I would start a petition, but someone got there first. Direct debits and standing orders need to be outlawed because they allow the Government to empty our bank accounts. And then there are the televisions. I have heard that the BBC restricts their size because if they were a bit bigger the edges of the image would reveal the studio and camera crew.
These are ridiculous examples, of course. But in my view they are scarcely more ridiculous than the scare stories being put out about Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), which will supposedly allow the Government to control all our money and monitor what we spend it on. As Laura Dodsworth recently wrote in the Daily Sceptic:
Digital money and particularly Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) offer the potential for the Government, through the central bank, to see every purchase and transfer you make, in real time. And not just see, but control.
I understand Laura’s concern, and if she was right about this then I too would be warning of the dangers of CBDCs. But the truth is that CBDCs are not the threat to liberty that Laura and others think they are. In fact, CBDCs’ critics get things upside down: CBDCs will, I believe, protect us against the overreach of private companies like PayPal, not make things worse.
