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When it comes to slippery slope metaphors, we have a rich history to draw from.
Going back to the 4th century BC we have the ‘Sorites Paradox’, but the more modern incarnation is that of the boiling frog
It goes like this:
If you try to drop a frog in a pot of boiling water it will hysterically try to preserve its own life by jumping out. But, if you place that same frog in a pot of lukewarm water, while slowly turning up the heat a few incremental degrees over time, the frog will no doubt slide into an idyllic haze. Much like you might in a hot bath. But as the temperature eventually reaches its boiling point it's far too late for the frog to escape and he is gradually cooked alive.
The metaphor is meant to remind you that superficially small, but progressive changes, can inevitably lead us to dire and unalterable consequences.
And I regret to inform you that we are all officially the frog that has been plunked into the pot of exponentially warming waters of an economic panopticon. One that poses incalculable risks to privacy, free speech, and private property.
Depressingly, this is already a forgone conclusion…you don’t have a choice in the matter. We will be forced to adopt CBDCs, or central bank digital currencies, within a generation if not sooner.
In a recent report issued by Bank of America, their analysts concluded that:
“CBDCs appear inevitable” and that "the[ir] potential to revolutionize global financial systems may be the most significant technological advancement in the history of money."
The if is not even a question anymore. It's rather a matter of when and how.
These considerations force us to hypothesize about what CBDC implementation will look like, how it could be utilized by regime forces, and what if anything we can do about it.
We first have to acknowledge the imminent adoption of these digital currencies by nearly all governments across the globe. Whether we’re talking about America, Britain, Canada, and Brazil on the one hand, or Russia, China and Iran on the other, all are currently wrapping up their public consultation and pilot program phases of their respective virtual currencies.
And if you think I’m exaggerating for dramatic effect, then simply google your country’s name plus CBDC. You’ll notice that for any nation you type, the top-ranked search result will be the official Central Bank web page of that country and a juvenile explanation of what will inevitably occur.
All are written in the same dry and overly simplistic manner that is, to anyone who recognizes the overarching pattern, a translucent mask for financial fascism.
Hey die die-hard exponents of liberal democracy, remember voting on this?
Not only are we predestined towards this policy outcome, but as a citizenry, we were not even educated on the basics of monetary theory, macroeconomics, historical reserve banking, and interest rates. And despite the potentially devastating consequences of having a financially illiterate populace, these items are completely absent from primary and secondary level education systems.
But don’t worry because they’re teaching your kids about BLM and how to switch genders. Because who needs to know about money in a corporatist-capitalist economic system when you're learning about Shaniqua’s anti-racist lady dick.
Truth be told half of all Canadian adults right now struggle with classic literacy, forget about the economic jargon.
But if you do know anything about economic topics, at even a rudimentary level, it overwhelmingly means that you purchased a college-level education.
And this is the first thing to recognize about CBDCs:
Not only are we kept in the dark about life-altering economic topics, but the ones who will go on to professionally manage and guide these systems will come from a very small aristocratic pool and all are educated at the same elite universities.
This is to say that it's a nobility-controlled game with a stranglehold on theory and real-world application.
And much like the absence of virology or epidemiology in basic education, such as that was used as a weapon by the expert class over the previous years, economic ignorance will be the rallying cry for establishment apparatchiks against you. Especially if there is an apparent “economic calamity” afoot.
But aside from the available opportunity of an impending crisis, say WWIII or a supply chain detachment…how will they raise the frog water temperature from piping hot (our current phase) to a rolling boil?
And how did we even get inside the pot to begin with?
The truth is that we were initially thrown into the pot by the founding father of American progressivism President Woodrow Wilson. By signing the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 he unwittingly destined us to the inevitable conclusion of a closed-loop monetary order. One that could surveil every aspect of your life and push you towards incentivized directions at the whims of central planners.
As Cato Institute scholar Norbet Michel states:
“At its core, this brave new world of monetary policy equates to the government saying that your money isn’t your money. Your property rights are subservient to the “public good” and the supposed necessity of “managing the national economy.
The real danger in CBDCs is that there is no limit to the level of control that the government could exert over people if money is purely electronic and provided directly by the government. A CBDC would give federal officials full control over the money going into–and coming out of–every person’s account.
This level of government control is not compatible with economic or political freedom.”'
