Amazon One Lets You Pay With Your Palm

Amazon wants its palm recognition technology in stores, stadiums, and office buildings

Amazon is unveiling its own palm recognition technology today that will be used initially to turn your hand into a personal credit card inside the company’s physical retail stores. Amazon One uses the palm of your hand to identify you, using a combination of surface-area details like lines and ridges, alongside vein patterns to create a “palm signature.”

At first, this palm signature will be used in Amazon’s own Go stores in Seattle, and the company also plans to add Amazon One to other Amazon stores in the coming months. Amazon One usage will eventually extend beyond just palm-based payments. “We believe Amazon One has broad applicability beyond our retail stores, so we also plan to offer the service to third parties like retailers, stadiums, and office buildings so that more people can benefit from this ease and convenience in more places,” says Dilip Kumar, vice president of Amazon’s physical retail business.

While many companies have experimented with palm recognition biometrics over the years, Amazon’s strong retail presence could certainly help make palm scanning a reality. Amazon hasn’t confirmed if any other retailers, venues, or businesses will make use of Amazon One, but the company says it’s “in active discussions with several potential customers.”

Amazon says it picked palm recognition over other technologies like face recognition because of some privacy benefits. “One reason was that palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm,” explains Kumar. “It also requires someone to make an intentional gesture by holding their palm over the device to use.”

Amazon One will use image scanning hardware that includes proprietary computer vision algorithms to capture and encrypt a palm image. You won’t even need an Amazon account to use the service, just a phone number and a credit card. Amazon One users will also be able to delete their biometric data from the company’s online portal if they no longer want to use the service.

Amazon has been working on this service for years, having applied to patent palm recognition technology at the end of 2019. Amazon One will appear initially in two Seattle-based stores, but the company has clear ambitions to bring this to a lot more locations beyond just its own stores.



Also:

Amazon Wants You to Pay With Your Palm. It’s a Sneak Attack on Apple and Google.

It’s also a potentially massive play to make Amazon the central ID system for your whole life—from banking and loyalty programs to tickets, age verification and someday even health records and corporate ID cards

Amazon One: Palm scanner launched for 'secure' payments

Amazon has announced a new payment system for real-world shops which uses a simple wave of the hand.

Its new Amazon One scanner registers an image of the user's palm, letting them pay by hovering their hand in mid-air "for about a second or so", it says.

The product will be trialled at two of Amazon's physical stores in Seattle.

But the company said it is "in active discussions with several potential customers" about rolling it out to other shops in the future.

"In most retail environments, Amazon One could become an alternate payment or loyalty card option with a device at the checkout counter next to a traditional point of sale system," it said.

Amazon also said the system could be used for "entering a location like a stadium" or scanning yourself into work instead of using an ID card.

"We believe Amazon One has broad applicability beyond our retail stores," it added.

Under the skin

Palm scanners are not a brand-new technology, and there are already some commercially available solutions.

"Palm-based identification is based on capturing the vein patterns of the palm," explains Dr Basel Halak of the Electronics and Computer Science School at the University of Southampton.

    Why Amazon knows so much about you

    Where the money is really made at Amazon

"These patterns are different for each finger and for each person, and as they are hidden underneath the skin's surface, forgery is extremely difficult."

Dr Halak said the level of security was roughly similar to a fingerprint scan, but could be used at a distance of a few inches, making it much more practical.

"In comparison with other form of identifiers such as physical devices, this form of biometric authentication is based on physical characteristics that stay constant throughout one's lifetime and are more difficult to fake, change or steal," he said.

Amazon has not detailed exactly how its version of the technology will work, beyond saying it will use "custom-built algorithms and hardware" and scan "distinct features on and below the surface" of the hand.

But it said one of the reasons it chose palm recognition was that it is "more private" than some other options.

"You can't determine a person's identity by looking at an image of their palm," it said, possibly a reference to the controversy surrounding facial recognition.

The firm has paused police use of its Recognition facial recognition software after civil rights advocates raised concerns about potential racial bias.

Amazon said other reasons for the choice included the "intentional gesture" of holding a palm over a sensor, and the contactless nature, "which we think customers will appreciate, especially in current times".

But privacy group Big Brother Watch criticised the development.

"Amazon continues to fill the market with invasive, dystopian technologies that solve non-existent problems," its director Silkie Carlo said.

"No one should have to provide biometric data in order to buy goods or services. Amazon's attempt to normalise biometric payment and home surveillance devices risks building a world in which we're more easily tracked and recorded, which will inevitably disempower citizens."

Early adopters can only try out the first version of the technology at two Amazon Go shops - the company's experiment with a real-world supermarket that has no checkouts, but instead tracks the shopper and what they pick up.

No Amazon account is required. To register, a customer can just insert their bank card and follow the on-screen instructions to link their palm print to that payment option, Amazon said.

The company promises that the print is not stored on site, but encrypted and kept securely in the Cloud. Customers could also delete their data via website, it added.

 

What Are Artificial Intelligence (AI) Crypto Coins?

