Thank you. The elites can’t wait for digital currencies. Luckily there was a setback with the failure of the attempt in Nigeria, but I can’t help but think that in the U.K. our elites have been better tyrants. They have gulled the population with the ‘for your safety’ mantra, and, whilst they train their beedy eyes on only the most difficult of their population, I doubt very much will be done to push back on the proposal.
"We don’t see the bad sort of tyranny - secret police, arbitrary executions, or torture"
It doesn't mean that they aren't happening however.....
Excellent article as usual.
Thinking about it, when have we ever not been tyrannised? In Britain, the State's tentacles of control might have been loose at the time of the Roman Conquest, say, but they have simply increased inexorably down the centuries and gone into overdrive in the 21st century with technology. Will it soon become so unbearable that it becomes the catalyst for a shift into a new paradigm - will we have a 'Great Awakening' where the rules are not just for the little people and our whole world becomes inverted to bottom up governance?
I am the “In-house IT correspondent” at the Daily Sceptic. TDS have kindly published several of my articles trying to drag the CBDC debate away from the conspiracy minded default, endemic in the sceptical community. In my opinion, CBDCs are a nuanced subject best explored through informed conversation which we do not see elsewhere in the media. Would you be interested in publishing an article on TDS, perhaps in the style of a Nichomachean conversation? The aim would be to challenge and develop the ideas of CBDCs, their regulation, Austrian economics, property rights, libertarianism and technocracy. DM me at scouse.heisenburg@gmail.com.
A couple of observations on CBDC. Firstly, the technical insolvency of all fiat currencies provides a compelling practical motivation for CBDC. US formal national debt is over $31 trillion and when you include the implied liabilities of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, it is over $110 trillion. This debt can never be paid. The UK and EU positions are similar, driven by the total government fiscal incontinence of totalitarian government. CBDC allows technical default on this debt by substituting one means of payment, GBP, for a new (less valuable) one, digital Pounds. The UK and US governments have done this before, suspending the gold standard in the 1930s and the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s.
Secondly, it means all transactions reconcile in one ledger, controlled by the government. We effectively have a digital currency now but each bank has to reconcile their ledger against all counterparties. CBDC concentrates that power in one place, opening control of all transactions. It also means we all bank with the Central Bank: there is no other bank. The fact the BoE is deliberately planning to retain the current banks, for appearances sake, shows they know quite how unpalatable the truth is to the public. In the same way the Nazis put the extermination camps in occupied Poland, to obscure what was going on from the public.
The assault on property rights is everywhere. The latest Energy Act allows the secretary of state to ask electricity suppliers to switch off 'smart' appliances (all types) in peoples homes in order to manage demand on the grid. The technology to do that doesn't yet exist (to my knowledge) as there would have to be standard protocols, but they have clearly laid down a marker that this is what they want to do, and there will no doubt be work going on now behind the scenes to enable this. It's quite incredible what's in that act, and our useless MPs just waved it through.
The ECHR is so hedged about with exceptions as to be in practice useless. (c. f. the lockdowns, which did not breach it because of an exception for "public health").
The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights is another matter, although unfortunately it is not legally binding (whatever that means in the context of "international law").
Article 17 says:
1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
Well argued. It's been baffling to see the various judiciaries step back in recent years. I don't get it because I thought the judiciary had a sense of itself as a cornerstone of democratic republics and similar political structures like those in the UK and Canada. In Canada, illegal fines that were used as a tool of intimidation during lockdowns, when met with legal challenges, found circumstances where the judge simply didn't show, thereby nullifying the fines while at once avoiding setting precedents to make sure this sort of tyrannical behaviour would have no future. One wonders how a fundamental check and balance like a judiciary would be on side when it came to curtailing their own power.
Thank you. The elites can’t wait for digital currencies. Luckily there was a setback with the failure of the attempt in Nigeria, but I can’t help but think that in the U.K. our elites have been better tyrants. They have gulled the population with the ‘for your safety’ mantra, and, whilst they train their beedy eyes on only the most difficult of their population, I doubt very much will be done to push back on the proposal.
"We don’t see the bad sort of tyranny - secret police, arbitrary executions, or torture"
It doesn't mean that they aren't happening however.....
Excellent article as usual.
Thinking about it, when have we ever not been tyrannised? In Britain, the State's tentacles of control might have been loose at the time of the Roman Conquest, say, but they have simply increased inexorably down the centuries and gone into overdrive in the 21st century with technology. Will it soon become so unbearable that it becomes the catalyst for a shift into a new paradigm - will we have a 'Great Awakening' where the rules are not just for the little people and our whole world becomes inverted to bottom up governance?
I am the “In-house IT correspondent” at the Daily Sceptic. TDS have kindly published several of my articles trying to drag the CBDC debate away from the conspiracy minded default, endemic in the sceptical community. In my opinion, CBDCs are a nuanced subject best explored through informed conversation which we do not see elsewhere in the media. Would you be interested in publishing an article on TDS, perhaps in the style of a Nichomachean conversation? The aim would be to challenge and develop the ideas of CBDCs, their regulation, Austrian economics, property rights, libertarianism and technocracy. DM me at scouse.heisenburg@gmail.com.
A couple of observations on CBDC. Firstly, the technical insolvency of all fiat currencies provides a compelling practical motivation for CBDC. US formal national debt is over $31 trillion and when you include the implied liabilities of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, it is over $110 trillion. This debt can never be paid. The UK and EU positions are similar, driven by the total government fiscal incontinence of totalitarian government. CBDC allows technical default on this debt by substituting one means of payment, GBP, for a new (less valuable) one, digital Pounds. The UK and US governments have done this before, suspending the gold standard in the 1930s and the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s.
Secondly, it means all transactions reconcile in one ledger, controlled by the government. We effectively have a digital currency now but each bank has to reconcile their ledger against all counterparties. CBDC concentrates that power in one place, opening control of all transactions. It also means we all bank with the Central Bank: there is no other bank. The fact the BoE is deliberately planning to retain the current banks, for appearances sake, shows they know quite how unpalatable the truth is to the public. In the same way the Nazis put the extermination camps in occupied Poland, to obscure what was going on from the public.
The assault on property rights is everywhere. The latest Energy Act allows the secretary of state to ask electricity suppliers to switch off 'smart' appliances (all types) in peoples homes in order to manage demand on the grid. The technology to do that doesn't yet exist (to my knowledge) as there would have to be standard protocols, but they have clearly laid down a marker that this is what they want to do, and there will no doubt be work going on now behind the scenes to enable this. It's quite incredible what's in that act, and our useless MPs just waved it through.
The ECHR is so hedged about with exceptions as to be in practice useless. (c. f. the lockdowns, which did not breach it because of an exception for "public health").
The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights is another matter, although unfortunately it is not legally binding (whatever that means in the context of "international law").
Article 17 says:
1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his
property.
No exceptions there.
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
Well argued. It's been baffling to see the various judiciaries step back in recent years. I don't get it because I thought the judiciary had a sense of itself as a cornerstone of democratic republics and similar political structures like those in the UK and Canada. In Canada, illegal fines that were used as a tool of intimidation during lockdowns, when met with legal challenges, found circumstances where the judge simply didn't show, thereby nullifying the fines while at once avoiding setting precedents to make sure this sort of tyrannical behaviour would have no future. One wonders how a fundamental check and balance like a judiciary would be on side when it came to curtailing their own power.
So we should keep using cash, even if it holds up the supermarket queue?