"War of cash: Who's behind this and why are they doing it?"

Cash is very efficient for tiny transactions. Cash transactions are immediate, flexible and anonymous. Cash doesn't request a password and can't be hacked. The usage of cash does not depend on the technology that can break down – and sometimes this happens, causing immense problems.

The benefit of eliminating cash and moving to the digital economy, they say, is the fight against crime. However, cash is not very convenient for illegal transactions. He's got this flaw for criminals that he works on a tiny scale. In case of large amounts of illegal transactions you gotta control to digital technology.

For example, in 2014, the perfect average for illicit drug trafficking was – believe it or not – Amazon gift tokens. late money laundering used online gambling sitesto hide his suspicious funds. On the another hand, cash allowed crime detection. Not just because, unlike digital technology, cash requires face-to-face transactions. In 2021. a crime group trying to launder money In Canada, she was caught trying to deposit large amounts of cash in the bank.

So why are they trying to decision us to a non-cash society? Who's "they"?

At the end of 2019 Kevin Dowd, prof. of Finance and Economics at the University of Durham, wrote an essay that was published in stock Economic Affairs.

Articles by prof. Dowd on the subject "War on cash" can be found on his website HERE. Our article is simply a paraphrase his blog, published on the website of the Institute of economical Affairs ("IEA") and its 2019 essay entitled "The war on cash is much more than cash".

His essay describes in item the arguments utilized by those who prosecute non-cash society and the digital economy, and why these arguments are wrong, if not false. It has 8 pages, it may seem discouraging to some, but it is written with an easy-to-read kind with quite a few subtitles that can be utilized as tags to proceed from where you finished, if you decide to read it after 1 section at a time. We encourage our readers to devote time to reading his essay in its entirety.

The proposals to abolish cash were first put forward by Kenneth S. Rogoff in 1998. They were subsequently developed by another economists as well as by Rogoff himself.

One of the main benefits of the alleged war on cash ("WoC") is that it would aid fight crime and give the central banks additional area for manoeuvre in monetary policy. This policy is promoted by an alliance of large companies dealing with digital payments, control ideologists and central banks.

Large digital payment companies advance WoC for commercial reasons: they want to destruct the competitor in order to be able to increase the fees charged on digital transactions. They besides usage the collection of data on our spending habits, data that cannot be obtained if we pay in cash.

The second group promoting the departure from cash is doing so as part of a programme to increase state control. They claim that cash should be abolished due to the fact that it is utilized by "bad people" – people active in money laundering, drug smugglers and terrorists. Yeah, bad people usage cash, but the remainder of us do, too. If we should endure cash due to the fact that bad people are utilizing it, the same argument applies to everything else they use, including digital money, which is more widely utilized for criminal activity than cash itself.

The 3rd group to advance WoC is central bankers. With the fall in interest rates, the central banks noted that their ability to further reduce interest rates was severely limited. The abolition of cash would enable them to overcome this regulation and let them to push interest rates deep into the negative territory in their efforts to boost the economy. The point is that if central banks tried to implement a policy of negative interest rates without prior abolition of cash, people would trade large-scale money for cash to thwart their efforts. Therefore, cash would should be abolished to force people to invest in negative-interest assets.

The usage of cash brings crucial benefits that digital money does not give. The fact that the war on cash would deprive us of these benefits is the least of its problems.

This besides threatens to undermine our privacy, allowing us to track all our expenses. erstwhile the government forces everyone to usage the electronic currency it can control, it can besides control how we spend it.

The government has the right to control everything. It may identify and block payments to or from persons or organisations it does not accept. His control over payments would be absolute and he could usage this control to prosecute his enemies—real or imaginary, it doesn't matter—and destruct them, depriving them of their livelihoods.

Anyone who is on the incorrect side of power – political opponents, informants, alleged criminals, whoever – can be "cancellated" and vanish only by blocking access to their bank accounts.

A government dominated by wellness fanatics could then force us to comply with the personalized "health recommendations" defined by the latest fashion for health. A government dominated by environmental fanatics could force us to "save the planet" according to the dictatorship of the latest fashion for ecology. A government dominated by spiritual fanatics could halt us from engaging in immoral activities to save our souls. The possibilities are unlimited.

It can be said that governments would not do that. But governments are already very advanced on this road.

In addition to very real concerns about the complete control of the government and the demolition of our civilian liberties, WoC threatens to undermine our privacy, expropriate large amounts of legally acquired wealth, exposure us all to the risks of mistaken digital systems, origin serious negative effects on susceptible people and let central banks to launch a dangerous policy of negative interest rates.

We should fight and keep spending money.