1. What is artificial intelligence (AI)?

AI is a branch of computer science and engineering. AI systems evaluate a lot of data using algorithms and statistical models and base their predictions or choices on those analyses.

The study of intelligent machines that can carry out tasks that traditionally require human intelligence, such as speech recognition, decision-making and language translation, is known as artificial intelligence (AI).

AI comes in many different forms, such as rule-based systems, machine learning (ML) and deep learning. While machine learning systems learn from data and can get better over time, rule-based systems employ a set of established rules to make judgements.

Neural networks, a group of algorithms modeled after the human brain, are used by deep learning systems, a subset of machine learning, to carry out complicated tasks.

Numerous sectors, including healthcare, banking, transportation and entertainment, utilize AI. The development of AI raises ethical and societal questions, such as the effect on employment and the possibility of bias in decision-making, even while it has the ability to increase efficiency and open up new opportunities.

2. What are AI crypto coins?

AI crypto coins, also known as artificial intelligence coins or tokens, are a type of cryptocurrency that incorporates artificial intelligence technology into their operations.

Such currencies might serve as a dedicated platform for AI and ML researchers and developers to develop and test new models, applications and algorithms in a decentralized and open setting.

Unlike conventional cryptocurrencies, AI crypto coins study market patterns, make predictions and execute automated trades using machine learning algorithms and natural language processing. Because of their ability to learn and adjust to market developments, investors treat them as a more dynamic and responsive investment option.

Artificial intelligence technology is being used by some AI cryptocurrencies to increase network security. Some coins, for instance, utilize facial recognition technology to verify transactions and avoid fraud.

3. How do AI crypto coins work?

AI crypto coins leverage the power of artificial intelligence to make more informed trading decisions and improve the efficiency of transactions on a blockchain network. 

Here’s a step-by-step explanation of how AI crypto coins work:

The steps involved in the working of AI crypto coins

    Data collection: AI-powered cryptocurrencies gather information from a variety of sources, including news articles, social media and market patterns. Then, to find trends and forecast market behavior, this data is examined using machine learning algorithms.

    Trading strategy: The AI system develops a trading plan, including when to purchase, sell or hold the cryptocurrency, based on the analysis. Without human input, this decision-making process is carried out automatically.

    Execution: Once the AI system has chosen a trading strategy, it uses smart contracts to carry out trades on the blockchain network. When specific criteria are met, these automated agreements self-execute and run autonomously.

    Continuous learning and improvement: Machine learning algorithms are used by AI cryptocurrencies to continuously learn and enhance their performance. The system can review the outcomes of previous transactions and modify its tactics as necessary to enhance success in the future. The AI crypto tokens aim to become efficient because of this process of ongoing learning and development.

However, as with all cryptocurrencies, investors should exercise caution and conduct thorough research before investing in any AI crypto coins.

4. What are the benefits of using artificial intelligence in the crypto market?

The use of artificial intelligence in the crypto market can bring several benefits in terms of risk management, decision-making, security, and more.

Here are some of the main advantages:

    Improved decision-making: Huge volumes of data can be analyzed by AI, which involves spotting patterns and trends that human analysts would overlook. Using this research, traders may decide when to purchase, sell or hold cryptocurrencies with greater knowledge.

    Increased efficiency: Numerous functions in the cryptocurrency market, including data analysis, market trend monitoring and transaction execution, can be automated with AI. This can speed up transactions on the blockchain network and save traders time.

    Better risk management: AI can assist traders in better risk management by evaluating data and spotting potential pitfalls. This can assist traders in making more informed choices regarding the assets they should invest in and the amount they should invest.

    Better security: By spotting possible security breaches and taking steps to stop them, the application of AI in the cryptocurrency market can enhance security. By doing so, the possibility of hacking and other security problems can be decreased.

5. Are there any risks associated with artificial intelligence cryptocurrencies?

While the use of artificial intelligence in the cryptocurrency market offers many benefits, there are also several risks to consider, including regulatory hurdles, volatility, technical issues, and ethical concerns.

Here are some of the main risks associated with AI cryptocurrencies:

    Lack of regulation: AI cryptocurrencies are still a relatively new technology, and there is a lack of regulatory oversight in the market. This can create an environment in which scams and fraud are more likely to occur.

    Volatility: Like all cryptocurrencies, AI cryptocurrencies are subject to high levels of volatility. The market can be affected by factors such as government regulations, hacking and investor sentiment. This volatility can result in significant losses for investors.

    Technical issues: The use of AI in the cryptocurrency market is dependent on the quality of the data that is analyzed. If the data is inaccurate or incomplete, the AI system may make incorrect decisions. Additionally, there is a risk of technical issues, such as errors in the smart contract code, that can lead to loss of funds or security breaches.

Ethical concerns: AI cryptocurrencies can raise ethical concerns, such as the potential for bias in decision-making or the impact on employment in the financial industry. It is important to consider the ethical implications of using AI in the cryptocurrency market and to work toward ensuring that the technology is used in an ethical and responsible manner.

