Filthy Lucre
There seems to be an informal push afoot to do away with cash money. Canada is moving in that direction:
As free market-based digital currencies like Bitcoin and e-gold continue to gain traction around the world, the government of Canada responded with the “MintChip,” an electronic payment system touted by authorities as “better than cash” and the “evolution of currency.” Critics of the scheme, however, were not so enthusiastic about the accelerating march toward a cashless society. — Alex Newman, The New American, April 16, 2012.
In the past, hard currency proved eminently useful and even served as a hedge against government intrusion:
Analysts of various persuasions have been celebrating the idea of killing cash, with allies in much of the establishment press heralding its supposed inevitability. Indeed, in recent years, physical currency — anonymous, untraceable, and simple — has come under a barrage of attacks by advocates of increased government control. — Ibid.
From a statist viewpoint, however, hard cash could allow citizens to avoid the tax man:
Supporters of a “cashless society” claim it would reduce robberies and make it harder for the “black market” to function. “Paper money is really the currency of crime: drugs, prostitution and the big kahuna of tax evasion,” claimed David Wolman, a proponent of a cashless society who recently published the book The End of Money. — Ibid.
But would there really be less crime in a “cashless society”? And what about Big Brother?
Privacy and security activists, however, warned that the implications of the continued march toward a “cashless society” could be troubling — to say the least. Imagine a system that could track every transaction that takes place, for example. Or consider the wide range of issues already plaguing the world of digital cash: identity theft, hacking, cybercrime, credit card fraud, and much more. — Ibid.
There’s even a religious dimension to going “cashless”:
Some Christians, citing a passage in the Book of Revelation, have expressed concerns about the accelerating trend as well. Scripture (Revelation 13:17) says: “And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” More than a few Bible scholars and theologians have found recent developments troubling in light of biblical prophecy. — Ibid.
People wishing to do harm, or even the ordinarily harmless sun itself, could disable or even destroy a vulnerable “cashless” system:
Pragmatists, meanwhile, pointed to a wide array of non-ideological potential problems with abolishing cash. An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, for instance, could shut down the entire electrical grid and the “cashless” system that depends on it. Solar events, problems in the power grid, and natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and more could also devastate the system, rendering commerce close to impossible. So could hackers or cyberwarriors working for a hostile power. — Ibid.
Pay Up or Stay Home
That’s the import of a proposed bill that could become law:
There is a new bill in Congress that is expected to pass that would allow the government to suspend your travel outside the country if you owe taxes to the IRS. — Kenneth Schortgen, Jr., The Daily Economist, March 23, 2012.
Actually, you don’t even have to owe any money; the IRS only has to BELIEVE you owe them:
Senate Bill 1813 (Highway Trust Fund), which was passed by the Senate last week and is now pending in the House of Representatives contains a provision that would allow the IRS to order the State Department to refuse to grant, refuse to renew, revoke or restrict the passport of any U.S. citizen which the IRS certifies owes the IRS $50,000 or more in unpaid taxes. There is no requirement that the tax payer be guilty of or even charged with tax evasion, fraud, or any criminal offense — only that the citizen is alleged to owe the IRS back taxes of $50,000 or more. — Ibid.
In the name of fighting terrorism, the U.S. government has become a terror to its own citizenry:
With Capital Control measures expected to be implemented in 2013, which would force Americans to keep their money from going offshore, the laws being legislated are now affecting the average citizen far more than any action against terrorists, or in support of the ‘War on Terror’. — Ibid.
Yes, the federals are afraid you, by withholding what little money you earn, will cripple their multi-trillion-dollar programs to exterminate a relatively small number of murderous nutjobs who have declared war on the West.
Even if it doesn’t pass, SB 1813 should never have come up for consideration.
Behavior Modification at the Federal Level
Cass Sunstein is supposed to be one of the best and brightest working for the current administration, but at least one libertarian demurs:
[An article in The New York Times Magazine] does mention that he has urged government to go to court in support of animal rights but what it failed to do is mention Professor Sunstein’s most dangerous and vile idea, namely, that government is the source of our basic rights. — Tibor Machan, The Daily Bell, April 16, 2012.
Sunstein apparently believes the proper function of government is, much like herding cattle, to “nudge” citizens in the “right” direction:
[The article] focused only upon one of his significant and controversial ideas, namely “nudging” or “libertarian paternalism.” This is the belief in a system of government regulations that amount to creating incentives for people to do the right thing (as per how the government or Professor Sunstein see it, of course). Instead of coming down on what government considers objectionable or undesired human conduct with a sledgehammer, nudging works by setting up various tricks with which people are led to act in the way the government people intend for them to act. — Ibid.
Thus, government becomes a benevolent dictator without appearing as such:
Call it behavior modification or libertarian paternalism, the gist of Sunstein’s type of government meddling in people’s lives is to use a not very subtle program of Skinnerian stimulus-response (after the late Harvard behaviorist psychologist, B. F. Skinner), whereby what government officials want the citizens to do isn’t commanded but made the result of various prompters. Although Sunstein and his collaborators prefer the term “nudging,” it is a misleading idea since if it involved no more than that, one could just sidestep it. — Ibid.
But it does involve “more than that”:
With governmental nudging, however, we are ultimately being forced to comply with how the government wants us to behave. There is no escape. If we don’t go along, we could end up fined or even sent to jail. That is why it is called paternalism, since the government acts as would parents act toward their children over whom they have full authority. The “libertarian” part is a ruse – it comes from the fact that government tries to keep the citizenry in the dark about what it is doing, making it appear that one is making one’s own choices when one isn’t really. — Ibid.
Far from being a benign and well-intentioned attempt to lead us beside still waters, “nudging” would inevitably result in a massive diminution of freedom.
What grants Sunstein and his ilk their warrant to modify everyone else’s behavior? Because, since they are our superiors in every way, it’s “the right thing to do,” of course:
What Professor Sunstein and his co-author Stephen Holmes claimed, in their 1999 book, The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes, is that “individual rights and freedoms depend fundamentally on vigorous state action” and “Statelessness means rightlessness.” This is the pre-revolutionary, pre-Lockean – and pre-Jeffersonian – idea that governments grant us rights; that there are no natural rights but mere privileges we obtain from a government – i.e., a group of politicians and bureaucrats – that can also promptly take them away. As Sunstein & Co. see things, it isn’t just for the protection of our rights that a government is desirable but the very existence of our basic rights is due to government! Instead of the citizens having rights that government is instituted to secure, all governments, like monarchs, czars, dictators and such, give people rights, which they can promptly take away at their discretion. By what right they do this is left entirely unaddressed! — Ibid.
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Books you might want to consult:
The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes.
