By Michael Snyder
www.endoftheamericandream.com
WASHINGTON, DC – Thankfully, some members of Congress are sounding the alarm. In fact, Senator James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) has actually introduced legislation “which would require the U.S. Treasury to keep printing and coining money if the government issues an official digital currency.”
On Sept. 29, Lankford introduced the No Digital Dollar Act.
Lankford said in a news release: “While some Oklahomans are open to digital currencies, many still prefer hard currency or at least the option of hard currency. There are still questions, cyber concerns, and security risks for digital money. There is no reason we can’t continue to have paper and digital money in our nation and allow the American people to decide how to carry and spend their own money. As technology advances, Americans should not have to worry about every transaction in their financial life being tracked or their money being deleted.”
Unfortunately, that sort of a bill is extremely unlikely to get through Congress.
Most of our leaders seem quite eager to explore the “possibilities” of implementing such a system. And, as we have seen over the past few years, those with authoritarian tendencies are not afraid to push the envelope to frightening extremes.
In an article for MaineWire, contributor Steve Robinson listed several hypothetical scenarios that we could potentially see if a “digital dollar” starts being used on a widespread basis:
1) To protest governmental limits on personal freedom, liberty activists stage a peaceful protest around the nation’s capital. That nation’s leader, wanting to quell the protest and protect his power, instructs his Minister of Economic Control to reduce the protesters’ Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) balances by 50 percent everyday until the protest ends. Guess what? The protest ends shortly after the message pings on what will be known in the future as “the CBDC smartphone app.”
2) Economic growth is lagging, and the economists in the federal government suspect it is because consumer spending isn’t strong enough. People are saving their money, rather than spending it. To fix this problem, the Ministry of Economic Control announces a new year-long negative interest rate for all CBDC accounts. Unspent balances will be reduced by 10 percent every month. As a result, no one saves, every one spends, and the economists have ‘saved’ the economy.
3) You’re at the grocery store picking up some ribeye steaks because some friends are coming over for a barbecue. When you get up to the counter, there’s a problem. The cashier says the payment isn’t going through. You check the CBDC app on your smartphone. There is an alert: “You have exceeded your monthly carbon credit usage; please remove the following items from your grocery cart in order to proceed…”
4) You want to pick up a new firearm for hunting season, so you swing by the local sporting goods store. But when you go to transfer CBDC credits for the purchase, you’re denied. The trusty CBDC app explains: “We’ve detected activity on your social media accounts that suggests you are at risk of causing harm to yourself or others. You are prohibited from purchasing a firearm for one year.”
Once we open the door to this sort of tyranny, there is no telling where it could potentially end. So we should strongly denounce all efforts to introduce a “digital dollar” while we still have the opportunity to do so. Unfortunately, most of the population is still deep in a state of sleep, and so the elite are moving their agenda forward very rapidly.