6. How to buy AI crypto coins?

Buying AI crypto coins is similar to buying any other cryptocurrency. 

Here are the general steps you can follow to purchase AI crypto coins:

    Choose a cryptocurrency exchange: You will need to find a cryptocurrency exchange that supports the specific AI crypto coin you want to purchase, which may charge a high trading fee.

    Create an account: The next step is to sign up with the exchange of your choice. This usually involves providing your email address, phone number and other personal information.

    Fund your account: After creating an account, you will need to deposit funds into your exchange account. This can be done using a variety of payment methods, such as bank transfer, credit card or cryptocurrency transfer.

    Buy the AI crypto coin: You can use the exchange to buy the AI crypto coin of your choice after your exchange account is funded. You can do this by selecting the coin you want to buy and specifying the amount you wish to purchase.

    Transfer the coins to your wallet: After purchasing the AI crypto coin, transfer it to a secure cryptocurrency wallet to ensure the safety of your investment

7. Are there AI crypto projects available on the market?

There are several AI crypto coins currently available on the market, such as SingularityNET, Fetch.AI, Numerai, and Cortex.

SingularityNET (AGI)

SingularityNET is an AI-focused blockchain platform that aims to create a decentralized AI economy. The platform offers a framework for building and exchanging AI applications, as well as allowing users to build and commercialize AI services.

Fetch.AI (FET)

Fetch.AI is a decentralized network that uses AI to create a “smart ledger” for autonomous machine-to-machine communication. From supply chain management to predictive maintenance are just a couple of the applications that can be made use of the network’s efficient data sharing and safe transactions.
Numerai (NMR)

Numerai is a decentralized hedge fund that uses AI to make investment decisions. The platform uses a unique data science competition model to create predictive models, which are then used to make trades in traditional financial markets.
Cortex (CTXC)

Cortex is an AI-based platform that allows developers to create and deploy machine learning models on blockchains. The platform develops a decentralized AI ecosystem with blockchain technology that may be utilized for a variety of applications, including speech and image recognition. 

8. Are AI cryptocurrencies safe?

The security of AI cryptocurrencies is influenced by a number of elements, including market sentiment, government regulations, the technology employed and the security procedures in place. 

While using AI in the cryptocurrency industry can increase efficiency and decision-making, it does not imply safety. The following are some risks related to AI cryptocurrencies that may affect their security:

    Hacking: Like any other cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence cryptocurrencies are susceptible to hacking. A hacker may be able to steal money or manipulate the market if they are able to access an AI trading system.

    Technical issues: Using AI in the digital currency market can be difficult and necessitates the use of high-caliber data and code. Investors may suffer substantial losses as a result of technical problems, such as coding bugs.

    Lack of regulation: Due to the cryptocurrency market’s mostly unregulated nature, fraud and scams may not be protected by authorized traditional financial regulatory bodies.

    Volatility: Undoubtedly, volatility impacts cryptocurrencies of any kind, including AI-based ones. In fact, AI coins may be even more volatile than other types of cryptocurrencies due to the use of AI algorithms. As a result, investors who rely on an artificial intelligence system to make trading decisions could suffer huge losses if the algorithm makes an incorrect prediction.

Therefore, investors should also consider the risks associated with the specific cryptocurrency and the security measures in place.

15-Minute Cities: What Are They And How Do They Work?

City planners say we have to rethink the way we build urban areas to make them more sustainable, healthy and just. The so-called 15-minute city is one idea. But are they viable?

As recently as a two decades ago, more people lived in the countryside than in urban areas. But that has since changed. Around 56% of the global population are now at home in cities, and the number continues to rise. According to the United Nations, two thirds of the roughly 10 billion people that will inhabit planet Earth by the year 2050 will live in built-up areas.

This consistent city spread has revealed serious cracks in their planning, shedding light on issues such as social injustice and exclusion, inadequate public transportation networks and smog-related health issues. One idea that has been gaining traction recently as a way towards more sustainable, livable and healthy futures are 15 minutes cities.

The idea behind the concept is to build cities in such a way that most daily necessities and services are located within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. Carlos Moreno, urbanist and professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris first came up with the idea in 2016. He wanted everyone to have easy access to shops, schools, doctors, the gym, parks, restaurants and cultural institutions.

Many people who live in cities today can only dream of that, and instead have to deal with traffic jams or poor public transportation to get where they want to go.

Human-centered design

Benjamin Büttner, mobility expert at the Technical University Munich says that in order to create more sustainable cities, things like green spaces, places to do sport, cinemas and shops need to be moved to where people live, not vice versa.

And that doesn't mean they have to be demolished and rebuilt, but that already existing public space needs to be rearranged.

The 15-minute city also offers a mobility concept: fewer cars and more space for cyclists and pedestrians, safe paths for children, people with disabilities or the elderly and places for social interaction.

"Cars are a problem, at least in urban centers. They take up too much space and they can hamper active mobility," Büttner said.

