass roll out of CBDCs—but only if these digital currencies are accompanied by digital IDs. According to the authors of the dystopian report: “While CBDCs promise to revolutionize payments and deliver efficiencies for consumers (retail or commercial), it is still unclear how their architecture accommodates an identity layer.” Thus a “digital identity layer should be developed” to accompany CBDCs. These government-backed digital currencies will be fully traceable and permissions-based. In other words, those in charge will be able to dictate what you can and cannot buy.
Digital IDs lay the foundation for social credit systems. For those who scoff at the idea of a social credit system, let me remind you that the United States, supposedly the land of the free, already has a soft social credit system in place, with millions of American workers being tracked, recorded, and even ranked.
Say what you like about Bitcoin, at least it was designed to give power to the people. A decentralized technology, it is the antithesis of CBDCs, which is the reason why the WEF isn’t a fan. Some analysts argue that centralized digital currencies and pure cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin can co-exist. But for centralized currencies to be fully effective, cryptocurrencies must be demoted or even eliminated from the financial equation.
Two decades ago, the behavioral economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein coined the term ‘libertarian paternalism,” the naïve idea that it’s possible for private and public establishments to change our behavior while also respecting our human rights. The push for CBDCs (and the digital IDs that will accompany them) is more like “statist paternalism,” a political system in which the state has complete, centralized control over its citizens’ actions and affairs. The elimination of cash is really an elimination of something much more profound: individual choice and freedom. Digital currencies may very well be more convenient, but that convenience will come at a significant cost.
Communism and all totalitarian economic systems are eventually brought down by black market trading. A future where the gov’t has complete control of every transaction will make those systems possible.
“The death of cash comes at the same time as the death of banks.”
Along with the death of privacy and freedom.
Cass Sunstein, mentioned in this article, and his wife Samantha Powers are two truly evil people. They have had undue influence over the government since the Obama days. She was the one who abused the FISA system with unmasking requests and he is the origin if the “nudge” concept of controlling people. These two are responsible in a big way for where we are today.
They are tightening the grip around our necks.
You won’t be able to drive a gas or diesel car. They will cut off your electricity so you can’t charge your electric car. They can put you in the dark and cold at any time.
Without cash, the government can make your life impossible with a flip of the digital switch. Most people do not raise or grow their own food. Without money, they will be dead.
The digital money system can target YOU SPECIFICALLY. “We don’t like what you are saying or doing so you can’t buy anything from this moment forward.”
Boom !
Canada had an internet outage not too long ago for about a day and the only way people could buy things was with CASH so this is another Leftist bad idea
Cass Sunstein and his wife Samantha Powers repulsive and evil. They’re both bizarre idiots.
The infrastructure is in place so that people use cash less and less as time goes on.
Virtually all retail establishments take credit cards and debit cards nowadays.
I can remember a time when credit and debit cards were not accepted everywhere.
We are losing freedoms with this, in that, all of our financial transactions are in a database somewhere, subject to surveillance by the powers that be.
I guarantee the people who brought us the lockdown and the massive firings for the non-vaxxed are working on it. The first sign of it will be a limit on how much cash can be used for one transaction. There is already an illegal limit on the amount of cash you can carry: 10,000. Over that and it’s confiscated. No trial. Just taken.
Then major woke companies will refuse to take cash.
Then the government will reveal that they spent billions to pay a chinese company to develop an app that is initially “voluntary.” The app will be useable for all transactions.
Then, in one fell swoop, cash will be invalidated at the same time that the app is made mandatory. (The government will give a “free” smartphone to the “poor” and undocumented immigrants.)
Remember Cyprus? The government will know how much money you have and just take what it wants from your assets.
This is coming. They will deny it up to the last minute.
No more garage sales or swap meets.
Conspiracy Theory! Never happen here! ~s
There are only 9 replies to this thread because far too many here have also embraced the laziness and convenience that has facilitated this digital concept starting with credit cards.
You are right on the money. Some of us saw this coming 30 years ago. But everyone kept saying it would never happen here.
Well it is thanks to the nay sayers.
Without physical money you can be rendered penniless with a keystroke.
It’s all about CONTROL
Unfortunately the only way to fight this is to fight fire with fire.
“Boss, I will take my pay in digital S&H green stamps because all those I do business with take them.”
Nothing in the Constitution restricts alternative digital currency. It is not physical “coining.”
Well now it is like this because of the lazy mistakes we already made as this concept progressed.
Call it what it is... Pure laziness facilitated this situation and they are taking advantage of this new situation.
If you are as old as I am, then you watched it come to this play by play.
Thanks for posting.
In my mind, cash will always be king. To me, charging your lunch at Mickey D’s is insanity.
Long live cash.
Cashless Future = Hackers Mecca
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