Convenience will replace freedom
Didn't file your taxes on time? Accused of a petty crime? Forgot to pledge your allegiance to Moloch the Almighty? In a cashless society, your life would be over until such time as you "made good" with the government.
This is essentially what legendary investor Jim Rogers warned about during a recent interview with MacroVoices Podcast:
Some states in the US you cannot make cash transactions above a certain amount. Governments love it. Then they can control you. If you want to go and buy a cup of coffee, they know how many you drink, where you buy them, etc., if they can all put it into electronic formats and they will. The world is all going electronic.How will they justify this incredible invasion of privacy and personal liberty? Terrorism! We have to stop people from using briefcases of cash to fund terrorism! Because of course, it's private individuals — not goverments, like the snakes in Washington or Rhiyad — who fund terrorism. That's the fairy tale we're all supposed to believe, of course.
When it's done, the governments are going to be very, very happy they are going to say they're doing it for our own good, this is not them, this is for our good. That they're doing this, but it's coming, and it's going to be a whole different world in which we live. Probably we are not going to have as many freedoms as we have now even though we are already losing our freedoms at a significant pace.
Rogers is aware of this and according to him, there's not much that can be done:
Payments in cash are widely used in the financing of terrorist activities... In this context, the relevance of potential upper limits to cash payments could also be explored. Several Member States have in place prohibitions for cash payments above a specific thresholdOur cashless future will be "marketed" in other ways, of course. It will be very "convenient". We already see this talking point being used to promote electronic payments used in every aspect of our daily lives:
Plenty of corporations are openly salivating at the possibility of abolishing cash — especially companies already in the "cashless" business.
And look, young hip kids are already getting excited about it:
So it's either we all end up as feudal serfs for a monolithic Government-Coropration or die in a nuclear war fought over the soverignty of Limpopo. The End.
Hype can effectively replace all hope. Hype can replace everything. Hype is the modern thing, the important thing and by far the best thing. Every successful business and economic adventure that makes money and fun (and lots of it) and all the good things that go with money and fun (and lots of it) absolutely requires hype. And we live for business success (money and fun and lots of it), there is no other reason for our existence.....
When hype has completed its course (and mission), all hope will be gone and no one will have noticed, because hype is so much better than hope or anything else. Hype is success! Hype is success. Repeat after me.
The ones that did 'notice' and 'took issue' with hype and were critical of it, of course, having been eliminated and their minds erased, at various times in the past. You simply cannot argue with success, money and fun (and lots of it). You do want to be a billionaire someday, don't you?
Everyone wants to be a billionaire. Repeat after me.
DUH.
ned, out