Digital Currency

Is Digital Currency a Step Forwards?

Imagine for a moment a different world, where cash no longer exists and digital currency has replaced it. The UK Government already has plans for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), but what will the country look like when the CBDC is implemented.

First things first, in order to ‘attach’ your wallet to you as an individual, you will need a digital identity. While this will initially more than likely be held on your mobile phone, the longer term, more secure strategy is to embed an identity chip under your skin.

Once your identity is secure, then your digital wallet can be secure.

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Now imagine you receive your wages, pension, or benefit payments direct into your digital wallet. It is convenient, secure, safe and reliable. What’s not to like about it?

Well, what if it was used to control your behaviour?

What if your digital currency was used as a tool to control you?

You need to think of a Government digital currency as a voucher system. Your Government will have ultimate control potentially restricting your purchases and what you can or can’t spend your money on.

The digitisation of society will mean total control over your life.

Your Government will have the opportunity to limit how much fuel you buy, how much beer, how many biscuits!

Imagine if you were to publish something on social media or online that the Government of the day didn’t agree with. Let’s call it misinformation for the sake of a better term. Your government could, quite easily block your digital wallet, restrict your ability to spend your money, or limit your spending to ‘approved essentials’ only.

The same measures could be used to control the public for health purposes, pollution, climate, behaviour, etc. Imagine that you had a big night out in the pub. The following day you attempt to revisit the pub but your payment is declined with the following message; “We noticed that you have already consumed your allocated alcohol unit allowance for the month. Payments for alcohol will not be possible until next month. Thank you for being a responsible citizen.”

There is nothing to stop a Government from preventing your electric car from working, limiting your energy supply, or limiting your purchasing to ‘approved’ items only.

What if your were deemed to be overweight and your digital ID limited your purchasing, preventing any purchase of fast food, only permitting the purchase of fresh fruit and veg until your weight met with approval. Some of you may well think that this is a positive step to make the less healthy less of a drain on healthcare resources, but I consider it sinister.

We could, I am not saying ‘would’ be at the mercy of our Governments. If you think that there are people in power who haven’t thought about the options available to them, then you are at best naive.

Any Government, anywhere on earth would have the power to control its people. Imagine posting a comment on social media and being financially penalised for doing so? This is the future we are galloping towards.

Just because we have the technology to do something, doesn’t make it the right thing to do.

George Orwell was perhaps a little premature predicting the future in 1984, but the technology already exists and it looks increasingly like it could be implemented in the coming years. All for your benefit of course.

Ultimate Control & Compliance

A digital wallet would provide Government with ultimate control over its people.

Implementations such as these seldom get deployed in one go, more of a stepping stone approach is more often used to complete the roll out.

In the same way that smart meters contain the technology to restrict or cut supply, digital wallets would provide the ultimate control system for the authorities.

China already has a social credit system whereby they are penalised and rewarded based on their behaviours. If you think it will never come to the UK then might I remind you that there was a time when we were watching lockdowns in China, safe in the knowledge that such craziness would never come here.

If you wanted a compliant population then you would probably do the same thing. If you were planning to introduce many policies that the public were unlikely to agree with, then you would probably do the same thing. Control the people through their wallets.

Once we have digital money, digital wallets, digital ID then a social score won’t be far behind and by that point we will be living in an authoritarian state, not the free country I was born in.

So, will this come to pass? Is this distopian future the actual future? Who knows, but we are step by step on the path to making it so. We are not heading towards freedom, we are heading away from it and that alone should be a cause for concern.

We already, here in 2022 have changes being made to our right to protest. Once we lose that right, it is a slippery slope to full authoritarianism.

By the time the masses wake up to what is happening it will be too late to change direction. Once cash is gone and digital currency is the only form of payment it will be too late.

By all means introduce a digital currency, but it needs to co-exist with cash so that we always have a plan B form of payment available to all. Right now as we speak, Apple Pay & Google Pay have been blocked in Russia. I feel certain if the West had the ability to do so then they would currently be blocking more forms of payment across Russia.

It might seem far fetched, but let’s face it, we went from clapping for carers and the NHS to threatening them with the sack if they refused an emergency use medical procedure. Thousands of carers actually lost their jobs. If we can ride roughshod over the Nuremberg code only 75 years after it was set in stone, then by my estimation, anything becomes possible.

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Parliamentary Lobbying

Our MP’s face a constant barrage of lobbying from industry, eager to gain advantage. This has never been easier to see than during Covid when pharmaceuticals pushed untested vaccines to a Government eager to find a solution to the problem regardless of the consequences.

Which brings me back to ‘sponsorship’ of MP’s. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if all MP’s had to wear logo’s of their financial interests on their clothing? We could then, better understand the positions that they were taking and why they vote the way they do. Just a thought. If I am elected, I will gladly wear logo’s of any interests I may have for all to see. How many existing MP’s would say the same?