{"id":7719,"date":"2015-05-01T05:36:52","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T10:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7719"},"modified":"2015-05-01T05:37:34","modified_gmt":"2015-05-01T10:37:34","slug":"7719","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7719","title":{"rendered":"The War on Cash: Transparently Totalitarian"},"content":{"rendered":"

The War on Cash: Transparently Totalitarian<\/a><\/h3>\n

George Orwell once wrote \u201cIf you want a picture of the future,\u00a0imagine a boot stamping on a human face\u2014forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not exactly a cheery thought, and one I don\u2019t agree with.<\/p>\n

While the forces pushing for centralization of power have been prevailing for decades, they haven\u2019t won a total victory yet. Technologies that empower the individual and that tend toward decentralization\u2014including the Internet, encryption, 3D printing, and cryptocurrencies\u2014offer a powerful ray of hope, reasons to be optimistic about the future.<\/p>\n

So the tug of war between the collectivists and the rest of us continues.<\/p>\n

One thing that would tip the scales heavily in favor of the collectivists would be victory in the War on Cash. Their goal is to eliminate the use of hand-to-hand currency, so that governments can document, control, and tax everything.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s exactly like what Ron Paul said: \u201cThe cashless society is the IRS\u2019s dream: total knowledge of, and control over, the finances of every single American.\u201d<\/p>\n

One way they are waging the War on Cash is to lower the threshold at which reporting a cash transaction is mandatory or at which paying in cash is simply illegal. In just the last few years\u2026<\/p>\n