From Paris to Shanghai: more and more cities are reconstructing

There are already 16 cities worldwide that have implemented the 15-minute city concept or similar ideas, or are working on doing so. The approaches vary, with some cities looking to implement 20-minute concepts, others 10-minute ones, and yet others focused on either individual urban districts or set on recreating the entire city.

Among the pioneers is the French capital. After Carlos Moreno introduced his concept in 2016, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, presented it in her reelection campaign and began implementing it during the pandemic.

The core of the Paris concept sees schools as "capitals," making them the center of each neighborhood. Schoolyards are being refurbished into parks to make them accessible for other activities after classes and at the weekend.

Paris also wants to repurpose half of its 140,000 car parking spaces, turning them into green areas, playgrounds, neighborhood meetups or bike parking spots. Streets right across Paris are due to be bike-friendly by 2026.

In 2016, Shanghai announced plans to introduce what it calls "15-minute community life circles," a plan that would ensure all day-to-day activities are within 15-minutes walking distance. Another 50 Chinese cities are looking to implement the concept.

An initiative in the UK is also aimed at achieving a better quality of life for city dwellers. As part of its countrywide renaturalization program, the British government announced plans to make it possible for everyone to reach green areas or open water within a 15-minute walk from their home.

The 'Superilles' or super districts of Barcelona

The Spanish city of Barcelona has been experimenting with so-called Superilles or super districts. The concept takes several housing blocks and puts them into a super block. Only residents or delivery services have access with cars and the maximum speed limit is 10 kilometers (6 miles) an hour.

Many streets are blocked for cars and are instead being used in different ways. Former parking lots have been given over to trees, vegetables and flowers, and are now places where children can play and people can while away their time on benches in the shade.

"Tactical urbanism" is what Büttner calls this approach. The concept is being tested for two to six months "in order to see whether the situation has gotten better or worse," he says. "In that case you can still say 'let's go back to the way things were before.' But if it's got better then you can make it a lasting measure."

Currently, 60% of public space in Barcelona and 85% of streets are used for traffic. More than half the city's residents are faced with noise and dangerous air pollution, which is considerably higher than World Health Organization limits. The new districts should reduce motorized traffic by 21%.

Will less traffic harm businesses?

Studies show that more bike and pedestrian traffic in cities saves money, as less is spent in the road maintenance and health sectors.

The positive effects of cycling are being estimated at more than €90 billion ($96 billion) in the EU alone. By comparison, mobilized traffic causes more than €800 billion in costs for health, environment and infrastructure every year.

Many shop owners are concerned that the 15-minute city idea will cause a collapse in sales since customers can no longer reach them by car. But in the western US city of Portland, the 20% drop in car traffic following the introduction of a 20-minute city concept, also led to an additional $1.2 billion (€1.14 billion) staying in the local economy.

15-mins city concept different for every place  

In order for as many people as possible to benefit from changing cities, and to avoid any new imbalance and gentrification, experts highlight the need to roll out the concept across different districts and ensure those taking part have a good social mix. That also requires rethinking regulations and traditional planning categories, such as city centers, housing districts, suburbs and commercial areas which have led to inequality and exclusion in cities worldwide.

According to Büttner, political will and courage of politicians and administrations are vital, as well as the dialogue with citizens and all parties involved. Because there isn't a set solution for all cities.

Every place and every social, economic and ecological structure of a city is different, Büttner says. So deciding which measures are best, depends on the context.

 

 

 

The surprising stickiness of the "15-minute city"

    Urbanism trends come and go but the "15-minute city" framing of walkable, mixed-use urban development is a lot more than a fad.
    The historical roots of the 15-minute city are connected deeply with the current moment—one we will be living with for a long time to come.
    As climate change and global conflict cause shocks and stresses at faster intervals and increasing severity, the 15-minute city will become even more critical.

Urbanism trends come and go: Broadacre City, Radiant City, EcoCity. Yet the "15-minute city" concept—which implies having all necessary amenities within a short walk, bike ride, or public transit trip from one's home—has demonstrated stickiness not just as an idea, but as a powerful tool for action – from Paris to Seoul, from Bogotá to Houston.

For longtime urbanists, the 15-minute city seemed to merely repackage the historic urban pattern of development: walkable, mixed-used districts. Old wine, new bottle, as the saying goes. But for a new framing to ignite a global urbanism movement, clearly there’s more going on.

The obvious, yet incomplete, answer is the pandemic. Would Paris's Mayor Anne Hidalgo have pushed for progressive urban design without this framing? Undoubtedly. But with COVID-19 and its variants keeping everyone home (or closer to home than usual), the 15-minute city went from a "nice-to-have" to a rallying cry. Meeting all of one's needs within a walking, biking or transit distance was suddenly a matter of life and death. The pandemic created an urgency around equitable urbanism that sidelined arguments about bike lanes and other "amenities" that have roiled communities for years.

The term was coined in 2016 by Sorbonne professor Carlos Moreno, who was given an Obel Award in 2021 for developing the idea. A Google Trend search of worldwide usage of the term; the peak is approximately November 15, 2020.