The groundwork for the digital currency scheme has largely been laid over the preceding two decades. It came in the form of terror wars, near economic collapse, preempting alleged political extremism, and the Orwellian reality of “pandemic management”.
In these regards, populations of the West have come to accept the reestablished authoritative supremacy of the State and a near-permanent state of emergency.
COVID-19, racism, Russian collusion, home foreclosures, MeToo, Islamic terrorism, the Ukraine war, fentanyl, gang shootings, inflation, the J6 capital insurrection, and on and on we go with the potential for massive geopolitical conflict.
Through all of these items, we’ve been relegated to a pathetic state of citizenship wherein we do not possess bodily autonomy, personal privacy, property rights, or even social autonomy.
Make no mistake about what has happened over the previous decades, our allowances of government dictate have proven that:
Your codified rights are transitory
Your body belongs to the State
Your voice will only be tolerated in peacetime
Your media will protect the elite
Your economic freedoms are subject to whim
Your privacy is anachronistic
And most importantly…Your individualism is hostile to the collective
And one of the last bastions of relative safety for our fleeting liberties was cash. Physical cash that we could spend without being covertly monitored for even benign commercial information.
But after CBDCs are installed the last vestige of actual privacy will be the confines of your mind. As in your inner and unspoken thoughts lest you be eavesdropped by your smartphone.
But another question of import comes to mind:
How will they officially switch us to their preferred monetary system?
Again we return to our friend Pepe in the pot.
Even though an emergency would allow them to rush draconian economic policies, it will likely be rolled out slowly and deliberately. Strategically picking off various groupings of people as they casually raise the stovetop burner temperature on the entire citizenry.
First and foremost will be the ones hopelessly addicted to government programs.
Starting with the low-hanging fruit, the State could easily coerce poor people on welfare, unemployment benefits, Medicaid, and senior citizen social security programs to adopt CBDC as a precursor to continued governmental assistance.
Since the failure to do so may mean death or a perilously dangerous existence on the streets, nearly all will push to get to the front of the line and sign up.
After this, they would likely target government employees and deliver them a stark choice:
Accept CBDCs as payment for your jobs or be fired. As we saw with the COVID-19 vaccine mandates, compliance will be above 90%.
So between the public sector employees and those relying on government money for sustenance, they will have converted a substantial plurality of the citizenry without much effort.
Simultaneously, we will get the eventual merger between CBDCs, Digital IDs, and Universal Basic Income. This may take a decade plus but time is on their side.
And it's not hard to envision all government departments mandating CBDCs as the only means of payment and revenue collection.
Want to renew a license? Have a fine to pay? Need to settle that property tax bill?
The only legal tender they’ll eventually accept will be CBDC.
For anyone not under government employment or receiving government monies, the irresistible carrot of UBI will surely be dangled soon enough. And it will be one of the greatest bait and switches of all time. After people become hopelessly addicted to free money as a means to prop up their lives, they too will be forced to accept the inevitability of a switch to digital currency.
Perhaps the most pressing questions of all revolve around what role political ideology will play and what political conflict will result from this paradigm shift.
Make no mistake about it…various regimes of the future will not see digital currency as a mere transactional medium for the economy. Rather, it will be viewed as a tool of social engineering. And this has the direct result of radically escalating the stakes of maintaining or gaining political power.
Do you think political discourse is fractured and polarized now? Wait until there’s an all-encompassing method of coercion that’s exponentially more powerful than simple laws and police enforcement.
What we’re talking about is the power to manipulate, blackmail, and ultimately unperson anyone hostile to their narrow agenda.
Imagine the worst political actors on the left with this level of societal control. One can easily see digital dollars linked to a carbon credit scheme under the aegis of environmental action. “Sorry. That t-bone steak exceeds your greenhouse gas limit for this month. Consider buying the bbq flavoured crickets instead”
On the other side, consider how the political right could use this level of power to unreasonably enforce their fetishes regarding law and order. Conservative CBDCs could be used to harshly punish criminals, real or otherwise, through a social credit-style system to enforce public safety.
Rack up enough petty charges and a police AI monitoring program could deem you an elevated risk to society. Resulting in automatic deductions, being banned from public locations, and being sidelined from meaningful employment.
