Digital Currency and You – The American Spectator

The most egregious act that brought the world’s attention to the Canadian truckers’ Freedom Convoy was when Justin Trudeau ordered banks to freeze the accounts not only of peaceful protesters but also of their financial supporters and even some people related only by association, such as ex-spouses. This move inspired so much outrage that, in a somewhat unprecedented fashion, this feckless prime minister was later excoriated to his face by some members of the European Parliament. In a blistering speech that went viral, MEP Mislav Kolakušić of Croatia declaimed, “You block the bank accounts of single parents so that they can’t even pay their children’s education and medicine, that they can’t pay utilities, mortgages for their homes,” and so forth.

Of course, Trudeau justified this move on the basis of the Emergencies Act, which he had invoked in response to the peaceful protest. But it must be remembered that, in our time, whatever is done on an emergency basis one year becomes permanent, part of the “new normal” and the modus operandi of the next. This pattern started with 9/11 and the passing of the Patriot Act, which has resulted in massive, ongoing, often-illegal surveillance of the public. Nor does it matter whether the crisis in question is real or imagined or manufactured; in the monkey-see-monkey-do world of political and bureaucratic decision making, whatever is instituted in one place is bound in fairly short order to be widely established all over the planet.

This process is now taking place with the introduction of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), one of the next big steps that if implemented will push us along the way toward dystopia. Pilot projects to introduce this innovation are now taking place in several wealthy countries, including the U.S., China, Sweden, and the U.K., as well as in less-developed countries, such as Jamaica and Nigeria. Under this system, everyone, including organizations, would have a so-called CBDC wallet of digitized currency, and all your money, both income and expenditures, would flow through it.

Today, despite having at their disposal bloated, highly credentialled bureaucracies, whenever nations undertake such projects, they inevitably hire a consulting firm to do the work for them. In the case of conversion to digital currency, the go-to firm is a rather large one called Accenture. With 738,000 employees and offices all over the world, it is prepared to do any job for you, but it specializes in what its website calls “accelerating change.” The ostensible idea behind accelerating change is that whatever the trend of the moment may be, one must not be left behind. Whatever is happening is said to be logical and inevitable, and you had better keep up or something bad will happen to you. In the words of the Accenture website, “For central banks to remain future-proof, central bank money must be modernized to meet the accessibility demands of the 21st century.” Accessibility, indeed, but the question this raises is accessible to whom. More on this in a moment.

But first a look at this idea of accelerating change. One might be forgiven for thinking that — what with the recent advent of a nasty pandemic accompanied by a fanatic, mindless, and destructive lockdown, which generated unnerving inflation and frustrating supply-chain disruptions and all of which has been topped off by a war in Europe — all of that would be more than enough change for most people’s taste. But these are not the changes that these enthusiastic change-makers really care about, except insofar as they create an excuse and the opportunity for implementing the ones that they do. Underlying the familiar pretext of wanting to make life easier and better for everyone lies the age-old tyrannical objective of centralizing power and control over everyone’s lives — and what better way to do this than by controlling your money?

Digital currency is not the only digitalization that Accenture is working on. The company has also been jointly commissioned by the World Economic Forum and the Canadian and Dutch governments to develop another digital instrument called the Known Traveller Digital Identity (KTDI), a super beefed-up version of the vaccine passports that were widely used during the COVID lockdowns. Likewise, KTDI is being billed as something that people want, something for the public good that will make life easier for travelers. For example, one good that is enumerated is to help prevent travelers from being inconvenienced if they forget their password. The part that is left out is why, on top of everything else, they would need another password in order to travel. And again, it is described as accelerating — there’s that key term again — the transition to digital credentials for travel.

The Accenture website also mentions that its idea is eventually to link the traveling database with others. Suppose, then, that the travel database was to be linked with the digital currency database. The coupling of digital travel passports with digital currency consists of almost everything the state would need to completely control you. In essence, all these projects to digitize the world are also programs to digitize you, to turn you into a virtual rather than real human being.

Picture this. You are at the airport expecting to take a plane somewhere. However, at the gate, the airline clerk informs you that for some reason or other you are not permitted to travel. It might be an error, she says; you can make inquiries and perhaps appeal, but at the present moment there is nothing you can do. You then might go to a snack bar to grab a coffee and sandwich to sit for a moment and think of what to do next, but when you try to pay, you are informed that for some reason or other your digital wallet has been frozen. It might be a mistake; you can make inquiries; it might be possible to appeal — but, for the moment, there is nothing you can do. Immediately you realize that you also can’t take an Uber home because you can’t pay for it. The only piece missing from this picture is that all of a sudden your phone has stopped working and so you can’t even call for help, and it’s rather easy to imagine that piece being put into place at some point in the future. In short, you have been arrested and imprisoned, but not physically, just virtually. You may not think of yourself as a virtual person — you are not one of the Sims in the computer game — but for all intents and purposes, that is exactly what you have become because you can be imprisoned in a virtual prison with no notice, no due process, and no immediate method to appeal.

The coupling of digital databases is already underway. In China, which is the apparent role model for all of this, digital currency is already being coupled with the social credit system, and this is the harbinger of what the world’s dystopic future might look like. In a consumer society, CBCD is an ideal and powerful tool for gaining total state control over almost every aspect of a citizen’s life. The state will be able to see not only your income but also your expenses and will be able to block the use of your CBDC wallet at any time. It will also be able to ration consumption and penalize you through sur-taxation for what it deems to be overconsumption. It will even be able to limit travel by capping the territory and duration of use of your digital wallet.

Digital currency is one of the most dangerous innovations coming down the pike. When the world’s central bankers decide to implement it worldwide, they will undoubtedly market it as merely some sort of housekeeping measure, a money saver and convenience. The government will save money by not having to print paper and mint coins. You will have the convenience of not having to carry around filthy lucre. It is easy to see why the movers and shakers are in such a hurry to make this happen, to “accelerate the change.” This will not sit well with the vast majority of people, and they know it and want to head off the inevitable public backlash. And the sooner the backlash begins the better because once it is in place it will be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse. The income tax was introduced as a temporary measure by various nations to pay for wars. England did so on and off for centuries. When it was reintroduced the last time to pay for World War I, the legislation stipulated that once the crisis was over the tax rolls were to be destroyed, but this did not happen because the bureaucrats who were supposed to do so quietly did not. Make no mistake about it — with respect to the digital currency that gives them so much power, the Deep State is not and definitely will not be on your side.

The digital world obliterates the analog world and the force of law that supports it. While the analog passport that you now possess confers upon you certain rights as a citizen, the…