When a new framing meets its moment, something more than a fad is emerging. Prior to the pandemic, few planners would have taken seriously the idea that "home" become the central organizing factor of all urban planning. Despite predictions of increased "telecommuting," working from home remained an outlier. Indeed, work and commerce have always been the central organizing factors of urbanism, from the post-agricultural revolution to the industrial and technological ones.

Historically, most cities grew up around trade, which then developed into more permanent places of commerce. Cities reduced transportation costs for goods and people by bringing them closer together. By reducing these costs, cities increased productivity and thus further evolved the city as a multiplier of culture and innovation. (As Aristotle said, "The city-state comes into being for the sake of living, but it exists for the sake of living well.") More than a century after the adoption of automobiles as the dominant mode of transportation, work still dictated urban geography, with increasingly longer commutes. Suburbia, the antithesis of the 15-minute city, couldn't exist without proximity to an economic urban engine.

The creative destruction of cities

COVID-19 may now be flipping this on its head, which is why the 15-minute city concept is taking hold in a way that it would not have before the pandemic. As demonstrated by the illustration below, the 15-minute city puts home at the center of urban spatial relationships. The point is not to have every cultural amenity and human desire within immediate reach of one's doorstep. New York can only have one Broadway theater district. But there's no question that Midtown Manhattan will have to follow a similar recovery pattern that Lower Manhattan did in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack: diversification. And that is true of the suburbs as well, significantly beyond the extent to which they've already diversified.

Indeed, the decentralization of work is not going to kill the city, it’s going to save it. There will be a lot of creative destruction along the way, but that is how the city renews itself: from within. The cities that don't decentralize work will struggle mightily in ways both known and unimaginable.

As climate change and global conflict cause shocks and stresses at faster intervals and increasing severity, the 15-minute city will become even more critical. Anyone who has followed Erik Klinenberg's work knows that resilience is rooted in place. Specifically, communities that foster and maintain social and economic relationships don't have to be wealthy, but they do need to be walkable and safe, with both residential and commercial buildings intact. And, I would add, for 15-Minute Cities to thrive, not just survive crises—and this cannot be stressed enough—they must also have plenty of mixed-income and equitable housing, as well as digital access.

This is how neighbors can know and understand each other: as local store owners and workers, colleagues, caregivers, educators, and friends. These are the people who come together when it matters most. The mutual-aid groups that appeared during the pandemic exemplify the importance of social cohesion in a crisis, which only works if necessities are within a reasonable distance of where people live.

And yet, 15-minute cities are not just a collection of autonomous medieval villages living in a constant state of crisis. The fractal nature of cities is what makes them dynamic places as a collection of connected neighborhoods with their own cultural histories that evolve over time and contribute to the identity of the larger city (such as the Harlem Renaissance, or the Latin jazz and hip-hop cultures of the South Bronx).

The word "connected" is doing a lot of work here. Yes, people need mass transit and other citywide services. But cities are as much an identity as a place. As historian Yuval Noah Harari might say, cities are a "fiction," a shared concept that organizes society around cooperation (however tenuous that may seem at times). While Harari focused on nation-states and religion as primary human fictions, I would argue that cities are the most innovative human fiction of all.

Dystopia, utopia, eutopia

In stark contrast to the 15-minute city is the predominant urban trend of the 20th century that continues into the current one: namely, rapid urbanization, both dystopian and utopian. An estimated 1 billion urban poor (1 of every 8 people on the planet) live in informal settlements. Then there's the dystopian ghost towns of China, where 130 million properties are vacant, which could house about 340 million people, surpassing the current U.S. population. The opposing trend is the ground-up construction of "smart city" utopias, such as Songdo City in South Korea and Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, among others. Even though they're largely considered soulless failures, hope springs eternal: Toyota's Woven City is now under construction in Japan.

Between dystopia (bad place) and utopia (no place) is "eutopia," a town planning term coined by 19th century Scottish polymath Patrick Geddes. It comes from the Greek origin of eu, meaning good, and topos, meaning place. Comprising "folk, work, and place," eutopia is the best possible manifestation of a city.

To better quantify and plan eutopias, Geddes developed the concept of a "vital budget." He argued that "society must transition from 'money wages'—which tend to dissipate energies toward individual gains at the expense of both natural and cultural qualities—to a 'vital budget' which facilitates 'conserving energies and organizing [the] environment towards the maintenance and evolution of life – social, individual, civic.'"

This sounds a lot like a 15-minute city, including the circumstances under which it emerged: through the cracks of creative destruction brought on by a technological revolution.
So, what’s new about the 15-minute city, then?

As a concept, not much, which is why I initially dismissed it as a fad. But as the "old wine, new bottle" framing went viral (pardon the pun) and began to spark real change, it became clear the historical roots of the 15-minute city connected deeply with the current moment—one that we’ll be living with for a long time to come.

"There is no such thing as a new idea," Mark Twain once said. "It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages."
 

John B. Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia Experiment and Reflections on the Welfare State

Signs in national and state parks all over America warn visitors, “Please Don’t Feed the Animals.” Some of those government-owned parks provide further explanation, such as “The animals may bite” or “It makes them dependent.”

