In “The Birth of the Cashless Society, Party One,” James Corbett introduced us to his perspective on how the Battle of the Crypto-Currencies will end up just like the conclusion of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”- the non-porcine farm animals will wake up and see the humans playing poker with the pigs, except that it is no longer possible to tell who is human and who is a pig.
In other words: in this transition to cashless society, the Federal Reserve Bank is going to move to a Federal Reserve Blockchain digital currency which will outlaw all other currencies, so that the triumph of the digital currency revolution will also be its final demise.
Investigative journalist, James Corbett, is publisher of “the Corbett Report, and graduated from the University of Calgary.
by James Corbett
But still, this may just seem like a technological upgrade to our payment systems. People increasingly pay with cards or payment apps anyway, so what difference does it make if we eliminate cash altogether?
I have done a lot of work on the cashless society over the years, but it’s one of those concepts that is so large and so difficult to envision in its entirety that it’s worth revisiting here. To get a sense of how the cashless society is not about payment convenience but about control over every aspect of your lives, watch this short video that the ACLU put out a decade and a half ago:
This video wasn’t even meant to warn about the cashless society. The hapless victim of this pizza transaction ends up being forced to pay in cash because his credit card is maxed out. But nonetheless, this is the vision of the cashless society in a nutshell. In the cashless society, your entire payment history and all of the information that is tied into that history will be plainly visible to those who have access to it. And if the government issues a decree about what you are or are not able to purchase, that decree will be enforced at the point of sale. At that point, freedom will only be found in the counter-economy.
If you want to get a handle on what such a future will look like, imagine the following scenario:
You are out for a walk late at night. You come to a red light, but there is no one around. You hesitate a moment, double-check that there is really no one in sight and then dash across the intersection. In the two seconds it takes you to cross the road, a large LED screen above the street lights up with your picture and your name. Two seconds after that you feel a buzz in your pocket. Taking out your phone you find a message from your bank informing you that you have been fined for jaywalking and that your social credit score has been reduced.
The next day, you find yourself at the airport, preparing to board a flight to visit your family on the other side of the country. When you go to check in you receive a message that your social credit score is too low and you will not be allowed to board the plane. Enraged, you curse the airline, the government’s social credit system, its jaywalking laws, and even the government itself.
Unbeknownst to you, someone has recorded your outburst and uploads it to social media, where you are quickly identified. The police come to your home the next day and take you downtown where you are shackled in a chair and made to recant your statements about the government.
Sound like something out of a dystopian sci-fi novel? Well, it’s not. It’s just a mundane portrayal of everyday life in current day China.
Facial recognition deployed to monitor the streets and automatically issue fines for jaywalking and other minor infractions? Check.
Social credit scores tied in to your ability to board public transportation or access government services? Check.
Police hauling people in for angrily ranting about the government and shackling them until they recant? Check.
The cashless society is about so much more than just how we pay for things at the store. Tied into a system of persistent technological surveillance, it represents the ultimate control over our lives. Can there be any doubt as to why the World Economic Forum and the Bank for International Settlements are working in concert with the central banks of the world and organizations like the Bill Gates-co-founded Better Than Cash Alliance to pave the way for this nightmare to become a reality.
