Whether because of money launderers, tax evaders, a pandemic, or whatever the current ruse is, a cashless society is where we are heading.
May 8, 2023
By: Bobby Casey, Managing Director GWP
It is hard to deny that “emergency” events leave societies vulnerable to all sorts of policies they would otherwise not allow.
9-11 certainly introduced a level of surveillance the likes of which would NEVER have seen the light of day under any other circumstances. But here we are with the Patriot Act, the TSA, and FISA. I naively thought spying on your citizens was a fairly cut and dry thing. Only a congressional hall of litigators could parse out actual nuance to something like that.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt receives credit to this day for “getting the US out of the Great Depression”. He did no such thing, of course. He protracted it for eleven years and while people were in an economic panic, got us into a war and introduced a whole new welfare state.
It is rather strange that people see tyranny as heroism when they are most scared and insecure. That’s how distorted our vision becomes through the lens of fear.
Yet, people were warning that the pandemic would be yet another portal for further oppression in the name of safety. The people warning of it, didn’t name it. Founder and Executive Chairman of the WEF, Klaus Schwab did when he said:
“The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world.”
It’s what many are calling the Great Reset. It’s like the term “woke” or “pornography”. You might not be able to define it, but you know it when you see it. If I were made to describe it, I’d say it’s a massive, industrial scale, gas lighting campaign.
The way welfare is a massive, industrial scale Munchhausen by Proxy campaign to maintain and manage poverty, this Great Reset will be a gas lighting campaign.
The greatest spikes in gun sales in the US is when there’s either a shooting or talk of gun control. Why? Because they took that choice for granted. People went from “I can get one if I want to,” to “I might never be able to get one.”
When you threaten to take the choice away, even for things that seemingly might not have very high demand, the demand will suddenly skyrocket.
There’s no reason to expect any different for money. It’s very true that people and businesses have shifted toward digital commerce and credit cards. But if you tell people you’re doing away with cash entirely, they will remind you that the choice belongs to them.
A cashless society is about obscuring economic consequences.
Look at your taxes. You never get an itemization of where your taxes go. You get vague categories like “education” and “defense”, but you don’t see how much goes toward administrators or cronies or other countries unless you specifically file a Freedom of Information Act request.
Walmart will give me a receipt fully itemizing everything my money bought. But not my own country.
As a matter of fact, look at inflation itself. It’s a hidden tax. Rather than someone asking for your money outright like the IRS or any other institution raising the rate, they just print more money and steal its value.
It used to be you saw actual breadlines where people who sought welfare would line up. Then they got vouchers. And now they have a debit card. This way, no one sees the poverty, and people in poverty don’t have to confront the discomfort of it publicly.
We moved off the gold standard, so we didn’t have to have sound, fully-backed currency. Rather we would back the currency with invisible debt.
And now, we are moving headlong into a cashless society. Where we just lose any visibility into money or currency. I run an online business, so I fully understand the utility of digital transactions. I’m certainly not advocating against them.
But there is a world of difference between having digital transactions existing in the world, and the elimination of cash transactions as an option.
The elimination of the cash option isn’t necessary. And that’s what has me and many others asking: “What gives? To what end are we eliminating cash? And why is it being forced?”
What do I mean by “force”? Around the world we were told not to use cash, because that could be a means by which the virus would spread. It’s utterly false, of course. In the US we had the added bonus of a “coin shortage”.
The issue is, that wasn’t a temporary policy. It was much stickier. In Ireland, for example, they noticed how the accessibility of customer service, in person banking, and operating ATMs were conspicuously absent, long after the pandemic was over.
With each notification that the cash or in-person option was not available, was a suggestion to use their online option. Ireland’s Financial Services Union (FSU) called that out, and the response was telling:
Both Bank of Ireland and AIB have closed 100 branches between them over the last 18 months, the submission said.
The submission was written before AIB proposed plans to withdraw cash services and take ATMs out of 70 of its branches.
The chief executive of AIB later admitted the bank “got it wrong” amid a public outcry and political criticism. The bank reversed the decision to downgrade the branches.
“We got it wrong,” Colin Hunt told Business News on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland. “The lesson for us from this is that we moved far too far, far too fast.”
You’ll notice the glaring omission here. They admitted they were wrong in how far and how fast, but not the actual direction they were going. No apology for going cashless, just for how aggressive they were in going that way.
In Switzerland, the FBS (Free Switzerland Movement) is pushing for a clause added to Switzerland’s currency law, which governs how the central bank and government manage the money supply, stipulating that a “sufficient quantity” of banknotes or coins must always remain in circulation.
The article goes on:
“It is clear that … getting rid of cash not only touches on issues of transparency, simplicity or security … but also carries a huge danger of totalitarian surveillance,” FBS president Richard Koller said on the group’s website.
He also views Switzerland as a European standard-bearer for the defense of cash.
Why put in safeguards against a cashless society if you didn’t see the wave coming? Because the wave is coming, under the guise of the Anti-Money Laundering Law. The Eurocrats in Brussels are discussing lowering the limit of cash transactions as a matter of regulation, not directive. This means each member nation would not have the right to determine for itself what is best for them; rather they would have to comply across the board.
Politicians in Brussels have long been pondering an upper legal limit on the value of cash transactions within the bloc, with lawmakers detailing plans to ban Europeans from spending over €10,000 in physical tender as part of a single transaction.
The European Parliament however has now voted for such a proposed limit to be dropped down to as little as €7,000 as part of efforts to clamp down on money laundering and tax dodging within the bloc.
The €7k is a compromise up from €3k believe it or not. Member nations are allowed to go lower if they choose, as France did limiting their cash transactions to €1k.
Many countries already have limits on cash transactions. Conservative party members in countries like Germany and Italy are seeking to keep the ceiling from falling any further than €10,000. In fact, Italy’s limit is €1,000 and they are looking to raise it to €10,000.
Criminalizing cash over a certain amount, however, is low-key forcing a cashless society on people. Either your money is legal tender or its not. The idea that it is only legal tender up to a certain point is outrageous since the government holds a monopoly on currency.
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