The National Park Service’s website for Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan advises,

    It transforms wild and healthy animals into habitual beggars. Studies have shown that panhandling animals have a shorter lifespan.

What would happen if animals in the wild could count on human sources for their diet and never have to hunt or scrounge? What if, in other words, we humans imposed a generous welfare state on our furry friends? Would the resulting experience offer any lessons for humans who might be subjected to similar conditions? Not having to work for food and shelter sounds appealing and compassionate, doesn’t it?

These are fascinating questions that I am certainly not the first to ask. Because they require knowledge beyond my own, I cannot offer definitive answers. Readers should view what I present here as a prod to thought and discussion and not much more. I report, you decide.

Our personal pets live in a sort of welfare state. Moreover, for the most part, they seem to like it. My two rat terriers get free food and free health care, though I am not only their provider, but I am also their “master” too. In fact, my loving domination is a condition for the free stuff. It seems like a win-win, so maybe a welfare state can work after all. Right?

Let us avoid hasty conclusions. Perhaps the human/pet welfare state works because one of the parties has a brain the size of a golf ball or a pomegranate.

This is an area illuminated by ethology, the scientific study of animal behavior. One of the more famous ethologists in recent decades was John B. Calhoun, best known for his mouse experiments in the 1960s when he worked for the National Institute for Mental Health.

Calhoun enclosed four pairs of mice in a 9 x 4.5-foot metal pen complete with water dispensers, tunnels, food bins and nesting boxes. He provided all the food and water they needed and ensured that no predator could gain access. It was a mouse utopia.

Calhoun’s intent was to observe the effects on the mice of population density, but the experiment produced results that went beyond that. “I shall largely speak of mice, but my thoughts are on man,” he would later write in a comprehensive report.

At first, the mice did well. Their numbers doubled every 55 days. But after 600 days, with enough space to accommodate as many as another 1,600 rodents, the population peaked at 2,200 and began to decline precipitously—straight down to the extinction of the entire colony—in spite of their material needs being met with no effort required on the part of any mouse.

The turning point in this mouse utopia, Calhoun observed, occurred on Day 315 when the first signs appeared of a breakdown in social norms and structure. Aberrations included the following: females abandoning their young; males no longer defending their territory; and both sexes becoming more violent and aggressive. Deviant behavior, sexual and social, mounted with each passing day. The last thousand mice to be born tended to avoid stressful activity and focused their attention increasingly on themselves.

Jan Kubań, a personal friend of mine from Warsaw and a Polish biocybernetician, considers Calhoun’s experiment “one of the most important in human history.” He created The Physics of Life website where he elaborates on the meaning and significance of the ethologist’s work. About the final stages of the mouse utopia, Kubań writes,

    Other young mice growing into adulthood exhibited an even different type of behavior. Dr. Calhoun called these individuals “the beautiful ones.” Their time was devoted solely to grooming, eating and sleeping. They never involved themselves with others, engaged in sex, nor would they fight. All appeared [outwardly] as a beautiful exhibit of the species with keen, alert eyes and a healthy, well-kept body. These mice, however, could not cope with unusual stimuli. Though they looked inquisitive, they were in fact, very stupid.

Because of the externally provided abundance of water and food, combined with zero threats from any predators, the mice never had to acquire resources on their own. The young mice never observed such actions and never learned them. The life skills necessary for survival faded away. As Kubań notes,

    Utopia (when one has everything, at any moment, for no expenditure) prompts declines in responsibility, effectiveness and awareness of social dependence and finally, as Dr. Calhoun’s study showed, leads to self-extinction.

The “behavioral sink” of self-destructive conduct in Calhoun’s experiment (which he replicated on numerous subsequent occasions) has since been mostly interpreted as resulting from crowded conditions. Demographers warn that humans might succumb to similar aberrations if world population should ever exceed some imaginary, optimal “maximum.” Others like Kubań point out that the mice utopia fell apart well before the mouse enclosure was full. Even at the peak of the population, some 20 percent of nesting beds were unoccupied.

My instincts tell me that Kubań is correct in suggesting that a more likely culprit in the mice demise was this: the lack of a healthy challenge. Take away the motivation to overcome obstacles—notably, the challenge of providing for oneself and family—and you deprive individuals of an important stimulus that would otherwise encourage learning what works and what doesn’t, and possibly even pride in accomplishment (if mice are even capable of such a sentiment). Maybe, just maybe, personal growth in each mouse was inhibited by the welfare-state conditions in which they lived.

Calhoun himself suggested a parallel to humanity:

    Herein is the paradox of a life without work or conflict. When all sense of necessity is stripped from the life of an individual, life ceases to have purpose. The individual dies in spirit.

By relieving individuals of challenges, which then deprives them of purpose, the welfare state is an utterly unnatural and anti-social contrivance. In the mouse experiment, the individuals ultimately lost interest in the things that perpetuate the species. They self-isolated, over-indulged themselves, or turned to violence.

