Cryptocurrency: CBDC Digital Fiat WARNING BELLS GOING OFF

[grarpamp]

CBDCs: The Ultimate Tool Of Oppression

https://brownstone.org/articles/cbdcs-ultimate-tool-of-oppression/
https://lauradodsworth.substack.com/p/cbdcs-the-ultimate-tool-of-oppression

Authored by Laura Dodsworth via The Brownstone Institute,

https://www.planetebook.com/free-ebooks/1984.pdf
‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a
human face – for ever,’ said O’Brien, the grand inquisitor of the
totalitarian regime in Orwell’s futuristic novel 1984.

Alternatively, you could imagine a sandal.

https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-affects-childs-university-enrolment-2018-7
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/this-credit-card-has-a-carbon-emission-spending-limit/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/06/21/bank-england-tells-ministers-intervene-digital-currency-programming/


Last month I visited Sutton Hoo, the famous Anglo-Saxon burial site of
a king and his ship in Suffolk. A gold coin pendant in the museum
caught my eye. It depicted a triumphant Roman standing over a
conquered barbarian, his sandalled foot placed firmly on the supine
opponent’s chest.
Coin depicting Emperor Honorius at Sutton Hood museum. View a better
image on the British Museum website.

The ship burial probably dates from 625 AD, long after the Romans had
left. The gold could have been melted down by the Anglo-Saxons but
instead it was fashioned into a pendant. Maybe it conferred the
prestige of the Roman world onto the wearer, or was totemic of
victory. Perhaps it was an ironic reminder that the Romans were gone
and every empire has its day.

The Roman on this coin was the Emperor Honorius, who ruled between 395
and 423. Miserably for Honorius, he was emperor when the Visigoths
captured and plundered Rome and when the British Isles slipped from
Roman control. In fact, when Romano-British cities asked him for help
against barbarian attacks he told them to look to their own defences.
You would never know all this from the coin, which is a fine piece of
reputational management.

Coins have always been more than lumps of precious metals; they are
also a means of propaganda and control.

Early bronze coins depicted cattle, as the state property of Rome was
originally comprised of herds of cattle. Then coins featured Roman
deities such as Mars, the god of war, or symbols of the state such as
the she-wolf with twins. Later in the Republic, images of politicians
featured on coins. The first living man to be embossed on a coin was
the powerful Julius Caesar. One silver denarius minted around 29 BC
shows a Nile crocodile (the symbol of Egypt) with the inscription
‘Egypt conquered.’ And other coins also showed emperors defeating
barbarians, gleaming with undistilled power.

Imagine handling a coin which depicts your own subjugation. If you
were privileged, hard-working or lucky enough to obtain some of this
lucre for yourself, it was nonetheless a reminder of the sandal on
your chest. Every time you bought a luxury good, your fingers would
slide over the embossed symbol of your defeat. Coins reminded you of
your place in the world.

Coins in circulation in the UK are at a record low. In fact, not a
single one or two penny coin was issued in 2022. Yet there has never
been greater potential to use money for propaganda and control.

Digital money and particularly Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)
offer the potential for the government, through the central bank, to
see every purchase and transfer you make, in real time. And not just
see, but control.

Of course, our governments in the West will say that central bank
money in digital form is convenient, safe, and stable. They will
promise never to use it as an instrument of control, as an
authoritarian government would. Here in the UK, our cosily-named
proposed ‘Britcoin’ would supposedly exist alongside cash.

China, the country that took the lead with lockdowns, has taken the
lead with CBDCs. It started researching CBDCs in 2014 and has been
running live trials of DCNY (Digital Chinese Yuan) for years, with the
size and scale increasing each time. The Chinese government has tested
expiration dates to encourage users to spend their DCNY quickly, for
times when the economy needs stimulus. That’s right, an expiry date
for people’s money has already been trialled.

The Chinese ‘Social Credit System’ is a broad regulatory framework
that is designed to score and incentivise the trustworthiness of
individuals and companies. In other words, the government will either
reward or punish various forms of behaviour using real-time
monitoring, data gathering and sharing, curate blacklists and
redlists, and use punishments, sanctions and rewards.

A report in 2019 found that 23 million people had been blacklisted
from travelling by plane or train due to their low social credit
score. In 2018 a student was denied access to university because her
father was in debt. There isn’t a centralised and transparent set of
rules, instead it’s been operated locally so far, but it has been
reported that behaviour such as poor driving, spending too long
playing video games, or posting fake news can result in low ratings,
as well as more serious matters such as not fulfilling court orders.

You won’t find many Chinese critics of the Social Credit System –
there is probably a sanction for criticism of government policy. You’d
think this system would unite Western commentators in horrified
criticism, but it is quite neutrally and even warmly described by some
left-leaning writers and think tanks.

We don’t need to look as far as China to understand the implications
here in the West. In 2019, Mastercard and Doconomy launched a credit
card with a carbon footprint calculator that can switch off your
spending when you reach your carbon max. This functionality is
voluntary, but it could be an automatic aspect of a CBDC.

Tom Mutton, a director at the Bank of England, said that the
Government would be required to make the final decision on whether a
UK CBDC should be programmable. Sir Jon Cunliffe, a deputy Governor at
the Bank, said:

‘You could think of giving your children pocket money, but programming
the money so that it couldn’t be used for sweets. There is a whole
range of things that money could do, programmable money, which we
cannot do with the current technology.’

As this quote reveals, CBDCs won’t just alter our relationship with
money but with government. Governments around the world have shown
increasingly authoritarian tendencies during the management of the
Covid pandemic, and more recently to discourage driving in cities.
Behavioural science has been leveraged to manipulate, incentivise and
coerce us into behaving as model citizens. Do we want to negotiate
with Daddy State to be allowed to spend our ‘pocket money’ as we wish?

An account-based CBDC would give the government enormous power over
your money as your identity is connected to the money. A 2020 Bank of
England discussion paper gave examples of programmability, for example
that smart cars could automatically pay for fuel directly at the
dispensing pump, with automated taxation and charitable donations at
point of sale.

That all sounds very convenient. But politicians pushing Net Zero
goals on an unwilling population could choose to go a step further. If
you insist on keeping your private car, despite the inconvenient 20
MPH speed limits, the ULEZ and congestion charges, and the Low Traffic
Neighbourhood barriers, they could simply dictate a maximum fuel spend
in a given time period. Just ten of your Britcoins on petrol this
month, Sir, no more driving for you.

Money grants freedom and so it is also weaponised to deny freedom.
Domestic abusers restrict access to money, and therefore essentials
such as food, clothing, and travel. Economic abuse is insidious,
effective and subtle, and it leaves no bruises. As with the domestic
abuser, the potential is there for the government to weaponise money
to exert the ultimate financial control.

The jackboot and the sandal were graphic symbols of authority
subjugating conquered peoples. If programmable CBDCs are introduced,
your own digital financial footprint will be used to control you. The
means of control change over time but the insatiable desire for total
control remains constant.