Any article beneath that headline should be short. Just one word in fact: no. The problem is that I keep reading articles here in the Daily Sceptic making the case for the opposite. Take this for example:
If and when there is a catastrophic failure, you will not only then be yourself robust to the consequences; you will also be able to clean up in the aftermath (assuming the result is not complete financial, and societal, collapse, in which case we’re all screwed anyway).
Remember, we are talking here about small change. Well, a digital equivalent of small change, but the means of settling small value transactions denominated in pounds. So, pound notes and penny coins. Complete financial and societal collapse. You see coins are not just coins, as another Daily Sceptic article alerted us to:
Coins have always been more than lumps of precious metals; they are also a means of propaganda and control.
These days the metals are not so precious, but that is beside the point. The author goes on:
The means of control change over time but the insatiable desire for total control remains constant.
Total control and complete societal collapse, this is getting serious. This is the kind of stuff I hear from the founder of Extinction Rebellion, Roger Hallam. It is not small change that worries him but a trace gas in the atmosphere. Apparently, if it is not reduced it will “destroy the weather” (no, me neither) and “thus our ability to grow food” leading to “the collapse of our society”. Bingo! I knew I had heard that somewhere.
How can I be so sure that we are not in the last desperate months before being overrun by hungry hordes short of change? For the same reason that I was sure Matt Hancock was never going to suppress COVID-19 with an NHS Covid App. No matter how powerful the politician, how rich the globalist, how strongly felt the ideology, some aspects of the real world just do not work the way these people think they do. Money and banking systems being a case in point. Take the concern that I read in the Daily Sceptic only this week:
We have never been in the position in which we now find ourselves, where centralised control over all transactions taking place in the economy is so tantalisingly within reach of central banks.
I am not concerned about this for the simple reason that it cannot happen. There is no way to centralise control over all transactions taking place in the economy because they do not pass through any central system, organisation or network from which anyone could control them. They all have a value measured in pounds sterling but that does not mean they can be controlled by the Bank of England, any more than the Oxford English Dictionary, or at any rate its publisher, can control what is written in the Daily Sceptic. To put it another way, if Klaus Schwab wanted to put an end to free speech he could try buying Oxford University Press, but it would not put him in control of how English is used, other than at OUP perhaps.
How about the technology risks? Cyber-attack, power outages, Government IT projects going wrong. One commentor on this site pointed out that his broadband was down for five days, just think if that happened to money. I know the public sector has a talent for screwing up tech projects, but not even the Bank of England would put critical national infrastructure on a domestic broadband line. And why is this never a criticism levelled at Bitcoin? We never hear the question: “What if the blockchain went down?” Bitcoin must run on some special libertarian technology not available to governments. The same goes for cyber-attacks. Crypto both suffers from and is the enabler of huge financial fraud. Start with ransomware and if you can stomach it, move on to the dark web, but crime is only ever mentioned in sceptical circles when it comes to systems that might one day handle the digital equivalent of small change. Visa, Mastercard and the entire global banking system have managed to limp along for decades, constantly pried, poked and cyber-attacked, but on the whole not an extinction level worry for the public.
And so, finally, to the programmable currency thing. This is the ultimate bogeyman for sceptics. Again, from the Daily Sceptic:
If programmable CBDCs are introduced, your own digital financial footprint will be used to control you.
No, it won’t. Why? Because we have had it for over 50 years, and it has not shown anything like these controlling tendencies. Every commenter on this site uses ‘programmable currency’ to pay to comment on this site. Are they controlled by their digital footprint? The humble recurring credit card payment, the direct debit and the standing order are all examples of programmable currency. Terrifying, aren’t they? The point is that you cannot make an unattended, recurring, remote payment with physical cash. But if cash was digital, that would be a possibility. How much, to whom and how often would constitute the ‘programme’. Not much of a programme I admit, but enough to have sceptics diving behind the sofa. Could the Government ‘programme’ a digital currency? Do you see many Government-originated direct debits in your bank account? Why bother when they can tax at source?
Cash is fighting for survival on many fronts, read all about it in my articles here and here. Do politicians and globalists think it is old-fashioned, crime-ridden and would be better off minimised and phased out? Certainly. Do they care about the de-banked, elderly, disadvantaged and cash-in-hand economy? Only if pressed. Can they legislate or abuse existing laws and take advantage of circumstances such as Covid to further their pipe dreams? It is in their very nature. But they cannot magically turn everything denominated in pounds, or any currency, into something they control. It is not physically possible. No matter how much they might want it, every Western banking system cannot be suddenly changed to block transactions they don’t like. It is not technically possible.
Modernising the currency so that it can be used online and as a kind of minimal, free banking service is not an attempt to usurp society. Offering a digital alternative alongside notes and coins for settling small transactions, which is relevant to about 5% of all transactions, is not a tool of oppression, at least not one any self-respecting oppressor would bother with. Small change is not to be feared and neither are digital currencies.
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