Digital Dollar Ending Privacy and Liberty

Guest Post by Jack Dapper

Good day Earth Clan—

Imagine this hypothetical situation from the not too distant future:

A widowed grandma no longer has the physical strength to take care of the yard work of her home. She has a bright and well-mannered grandson, who happens to have a pretty and polite high school sweetheart. She nurses a not-so-secret desire that God will bless her with the longevity to see her great-grandchildren. Regardless, the yard work needed to get done and so she hired her strapping young grandson to mow the lawn in the warmer months and shovel the driveway in the colder months, among other sundry tasks throughout the year. She compensated him handsomely for his efforts, paying him $3,000 over the course of year, plus $500 each on his birthday and Christmas.

All these payments happened electronically, of course, given that the digital dollar was debuted on New Year’s Day 2021. American citizens were mandated to exchange all their physical currency for digital dollars within the year. The government also demanded its subjects submit their physical gold and silver holdings. The government was generous enough to compensate these “gold bugs” at cost for their “barbarous relic” rather than the value it had skyrocketed during the collapse of the dollar in 2020 due to hyperinflation. Our widowed grandma in question was shocked to learn on the evening news that some people had foolishly refused to hand over their illicit “pet rocks” and were summarily jailed or killed in shootouts.

Being advanced in her age, our widowed grandma in question was not technologically sophisticated. So, she visited the local branch of her bank to have her bankers perform the transactions on her behalf. When she instructed her banker to make these transactions, she admitted that they were in exchange for services rendered, and thus taxable. Additionally, when she called to authorize the two $500 transactions, she failed to specify that they were gifts. The banker and the government had no evidence as such, nor indeed, any desire to recognize the transactions as nontaxable.

Therefore, automatically throughout the year, the federal government taxed the grandson’s income at 15%, the state government taxed at 7.5%, the municipality government taxed at 5% and the bank fee was 2.5%. Each transaction, 30% of the grandson’s income was stolen with the click of a mouse.

Why are the dates so close to the present day? Because we are rapidly headed toward this future.

And the implementation of the digital dollar will be the end of our privacy and our liberty.

This dystopian future was first broadcasted—and praised—by the Economist in September of 1998.

While the article does not explicitly state the currency would be digital, it is not a great leap to see how its reference to “telecommunications technology” and the current ubiquity of digital transactions—from debit and credit cards to peer-to-peer exchanges like Venmo and even Bitcoin—portend the rise of a digital currency. It predicted the rise of “one world, one currency”, which it unoriginally nicknamed the “phoenix”. Ominously, readers were instructed to “pencil in the phoenix for around 2018, and welcome it when it comes”.

The only real reasons the articles provided as to why we should welcome this one world currency is because of its “convenience and the stability of its purchasing power” for “companies and shoppers”. Indeed, many if not most people would agree that a digital currency would be a great convenience, and rightly so. However, the article fails to expound whatsoever on the potential pitfalls and practical concerns over the lack of individual sovereignty that would arrive simultaneously with a digital currency.

Unfortunately, in today’s day and age, most people essentially view privacy as an antiquated concept. People willing share everything from the most mundane to the most intimate aspects of their lives freely on a variety of social medias and without much forethought to the ramifications. Indeed, many would rather infamy than obscurity. They may even naively argue that if they are not doing anything wrong than they have nothing to hide, but they don’t know how that information may be used against them in the future.

Imagine the amount of data that could be gleaned from a company or government knowing someone’s transaction and purchasing history. How much that person earns and who pays them; how much that person spends on alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana; if that person gives charitably and, if so, did those donations go to undesirable organizations; whether that person has recently purchased firearms or ammunition. All of our personal data would collected, analyzed, sold or acted upon by utterly remorseless and immoral companies and governments. Our best interests would not be considered.

In fact, people would lose the liberty over their personal finances to the dictates of the government. For example, the government may arbitrarily determine that the economy is too sluggish. Thus, it forces it citizens to increase their consumption by a stated percentage, lest the government automatically withdraw the difference to reach the required spending amount—plus a civil fine, of course. And when the government later arbitrarily determines that the economy is now running too hot, it will force it citizens not to spend beyond a certain percentage (outside of what it judges as “essential” goods and services). The government would be able to block someone’s “excessive” purchases altogether—plus assess a civil fine, of course.

Additionally, a digital currency could be easily overlapped with a social credit score system, as seen in China. This system could restrict the free movement of people without having to jail them or involve government goons. For example, the government could determine that you have defaulted on your mortgage payment and are thus prohibited from purchasing what it deems as “non-essential” until you have first satisfied the mortgage payment. Other examples would be having unpaid parking tickets or failing to appear for jury duty. The government could fine you without due process, at best, or at worst, prohibit your future transactions only to what it considers allowable, in its narrow view.

But why stop there? The government could easily use a digital currency to increase sources of “tax revenue”. For example, if while driving someone crossed an intersection as the yellow light turned red, the enforcing agency would not have to send a fine in the mail. Rather it could automatically deduct its fine from your bank account. Jaywalking, pulling through parking spaces, rolling stops, and a whole host of other incredibly minor infractions suddenly make governments pigs at the trough. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is an unlikely scenario, what with cameras adorning seemingly all intersections and on/off ramps in metropolitan areas.

Additionally, the risk of simply losing your life’s saving because theft, whether government or otherwise, is not mitigated whatsoever, despite claims to the contrary. Digital currency is no safer than “keeping money under the mattress”. Just ask anyone who has struggled for restitution after identity or credit card theft. Or, for a even more modern example, recall the stolen bitcoins of Mt. Gox—all that digital “wealth” vanished without a trace. And it’s never coming back.

Some may read these predictions and write them off as “doom-and-gloom” or “not possible” in the United States of America. The reality though, is that we are already taking the first steps down that path. With the staggeringly unprecedented rise in unemployment (17 million and counting!) due to the Coronoavirus crisis, the government has perhaps the best opportunity that it will ever have to implement a digital currency without much pushback from the American public.

The American public is currently desperately waiting upon their paltry $1,200 “direct stimulus” checks. This, combined with extended unemployment benefits claims and durations, create the perfect catalyst for implementation. The government has lured in displaced and downtrodden Americans in with these. As the lockdowns drag on and more and more companies are forced to terminate their workforce, calls for a universal basic income will grow louder and louder. This is the absolute perfect opportunity to deceive the American people into forfeiting the remnants of their privacy and liberty.

They will simply say—to all those, employed or not, lawful citizen or not, who seek a universal basic income, regardless of salary or wage, sign up for our digital wallet and receive $1,000 per month.

Think this is a conspiracy? Think again.

You’ve been warned.

Yours truly,

Jack Dapper, “a pseudonyn”

www.lowbornhighbrow.com

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