{"id":26933,"date":"2016-09-08T05:24:32","date_gmt":"2016-09-08T12:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/?p=26933"},"modified":"2016-09-08T05:30:20","modified_gmt":"2016-09-08T12:30:20","slug":"shoving-us-at-gunpoint-toward-the-cashless-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/08\/shoving-us-at-gunpoint-toward-the-cashless-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Shoving us at gunpoint toward the cashless society"},"content":{"rendered":"

Talk of forcing us into a cashless society has been around for decades. It’s very easy to tune it out as old news, something that’s going to remain a statist pipe dream forever. <\/p>\n

But it’s time to take this very, very seriously. The stage has been set. We’ve got central-bank desperation. Negative interest-rate policies. A police\/surveillance state in which cash is more important to the authorities than any actual crimes committed. And the increasing ruthlessness of first-world states everywhere. We’ve got an atmosphere in which the desire for privacy is itself considered a sign of criminal intent. <\/p>\n

Now the faux-intellectual case for complete government control and surveillance of transactions is being promoted so rapidly and universally it seems a coordinated effort. The economic noise just ramped up again upon publication of superstar economist Kenneth S. Rogoff’s The Curse of Cash<\/i><\/a>, in which (I have not personally read it but have repeatedly heard) he agitates for elimination of all cash over $10 bills, forcing all but latte-level transactions under government scrutiny — or into Outlawry.*<\/p>\n

J.D. Tuccille has has an excellent overview<\/a> of the positions on both sides. (His article is a real linkfest, so set aside some time for it.)<\/p>\n

Oddly enough, both the pro-freedom side and the pro-government side view the basic situation in the same light (though of course they draw wildly different conclusions from it): cash enables privacy; cashlessness enables government control.<\/p>\n

This issue, like “gun control,” is a watershed. This issue, like “gun control,” has been around a long time and is easy to get complacent about. This issue, I’m thinking, is going to be one of the two key turning points for freedom-vs-statism in the years ahead.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

* Fortunately, the majority of Amazon reviewers so far are heatedly on the side of the angels. Although the book is getting huge buzz in the financial mainstream press, it seems the general economically literate public is Not Amused.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talk of forcing us into a cashless society has been around for decades. It’s very easy to tune it out as old news, something that’s going to remain a statist pipe dream forever. But it’s time to take this very, very seriously. The stage has been set. We’ve got central-bank desperation. Negative interest-rate policies. A police\/surveillance state in which cash is more important to the authorities than any actual crimes committed. And the increasing ruthlessness of first-world states everywhere. We’ve got an atmosphere in which the desire for privacy is itself considered a sign of criminal intent. Now the faux-intellectual…<\/p>\n

Continue readingShoving us at gunpoint toward the cashless society<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,11,12,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-and-movies","category-government","category-guns-and-gun-rights","category-money","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26933"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26940,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26933\/revisions\/26940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}