Government Controlled Central Bank Digital Currency: An Extinction-Level Threat Against Liberty

Joe Biden’s Executive Order on March 09, 2022, reenergized the social media buzz over digital currencies to the point that many far-left national socialist media sources began talking as though this dangerous threat to liberty is now inevitable.  Part of the problem is that we have a classic case of bait and switch in progress, replacing the anonymity and ease of use of cash and coin with a technological nightmare that will eviscerate freedom and individual civil rights.  Your friendly neighborhood government oligarchs are only too happy to cynically exploit the goodwill built up over the years by Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

This is a complex subject matter far beyond the scope of a short essay.  Unfortunately, the party in control of the government and the nation’s leftist socialist media (but we repeat ourselves) take full advantage of this fact to confuse the issue aware of the familiarity most people have with credit and debit cards, as well as the recent excitement over the most prominent cryptocurrency Bitcoin and secure in the knowledge that most would falsely consider Central Bank Digital Currencies as the same thing.  We’re here to make the case that there is a vast difference by several orders of magnitude, that any Central Bank Digital Currency would be liberty’s extinction-level event.

What are cryptocurrencies and Central Bank Digital Currencies?

Even though the media sometimes refers to them interchangeably, cryptocurrencies are not Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC).   The Oxford English Dictionary defines cryptocurrency:

A digital currency in which transactions are verified and records maintained by a decentralized system using cryptography, rather than by a centralized authority.

decentralized cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin now provide an outlet for personal wealth that is beyond restriction and confiscation’

Please take note that the definition specifically refers to a decentralized system, rather than a centralized authority.  Compare this to the Oxford English Dictionary definition for a central bank, the controlling authority of a digital currency:

A national bank that provides financial and banking services for its country’s government and commercial banking system, as well as implementing  the government’s monetary policy and issuing currency.

Note that it refers to issuing currency, under its centralized authority — the exact opposite to decentralized cryptocurrencies.  This is just one of the vast differences between the two concepts.  The authoritarians are purposefully exploiting everyone’s casual use of debit or credit cards along with the familiarity with the more prominent cryptocurrencies.

In many ways, the developments have been towards greater anonymity, restrictions in use, and decentralized control in the technology trends in moving from card to cryptocurrency transactions.  Despite the volatility in these currencies, they have built up a certain amount of goodwill.  This could easily explain why certain entities conveniently forget to correct the record in distinguishing cryptocurrencies from Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC).

The vast differences between cryptocurrencies and CBDCs regarding liberty

1. Permissionless public sphere versus closed systems requiring permission for use.
2. Decentralized dispersed systems versus fully centralized control.
3. Pseudonymity versus tracking of every transaction.
4. Unrestricted use versus programmed control.
5. Benefiting the people versus benefiting the government.

Cryptocurrency systems are based on decentralized, open systems, as contrasted with the closed but fully centralized control systems of Central Bank Digital Currencies.  While cash is the gold standard (pardon the pun) for anonymity, cryptocurrency is at least pseudonymous.  Compare it to the complete lack of anonymity with Central Bank Digital Currency.  This means while there is some anonymity with cryptocurrency, governmental authorities can still catch criminals and fellow governmental officials.

Everyone should keep in mind that tracking and control are the two primary reasons authoritarians everywhere love Central Bank Digital Currencies.  Each digital asset would have explicit tracking and control technologies to micromanage the currency down to the tiniest detail.  Consider what would happen in the process of depositing anonymous cash into your digital currency account.  The system would scrupulously log and serialize each unit of currency.

The central authority would track these through the financial system as you spend them.  If you’re concerned about your privacy now, wait until every government official or busybody can look at where you’ve spent every cent of your brand-new Fed dollars.

