People love the digital revolution. It allows them to work from home and avoid stressful commutes and office politics. The young love their cell phones that connect them to the world. For writers the Internet offers, for now, a far larger audience than a syndicated columnist could obtain. But while we enjoy and delight in its advantages, the tyranny inherent in the digital revolution is slowly closing its grip on our lives.
Use a gender pronoun or doubt an official narrative and you are blocked from social media. The same corporations that are required by federal law to send us annual statements on how they protect our privacy also track our use of the Internet in order to build marketing profiles of us. The FBI, CIA, and NSA track our use of the Internet to identify possible terrorists, school shooters, drug operations, and foreign agents. Face identification cameras now exist on the streets of some cities. DNA data bases are being built. It goes on and on.
In China the digital revolution has made possible a social credit system. People are monitored about what they say, what they read online, how they behave, where they go. The profile that results determines the person’s rights or privileges. A person who hangs out with the wrong crowd, criticizes the government, misbehaves, drives too fast, drinks too much, has a poor school or work attendance record might be denied a driving license, a passport, university admission, or could have access to bank account limited or blocked.
Digital money is the ultimate power of tyranny.
There is no cash form of digital money that can be put in our pocket and used for anonymous payment. Advocates of digital money make much of its ability to close down crime and tax avoidance. Digital money allows a block put on an alcoholic’s bank balance to prevent its use for the purchase of alcohol, and an overweight person’s food purchases could be controlled by how his digital money can be used. These restraints put on individual choice are hyped as health measures.
But after all of this is said, the stark fact remains that the same power conveyed to authorities by digital money can be used to totally control the person. Suppose you object to the evaporation of freedom, or expose a corruption, or challenge an official narrative. The government can block your access to your account or block its use to pay for your housing or food, and bring you to your knees.
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