U.S. War Machine: A Means to Covertly Introduce CBDCs?
Your money is wanted by the government. It wants your money and will use any means necessary to acquire it, including stealing, borrowing, and begging. The government has used a variety of tactics to steal, cheat, scam, and generally defraud taxpayers of their hard-earned money. These tactics include asset forfeiture, costly stimulus packages, cronyism and graft, wasteful pork barrel legislation, and a national security complex that keeps undermining our freedoms without making us any safer. In addition, Americans have been forced to foot the bill for all of the government’s incursions into unending wars, foreign aid, military empire, welfare state, roads leading nowhere, swollen labour forces, secret agencies, fusion centres, private prisons, biometric databases, intrusive technologies, arsenals of weaponry, and other spending items that contribute to the rapidly increasing wealth of the corporate elite at the expense of middle-class taxpayers.
The result of those $1.2 trillion spending legislation is the money needs to be paid for by someone. The government’s agents have come up with new ways to support its excesses and increase its generosity because the government’s insatiable thirst for money, power, and control has gotten out of control. These methods include taxes passed under false pretences such as fees, tolls, tickets, and penalties. The government always comes up with new schemes to enable its agents to confiscate bank accounts because no matter how much money it takes in—as seen by the incessant temporary financing agreements and the ongoing raising of the debt ceiling—it will never be sufficient. In comes the digital dollar.
CBDCS TO FACILITATE CITIZEN TRACKING AND CONTROL
The ultimate outcome of the central bank digital currency that President Biden supports, will be a digital currency that facilitates citizen tracking, control, and punishment. For example, the FBI and the Justice Department quietly moved forward with plans for a cryptocurrency enforcement team (also known as digital money cops), a virtual asset exploitation unit tasked with investigating crypto crimes and seizing virtual assets, and a crypto czar to oversee it all, weeks before the Biden Administration made headlines with its support for a government-issued digital currency. Of course, this is not surprising. The way the government works is by providing us with resources to make our lives “easier,” which also makes it simpler for them to impose laws.
The global trend towards the adoption of cbdcs
In fact, there is a global trend towards this switch to digital currency. More than a hundred additional nations are thinking about launching their own virtual currencies. China has already implemented a digital currency that is issued by the government. This currency not only enables the government to monitor and intercept people’s financial transactions, but it can also be used in conjunction with its social credit score system to penalise people for moral failings and social infractions (and to reward them for following government-approved behaviour). The Chinese Communist Party will be able to directly oversee and access people’s financial life using digital yuan, doing away with the need to coerce financial intermediaries. The authorities may simply suspend dissidents’ and human rights advocates’ digital wallets in a culture where people consume yuan digitally.
The war on cash erases privacy
CBDCs are for surveillance
A digital currency will unavoidably play a significant role in both our economy and government surveillance programs. When you combine that with ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) initiatives—which are essentially corporate social media credit scores—you’ll see that we’re heading in the same direction as China in terms of digital dictatorship. Digital currency issued by a central bank can be used as a tool for government surveillance of citizens and control over their financial transactions.
Cbdcs sold as a solution to crime
As a result, digital money gives the government and its business partners an easy-to-track, tabulate, mine for data, hack, hijack, and seize method of trade whenever it suits them. This drive for a digital currency fits nicely with the government’s long-term, covert campaign against cash. This so-called “war on cash” has been marketed to the public as a way to combat terrorists, drug traffickers, tax evaders, and even COVID-19 germs, much like the wars on drugs and terror. These days, having large sums of money about you may get you accused of being a criminal and linked to questionable activities. Police argue that since cash is more difficult to trace, can be used to pay illegal activities, and denies the government its cut of the transaction, it is the preferred medium of exchange for illegal transactions. Therefore, banning paper money will aid in the fight against crime and increase government revenue. The true cause of this war on cash is Big Government’s obscene attempt to seize control. People’s privacy will decrease because electronic commerce makes it easy for Big Brother to monitor our actions and prohibits those that it finds objectionable. This is how a cashless society plays straight into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners)—it is easily watched, controlled, manipulated, weaponised, and shut down.
Tech has done the heavy lifting for cbdc acceptance
The transition to a cashless society is actually not that difficult to sell to a society that is becoming more and more reliant on technology for even the most routine aspects of daily life, even in light of what we know about the government and its history of corruption, bumbling, fumbling, and data breaches, not to mention how easily technology can be used against us. Digital cash, or the ability to pay with a debit card, credit card, or cell phone, is quickly becoming the de facto currency of the American police state, in a similar manner to how citizens have chosen to be monitored by the government thanks to the convenience of GPS and mobile phones. It was once predicted that by 2020, smartphones will completely replace cash and credit cards. Since then, an increasing number of establishments, such as several airlines, hotels, car-rental agencies, restaurants, and retail outlets, have implemented no-cash rules. Even churches and the homeless use digital currency in Sweden.
The war on cash erases privacy
What then is the actual reality here? Even though living in the digital age has many benefits, such as convenience, it’s difficult to see how a cashless society that is managed through a digital wallet won’t mean the end of what little privacy we still have and expose us to the likes of data hackers, government thieves, and an all-seeing, all-knowing Orwellian corpo-governmental state. First off, by privacy, I don’t just mean doing things you don’t want other people to know about—those harmless, tiny things you do behind closed doors that are awkward or personal but not destructive. Additionally, I’m talking about matters that are extremely private and that nobody should be aware of—certainly not the government and its army of petty prefects.
Cbdcs usher in complete control
Second, it’s already evident how simple it will be for government agents to control digital wallets for their own benefit in order to follow you about, keep an eye on your conversations and actions, and eventually shut you down. For instance, the Department of Homeland Security’s Electronic Recovery and Access to Data devices, which enable police to not only find out the balance of any magnetic-stripe card but also freeze and seize any funds on pre-paid money cards, are making civil asset forfeiture schemes even more profitable for police agencies. When the digital money police arrive in full force, those numbers should soar.
Third, the government will have complete control over the economy and financial interactions with its citizens if it issues digital money. Although the government can boast about how easy it is to transfer stimulus funds into individuals’ accounts, such a system might also lead to what economists refer to as “negative interest rates.” Instead of restricting it with a zero bound barrier on interest rates, the government may decide to impose negative interest rates on digital accounts in order to slow down economic development. Fourth, the adoption of a digital currency will expose Americans and their bank accounts to even higher levels of financial risk from both government agents and hackers. The UK’s Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, James Bowler, struggles to explain what problems CBDCs are actually going to solve.
Fifth, in practically every area of our life, digital authoritarianism will rewrite the definition of freedom. Once more, we need to turn to China to see what lies ahead. Chinese authorities employ technology in more subdued but no less effective methods to maintain population control throughout the nation. By using digital money, the central bank will be able to monitor and regulate people’s financial transactions. China is constructing “safe cities,” combining information from invasive monitoring systems to forecast and stop anything from natural disasters and political unrest to fires. The government thinks that these intrusions, together with administrative measures like preventing access to services for those on a blacklist, will encourage individuals to engage in “positive behaviours,” like exercising and adhering to laws more closely.
Written By Tatenda Belle Panashe