The worst kind of bait and switch: Authoritarianism instead of freedom

If you were persistent enough in wading through the (BS) Biden Speak of the president’s Executive Order calling for the Responsible Development of Digital Assets, you eventually come across some of their key buzzwords in setting up a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) instead of merely regulating cryptocurrencies.   One of these revelations of their little ‘financial inclusion and equity’ scheme is at the end of the second paragraph of section 1. Policy:

We must take strong steps to reduce the risks that digital assets could pose to consumers, investors, and business protections; financial stability and financial system integrity; combating and preventing crime and illicit finance; national security; the ability to exercise human rights; financial inclusion and equity; and climate change and pollution.

Take note of their use of the term equity in that woke word salad. A concept expounded upon by our future Vice President, Sen. Kamala Harris in November 2020:

There’s a big difference between equality and equity. pic.twitter.com/n3XfQyjLNe

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 1, 2020

It’s a short video that should terrify anyone deemed ‘privileged’ by the liberty denier left that has a bank account or any financial assets.  As Kamala Harris condescendingly explains in the video:

“So there’s a big difference between equality and equity. Equality suggests, ‘Oh, everyone should get the same amount.’”

…

Her video showed an illustration of a white man with an advantage while rope-climbing up a mountain, while a woman of color left behind needed assistance.

Harris concluded, “It’s about giving people the resources and support they need so that everyone can be on equal footing, and then compete on equal footing.

“Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place,” she said as the video ended.

“giving people the resources and support they need so that everyone can be on equal footing”

That takes on a whole new meaning under the guise of discussions of digital assets under the direct control of the nation’s socialist left, and that’s just the start of the ordeal.

All things being there common, every man hath abundance of everything

Long before Karl Marx (359 years to be exact) vomited the farcical concept of ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’, Sir Thomas More expressed a very similar concept ‘All things being there common, every man hath abundance of everything’ in his book Utopia published in 1516.  The later translation of that work specifically refers to the 4th century B.C. collectivist concepts of Plato’s Republic from ancient Greece.  For the record, that was 2,400 years ago — so much for collectivism being a ‘new’ concept.

We can’t definitively say that Karl lifted this idea from a tome that had been around for over 3 ½ centuries.  However, you could almost say that he fell short in his skillset.  So, he took from the abilities of Plato and Sir Thomas More and gave to himself according to his needs like any good leftist.  After which he acted in the same guise and took all the credit for developing these concepts.

Now with the possibility (read: nightmare) of Central Bank Digital Currency, there is no limit to how the anti-liberty left could exploit this technology along with ESG scores to give and take to micromanage everyone’s life down to a minuscule level.  Make no mistake, the inherent nature of CBDC renders it programmable, it’s just that the liberty eviscerating leftists just said the quiet part out loud:

Earlier this month Sir Jon Cunliffe, a deputy Governor at the Bank, said digital currencies could be programmed for commercial or social purposes, even down to the way children spend pocket money.

He told Sky News: “You could think of smart contracts in which the money would be programmed to be released only if something happened.

“You could think of giving your children pocket money, but programming the money so that it couldn’t be used for sweets. There is a whole range of things that money could do, programmable money, which we cannot do with the current technology.”

It is vitally important to understand that we are not overhyping the threat to liberty and individual rights posed by the implementation of Central Bank Digital Currency schemes.  Draconian social credit control is already oppressing the people of red China; the wrong score means you cannot operate in the economy.

Just imagine a similar system in the States.  You could easily be prevented from buying firearms or ammunition, then there would effectively be no more common-sense civil right of self-defense.  What’s to stop them from having some sort of unexplained error for parents who speak out at school board meetings?  What are the odds that your CBDC suddenly reads zero if you are accused of wrongthink?  The possibilities are as horrifying as they are endless.

Rapidly approaching the point of no return

We have no other choice than to reject this concept, no matter if it’s in the middle of an ‘emergency’ or not.  We’re at a point that is akin to approaching the rapids that lead to Niagara Falls, that span the US and Canadian Border.  There is a certain point where the current is too strong and it precludes any kind of rescue and you are certain to go over the escarpment.  The river is relatively calm before the rapids, but this changes quickly.  We are in those relatively calm waters now, but if Central Bank Digital Currencies are enacted there is no turning back.