"Money is simply a buzzing freedom," wrote Fiodor Dostoevsky in "Memoirs from the home of the Dead". Even in the Siberian camps described by him, money was a substitute for freedom, for the underprivileged could spend it on what they wanted (read anything that could be smuggled into the camp). any bought vodka for them, others lost them in cards, others spent them on clothes, food, or cigarettes. The buzzing coins in their pocket were more valuable to them than to the people on the another side of the fence, due to the fact that they were the only freedom they had inside the cathorga.
Even in the most hard times erstwhile spending money on one, frequently the basic article active giving up buying another, freedom of choice was undeniable. In fact, through the full past to this day, money has fulfilled its role. He gave people freedom, allowing them to prosecute their dreams, these mundane ones, like fresh shoes, or a roof over their head, for those more sophisticated, like hunting tigers in India, or their own plane. With all the restrictions imposed on us by our own economical situation, authorities and society, the freedom of what we spent our money on was 1 of the fundamental freedoms. It was tried to limit it legally, but it was done by limiting access to certain articles and services (alcohol, literature, gambling, fornication), but it was not decided what the citizen yet spent his money on. Why not? due to the fact that there were no tools to control it. So a fistful came in and got their hands on it, but the device of illegal trafficking continued.
present the situation has turned. Today, the authorities already have tools, not only to control all our spending, but to block it. There's only 1 component missing, the liquidation of physical cash. We are going to the point where we will lose control of what we want to spend money on, giving this decision to regulators. Physical cash disposal is progressing fast. Only about 8-9% of the world's money exists in paper or monetary form, the remainder is just a binary evidence on servers. Both the convenience (the life-saving electronic payments), the circumstances, the marketplace situation (the devaluation of money by governments through unlimited overprint – or alternatively an electronic addition – leading citizens to escape from the retention of assets in money, especially paper money), the compulsion (self-service money and vending machines where we will not pay cash) and the regulation (reduction of the limits on withdrawals from ATMs, limiting the amount of cash payment transactions or the request to study them), all of this leads us to a situation where all our assets yet take electronic form. All our resources, until the last buck, will be under constant and full control of banking and capital institutions, and indirectly under the control of state and suprastate authorities.
Already long ago, money ceased to be a specified means of payment, and it began to be treated as another good in itself, driving the present, unreflective, monetized world. Almost a 100 years ago, Simone Wai called for a "lowering of the prestige of money" that draws the worst out of people, but it most likely did not mean its devaluation (by creating empty securities, pumping stock bubbles and various types of embezzlement from Wall Street or The City) or losing a physical figure as technology develops. But it did not. present – as Joel Kurtzman wrote in 1 of his books – "the fresh form of money is only a dematerialized sum of zeros and onlys, transmitted with fibers from 1 relay station to another". It can be replicated without restriction, but only financial institutions that have abused it for decades, leading to marketplace destabilisation, devaluation of money and, consequently, crises. What is more tragic is that these crises effort to address the methods that led to them, or further printing, in order to fill the emerging speculative holes. However, this was all just an introduction to what would happen erstwhile money lost its completely paper, unrecorded and unleavened digital trace figure.
This process is progressing rapidly. The authorities of many countries (together with banks and technology industry) are looking for an alternate to the remaining physical cash (also an alternate to the emerging cryptocurrency). CBDC (digital money issued by central banks) is presently under improvement to replace paper banknotes. specified money (regardless of the form of the electronic average on which it will be located: chip, keychain, SIM card pager) even if it allows offline transactions between the buyer and the seller, will be under the full supervision of banks, state institutions and corporations providing technologies that theoretically can do anything with it if specified a "higher" request arises. The breach of the social contract can be justified in a number of ways. Emergency situation, public purpose, prevention, State security, social interest. The pandemic showed how to deal with an disobedient citizen – an example is Canada, in which bank accounts were frozen in 2022. What is an electronic leash was besides late discovered by 1 French justice who was blocked by credit cards at the command of D. Trump, after the justice had issued a warrant for the arrest of B. Netanyahu if he had set ft on French soil. These shy steps are just swallows of future reality.
Your discomfort with deficiency of anonymity should make you think. Surveillance will not service indefinitely just marketing profiling. It will have real consequences. "Today we will advise you on what to buy and what not to buy, next day we will decide." You won't even gotta exposure yourself to power, simply the anticipation of buying certain goods will be limited to you (for your sake, or the general good, of course). So if by this point (after paying all ecotaxes) you can inactive afford luxury specified as tobacco, saturated fats or sugar in your ankles, erstwhile you effort to buy 2 packs of cigarettes, or 5 burgers this month, you can be disappointed. The situation will become even more complicated erstwhile your attitude, behaviour or views interfere with adopted social and political standards. You will be rapidly brought to the ground, receiving a ban on certain forms of activity and expression – otherwise your means will be frozen, or worse, requisitioned. However, this does not gotta go consecutive for government directives. For example, it is possible that for your utmost views, any trading network (which powerfully identifies itself with universal political correctness), under individual sanctions will block you from buying their goods and others will follow. You'll become a consumer outcast. If my dark visions scare you, halt reading due to the fact that it's not over.
Sooner or later the cash will disappear, the question is: can we someway defend ourselves from the negative effects? Looking at how uncritically we are subject to all technological innovations, I dare to uncertainty (this concerns not only consumers, but besides our representatives). I am not saying that fresh technologies are created for any evil purposes (they simply are created), but besides frequently they were utilized for specified purposes. I think about it, looking at the appetite of the owners of the Bigtechs (the day before supplying technologies and software, and present aspiring to real rule) and the mad autocrats who repeatedly spend past (and who have never previously possessed tools to conduct full surveillance and exercise full control of the unit). 1 can only guess how the unlimited power to make funds and decide their flows (even those retail ones) will be utilized in the only electronic form available. It may happen that it can only be exchanged for certain goods (so it will take the form of electronic cards utilized as communes). Or worse, it will become timely. It will should be released by the end of the settlement period, or it will be lost like bonus gigabytes in a telephone subscription. erstwhile that happens, people will be surrounded by a full bunch of unwanted items and articles being poorer and more enslaved than ever.
Of course, most of this may not happen, but in my opinion, everything is moving slow (and will move) in this direction: in the name of consumer convenience, in the name of modernity and flexibility, in the name of transparency of transactions, limiting economical crime and money laundering, in the name of anti-violence, speech of hatred and a full array of arguments – dunes promoted by media, politicians and tech lobbyists giants. erstwhile the transformation is over and the supercomputers collect the last part of information about us, who will focus the full burden of future regulations, warrants, bans and their absolute enforcement with electronic support systems? Not on millionaires (who adequately safe their interests), but on a grey unit, defenseless against a fresh zero-one surveillance system.
individual will say I'm panicking. present you can pay BLIK to a dealer, or at Dark online buy utilizing a credit card of an exotic snake that will arrive us from another continent in a Styrofoam box and nobody cares. Error, there are presently no computing powers to control it, but all in due time. The full freedom to spend their money will vanish irretrievably, and regulations will affect anyone who has managed to stay anonymous to this day. This will be ensured by digital investigators (and will not be police officers - future “criminals” will follow and catch algorithms). And although there will surely be ways to circumvent these fresh restrictions (exchange trade, local currencies), the question is, do we want to accept all this? Do we want to completely get free of our privacy? If not, let's usage the cash as long as possible. And now we're gonna teardrop down individual - most likely motivated by good intentions - hellish plans? Comfort is not all, and its price may be besides high.
