If governments and central banks control the creation, distribution, and exchange of virtual money, whatever remains of free markets will disappear. If governments and central banks monitor every transaction between consumers and producers, then all industries will be subjugated to the centralized command of the State. If governments and central banks assert the legal power to determine who may store value, how much value may be personally stored, and how long that value will be permitted to last, then whatever remains of private property will cease to exist. If governments and central banks maintain a digital monopoly over the only legalized forms of money, then they may redistribute wealth or penalize personal behavior without regard for individual rights or limits to their control.
The same surveillance systems and social credit scores that are already pervasive in communist China will invariably become pervasive throughout the formerly free West, as well.
No doubt propaganda campaigns will cloak this oppressive monitoring in the West’s own “politically correct” language of fighting “hate” or “racism” or “climate change” or the next COVID-like scare, but the West’s system of control over its citizens will be no different from the Chinese communist version: Individuals will have their digital wealth confiscated or replenished according to whether their behavior conforms to the strictures of the State. Free markets, free will, free speech, and even free thoughts will be regulated just as easily as central banks regulate each citizen’s digital wealth. In effect, the implementation of CBDCs will give Western governments the ultimate monopoly over every lifewithin their dominion.
For too long Westerners have remained quiet while market competition has given way to government-sanctioned monopoly, and private property has transformed into something much less personal or secure. The funny money of paper currencies has destroyed most ordinary Westerners’ savings, while artificially inflating the prices of stocks and other assets increasingly beyond the reach of many. Now an overhaul of the financial system and a transition to mandated CBDCs threaten what remains of Westerners’ personal liberties. Before the last vestiges of the Cold War’s ideological dichotomy evaporate and nothing remains to distinguish East from West, this is the time for friends of freedom to stand and be counted. For while Klaus Schwab may desire a future where Westerners find happiness in owning nothing, those who value liberty know that personal ownership and the unfettered exchange of goods, services, and ideas remain the bedrock of those free nations that refuse to be enslaved.