Does that ring a bell? Read Charles Murray’s 1984 book, Losing Ground, or George Gilder’s earlier work, Wealth and Poverty, and I guarantee that you will hear that bell.

Or, if nothing else, ponder these prophetic words from one of the otherwise short-sighted, opportunistic architects of the American welfare state, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1935:

The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.

I can think of one big difference between Calhoun’s mouse utopia and the human welfare state, and it does not weigh in humanity’s favor. For the mice, everything truly was “free.” No mouse was taxed so another mouse could benefit. In the human welfare state, however, one human’s benefit is a cost to another (or to many)—a fact that rarely acts as an incentive for work, savings, investment, or other positive behaviors. That suggests that a human welfare state with its seductive subsidies for some and punishing taxes for others delivers a double blow not present in mouse welfarism.

To what extent do the mouse utopia lessons apply to we humans? I would be careful about drawing sweeping conclusions. I am reminded, however, of these words from economist Thomas Sowell: “The welfare state shields people from the consequences of their own mistakes, allowing irresponsibility to continue and to flourish among ever wider circles of people.”

We should not need mice or other animals to teach us that, but perhaps they can.





12 Reasons to Oppose the Welfare State

Soft-Core Case

    Universal social programs that “help everyone” are folly. Regardless of your political philosophy, taxing everyone to help everyone makes no sense.
    In the U.S. (along with virtually every other country), most government social spending is devoted to these indefensible universal programs - Social Security, Medicare, and K-12 public education for starters.
    Social programs - universal or means-tested - give people perverse incentives, discouraging work, planning, and self-insurance. The programs give recipients very bad incentives; the taxes required to fund the programs give everyone moderately bad incentives. The more “generous” the programs, the worse the collateral damage. As a result, even programs carefully targeted to help the truly poor often fail a cost-benefit test. And while libertarians need not favor every government act that passes the cost-benefit test, they should at least oppose every government act that fails it.
    “Helping people” sounds good; complaining about “perverse incentives” sounds bad. Since humans focus on how policies sound, rather than what they actually achieve, governments have a built-in tendency to adopt and preserve social programs that fail a cost-benefit test. Upshot: We should view even seemingly promising social programs with a skeptical eye.

Medium-Core Case

    There is a plausible moral case for social programs that help people who are absolutely poor through no fault of their own. Otherwise, the case falters.
    “Absolutely poor.” When Jean Valjean steals a loaf of bread to save his sister’s son, he has a credible excuse. By extension, so does a government program to tax strangers to feed Valjean’s nephew. If Valjean steals a smartphone to amuse his sister’s son, though, his excuse falls flat — and so does a government program designed to do the same.
    “No fault of their own.” Why you’re poor matters. Starving because you’re born blind is morally problematic. Starving because you drink yourself into a stupor every day is far less so. Indeed, you might call it just desserts.
    Existing means-tested programs generally run afoul of one or both conditions. Even if the welfare state did not exist, few people in First World countries would be absolutely poor. And most poor people engage in a lot of irresponsible behavior. Check out any ethnography of poverty.
    First World welfare states provide a popular rationale for restricting immigration from countries where absolute poverty is rampant: “They're just coming to sponge off of us.” Given the rarity of absolute poverty in the First World and the massive labor market benefits of migration from the Third World to the First, it is therefore likely that existing welfare states make global absolute poverty worse.

Hard-Core Case

    Ambiguity about what constitutes “absolute poverty” and “irresponsible behavior” should be resolved in favor of taxpayers, not recipients. Coercion is not acceptable when justification is debatable.
    If private charity can provide for people in absolute poverty through no fault of their own, there is no good reason for government to use tax dollars to do so. The best way to measure the adequacy of private charity is to put it to the test by abolishing existing social programs.
    Consider the best-case scenario for forced charity. Someone is absolutely poor through no fault of his own, and there are no disincentive effects of transfers or taxes. Even here, the moral case for forced charity is much less plausible than it looks. Think of the Good Samaritan. Did he do a noble deed — or merely fulfill his minimal obligation? Patriotic brainwashing notwithstanding, our “fellow citizens” are strangers— and the moral intuition that helping strangers is supererogatoryis hard to escape. And even if you think the opposite, can you honestly deny that it’s debatable? If so, how can you in good conscience coerce dissenters?



 

A Look At The 'Fascist' Agenda Behind The 'Great Reset'

Recently, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director called for a “new Bretton Woods moment.” Meanwhile, the IMF is not the only entity pushing for a “great reset,” as the World Economic Forum (WEF) and other mainstream entities have been promoting the financial reboot propaganda.

The Status Quo Preps for the ‘Great Reset’ Via Intense Propaganda

In 2020 the world moved in lockstep in order to avoid the coronavirus outbreak. The government’s reaction to Covid-19 created a different world and the global economy has seen better days. The last report concerning the IMF’s call for a “new Bretton Woods moment,” news.Bitcoin.com’s findings discovered some of the “great reset” doctrines. The great reset concept is very similar to George Orwell’s famous dystopian novel 1984, and some believe the subject is a borderline ‘conspiracy theory.’

