The government must needs discover new ways to reach into your wallet. It bleeds cash faster than a late-stage ebola victim loses blood, and with the same eventual result.
Going cash free is not the latest idea, but it’s one that won’t go away, awaiting now only tweaks in technology to make it into reality.
Just think how wonderful it will be when cash need not be carried! A chip in your palm will be sufficient. Want a candy bar? Swipe and it’s yours.
And the government’s. Not the candy bar: the fact that you bought it, and the fact where you bought it, and the fact when you bought it, and the fact that the fellow who sold it to you is now a taxable dollar-sixty richer.
And the fact that your account, which was previously at $X is now at $X – $1.60. And the fact that, all told, in the last month you spent $Y on candy bars, which is 10% more than the government-recommended maximum. That triggers a warning. Go over 20% and the chip is no longer allowed to debit candy.
If you don’t believe the candy example, you will accept tobacco, alcohol, salt, saturated fats, red meat, ammunition, spray paint, plastic bags, glue, knives, guns, reactionary blogs, and so on. Anything the matronly government decides that is not in your best interest to have too much of, or at all. It’s for your own good.
Visa or Master Card or whatever banks make deals with the government to process e-cash (which is the inevitable name) will also grow just a tiny bit richer because you had to have some chocolate-covered peanuts. Which is why the merchant had to charge a dollar-sixty instead of a dollar-fifty. This is a necessary consequence, as is well recognized. Money may grown on trees as paper, but bits have to be stored and tracked by somebody. Government-authorized somebodies.
Why would the government have access to every transaction, when these are a private matter between you and your usurious credit card company? They probably won’t, at first. But those records will only be one subpoena or friendly chat with the local G-man away. Or maybe the NSA would by default make copies.
But just think. Why shouldn’t the government be able to track your income and tax-related expenditures? It would eliminate all kinds of cheating, which in turn would cause government coffers to overflow. Again, at first. The temptation to pass a law to track “only” the money you make and the money made by merchants—which is in effect all transactions—will not be resisted.
Get ready for mainstream press stories, funded by banks, painting the horrors of cash. How criminals use it to do criminal things. Not cheat on taxes, because even the government knows most do not see this as true cheating. Cash is used to buy drugs, you know. And illegal guns. Even NRA memberships.
Which is why it doesn’t have to be the government forbidding transactions for the prevention of certain forms of transactions to become reality. Already some banks withdrew support for the NRA. They are free companies and ought to be allowed to do so, runs the “conservative” argument. What happens when all these free companies decided en masse to stop transactions of politically incorrect entities?
That will force the government to step in to quiet the clamor. And that puts the government in charge of who gets to charge for what. That forces the government to “monitor” transactions in some official way. It won’t be long after when the “nudging” starts, alerting you to the amount you spend on candy.
Then finally come the government-imposed restrictions. Some will flee to the “blockchain”, supposing these are still legal when not officially tied to fiat currencies. And there must be official ties if you are to use your blockchain money at e-money-only sites. Which must become global. Anyway, at least for now, this technology is too feeble to track and share (in encrypted form) every transaction.
You will scoff, but it is difficult not to get Biblical about this.
And he shall make all, both little and great, rich and poor, freemen and bondmen, to have a character in their right hand, or on their foreheads.
And that no man might buy or sell, but he that hath the character, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Yes, you may worship as you choose, but it’s only commonsense to promise you won’t engage in hate speech. How easy it is to say that those branded criminals be banned from buying and selling. They will still, after all, be allowed to access government-provided cheese and housing so that they don’t starve or freeze. And all they have to do to lose the criminal brand is to swear to worship the one true god—the State.
How long? Who knows. Thirty years? Twenty? Two hundred? Moto in fine velocior: things accelerate toward the end.
BARTER. Centuries old way around greedy governments and less bloody than outright revolution.
Coins and bills will have to stick around long enough to replace the dead white guys with those acceptable to the social justice warriors. You can’t put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill and have her there for just a few years before switching to e-cash.
Church contributions: collection baskets are out; e-chips only, please. And (oops) e-money won’t work for your “disallowed” church. Your church harbors and supports bad-think. You can’t contribute. Your e-chip won’t work there. Strictly private decisions by banks, of course; no First Amendment infringement at all. So: no way to fix the roof, pay clergy or support staff, get power or water — no e-money coming in equals no e-money going out equals none of that.
“Going cash free is not the latest idea, but it’s one that won’t go away, awaiting now only tweaks in technology to make it into reality.”
Just remind me – who “creates” (enacts) new laws?
A. Politicians.
A more corrupt and shady mob you will never meet.
Despite the deep state finding e-cash irresistible, the people you need on-side to make this happen (ie, politicians) would NEVER allow it – at least, not without some form of “ownerless e-cash” for, umm, political donations etc etc. Only acceptable if they exempt themselves, see?
Not that they couldn’t do that, but it’s a VERY bad look… bad enough to cost you votes… so, won’t happen – at least by direct Govt decree. I would suspect it is more likely, as you say, to creep up on you, while keeping some method of cash for bribes – er, I mean “political donations”.
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