But regardless of who is at the helm, we need to realize that they will be in control of a completely closed economic, social, and political panopticon. And with the absence of any sustained political opposition to CBDCs from entrenched parties, we can easily surmise that they are all on the same page.
This means you will be implicitly surveilled throughout the entirety of your existence and this is extremely valuable to existing power structures. So much so that the likelihood of zero-sum, or even negative sum, political calculations will quickly become the norm among political entities.
Reaching across the proverbial aisle, if such a thing even exists, for brokerage-style consensus outcomes will be extinct. How could you trust the other side to govern and bargain in good faith when you could use CBDCs to vanquish your enemies without firing a shot?
Forget cancellation within the contemporary understanding of the term. You would have the ability to unperson the out-group and completely remove them from the system.
“What about Bitcoin?” some of you may be asking. Could our salvation ultimately rest upon the benevolent genius of Satoshi?
Perhaps marginally, that’s completely outside of the system. Which makes it valuable in that respect. The currency of last resort. However, we know that with various state actors embracing their perverted and centralized digital coins, adoption will be a requirement to participate in the system. '
Which almost ensures that they will put various safeguards in place to prevent people from working outside the system. One problem that Bitcoin doesn’t solve.
Employers, starting most obviously with the mega-corporations who collude with the government already, will dutifully track paychecks and ensure they are still vanguards of the status quo. Much like the willing functionaries they were during the COVID regime. And remember that the likes of Black Rock and Vanguard adopting this technology makes it a de facto economic policy.
Landlords will also slowly be coerced into extracting CBDC rents from their tenets (to pay their property tax bills on the up and up), and all utility companies wanting to keep their operating licenses will be made to comply as well.
Think you can resist the coming onslaught?
Anyone who has even gone camping for a weekend without their cell phone knows how difficult living off the grid can be. That's even assuming there will be any land you can physically occupy without the burden of providing digital proof to anyone curious enough to ask.
In this respect, the lesson of Roosevelt’s gold confiscation may prove prescient in answering the Bitcoin vs. CBDC question.
The American federal government took radical steps to ensure that no one could possess, transport or sell gold within the United States in the 1930s. It took nearly 40 years before these practices were fully sidelined in favour of the Nixon government going full-fiat with the scrapping of the gold standard.
In the same vein, Bitcoin production, procurement, and transaction could be disincentivized by making the penalties ominously high.
Possession of a non-custodial bitcoin wallet could be legally mandated as akin to having a pound of cocaine with intent to distribute.
Likewise, any irregular economic activity resulting from black market bitcoin exchanges, for example, trading Bitcoin for milk from a family farm, could result in fines so steep that you deem it an unreasonable risk to proceed.
In conclusion, the red pill here is that the regime has already made plans for CBDC implementation. It's happening right now and you can look this up for yourself.
The black pill is that there’s nothing you can do to stop it. You may kick and scream and hold out, hey maybe you even abstain from the system until you die, but your kids will begrudgingly accept it and their kids won’t even know what physical money is.
The white pill is that you can accept this conclusion and try to live as far outside of the system as humanly possible. This will be a dramatically harder life than you're used to living but it's not impossible.
Using crypto, growing your own food, diversifying your revenue streams, and embracing a local bartering network will become staples of your economic life.
If there’s enough coordinated resistance to the idea altogether, like-minded people may even be able to use this as a basis for secessionist and free-state movements. Ones that will ban CBDCs as foundational constitutional elements of new statehood.
Short of this, you can relegate yourself to a few choices:
Take the blue pill, along with your UBI cheque, and give in
Take the red pill and live an embittered existence that ultimately transforms you into John the Savage from Brave New World
Take the black pill and adopt a Kaczinskyean approach of nihilistic isolation in the woods, or
Take the magenta pill and do your damnedest to either relocate, reform the existing structure, or become an integral part of decentralized alternative economies outside of the CBDC framework
Recall that street-level opposition to draconian regime policies is futile and dangerous for you and your family.
Whether you were a peaceful trucker at the Ottawa convoy, a leftist protester at the 1999 Seattle WTO meeting, an entrant to the Capitol Building on January 6th, or a dead Kent State student in 1970… you will be dealt with harshly and to the fullest extent of the law for meddling in regime certainties.
Your only choice may be to become the frog who can jump in and out of the proverbial pot without the chef noticing.