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CBDC isn't a prerequisite for that dystopian future suggested by the author. In some parts of Australia, the government has been trailing cashless benefit paym
by toomanybeersies 5y ago
CBDC isn't a prerequisite for that dystopian future suggested by the author.
In some parts of Australia, the government has been trailing cashless benefit payments. Welfare recipients are given a special "Cashless Debit Card", which can't be used to pay for alcohol or gambling. I'm pretty sure that food stamps work the same way in the USA.
Limiting purchases of fossil fuels has been done before too. During WWII most countries managed to implement fuel rationing with little more than paper tokens.
- Barrin92 5y agoUnless we've radically redefined what dystopia means someone has to explain to me what's bad about a welfare system that people can't abuse to buy booze. All I get from the article is that CBDCs enable pretty reasonable interventions like subsidizing electric cars, penalizing fast food, and so on. Which we already do because it's a good idea to not set the planet on fire or have the entire population be obese in 30 years. And we get rid of the middlemen in the process pretty tame as far as dystopias go
- noisy_boy 5y ago> Welfare recipients are given a special "Cashless Debit Card", which can't be used to pay for alcohol or gambling. All that would do is to give rise to unorganized/underground barter market that will happily exchange your purchases with alcohol, at an exploitative markup of course, so that you can give up even more essentials in exchange for pumping your life down the drain faster.