For instance, a website called greatreset.com has been floating around the web catching people’s attention this year. Additionally, a Youtube video published by the Corbett Report offers a guide to the so-called reboot. The great reset conversation is also quite topical and discussions can be found on many social media avenues like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook.

Likewise, websites like the greatreset.com have sparked intense speculation about an upcoming financial reset where the global elite forcefully invoke the ‘fourth industrial revolution.’ The coronavirus measures coupled with purported climate change and statist propaganda are considered the primers of this great reset concept.

In fact, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has been promoting the concept for years, and back in November 2016, the WEF tweeted about eight predictions for the year 2030. The WEF 2030 prediction tweet describes a world where, “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy” and the short clip says that everyone will rent everything they need. The prediction quote from the tweet originally stems from a member of Danish parliament, Ida Auken.

Ever since the #greatreset hashtag started trending again this week, people have also been responding to the 2016 WEF tweet. Today, the WEF website and its founder Klaus Schwab are still heavily promoting this idea.

“Do we aim to get back to where we were before, or should we take the opportunity to make society fairer, smarter and greener, and get humanity off the road to climate catastrophe – a ‘great reset’?” one of the WEF’s reboot editorials states. The editorial is the subject of Klaus Schwab’s book called: “Covid-19: The Great Reset.” The book describes how the virus disrupted both economic and social infrastructure and “what changes will be needed to create a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable world going forward.”

Moreover, the publication Time Magazine has dedicated a lot of time to get its readers to understand the great reset as well. Time has partnered with the WEF and hosts a whole section towards the reset ideas. Similar to the book and WEF’s stance, Time’s new collection of great reset editorials discuss topics like the coronavirus, climate change, and reimagining capitalism.

The Time articles are also filled with equality boosterism and environmental destruction cues from the progressive left. Oddly enough, one editorial notes that some “segments of society” can’t “make this great leap for­ward” in regard to the great reset. However, the author says that “governments can rewrite the social con­tract to provide for as many as possible remains urgent and vital.”

The Elite’s Great Reset Doctrine Is Considered an Advance Toward a New Type of Political Globalism and Fascism

Not everyone is too keen on the great reset concept, and there’s a number of hit pieces against the idea trending on the web. For a case in point, an editorial published by the publication, Winter Oak, calls the new trend Schwab’s “fascist reset.”

“This new fascism is today being advanced in the guise of global governance, biosecurity, the ‘New Normal,’ the ‘New Deal for Nature’ and the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution,’” explains the Winter Oak article.

The author adds:

The original fascist project, in Italy and Germany, was all about a merger of state and business. While communism envisages the take-over of business and industry by the government, which – theoretically – acts in the interests of the people, fascism was all about using the state to protect and advance the interests of the wealthy elite.

On Twitter, one of the authors of the “HPV Vaccine On Trial,” Eileen Iorio, told her 15,000 followers that the founder of the WEF “wants to take this unprecedented opportunity to ‘Reset’ the world.”

“#TheGreatReset was founded in Davos and you don’t get to vote on it. Climate Change policies will be the cover story. [Time Magazine] LOVES it,” she added.

 For quite some time now free-market advocates and Austrian economists have warned about the infectious political globalism spreading throughout the world. Meanwhile, central banks and politicians have been creating money out of thin air and feeding trillions to special interests.

Winter Oak says that Schwab’s agenda is based on his theory dubbed ‘stakeholder capitalism,’ which has a number of extremely fascist elements. In a stakeholder capitalist-based world, the private sector is tightly tethered to the government and “the notion that a firm focuses on meeting the needs of all its stakeholders: customers, employees, partners, the community, and society as a whole.”

 

 

Also:

A leaked French governmental document confirms the Great Reset planned by the New World Order

The heading of the schedule mentions the High Commissariat for Planning, a public organization created by the French government through a presidential decree signed by Emmanuel Macron, who appointed Francois Bayrou at the head of this institution.

The global elite want to drag mankind towards the biggest economic crisis ever seen in history.

This huge economic upheaval will create a massive hole in global demand. At that point, the food supply chain would be disrupted.

Bankruptcies and economic busts will be devastating and unprecedented. Unemployment will reach peaks never before seen and people will have problems getting essential food resources.

This phase anticipates many riots will lead to the total collapse of society.

The next step would be the militarization option. Martial law will be the only way to placate the massive rebellions and riots caused by a pre-planned world famine.

It would be a war scenario, but on a global scale.

The great destabilization would have the characteristics of the catalyzing event mentioned by David Rockefeller in 1995 before the United Nations.

This crisis will be accurately engineered in order to create a disorder which would take mankind to the New World Order.

Once the masses lose their jobs and the minimum essential resources to survive, they will be offered a choice: receive the universal income.

The creator of the Five Stars Movement, Beppe Grillo, has spoken about this subject. The FSM has been the mouthpiece of one of the main goals of the globalist circles such as the Club of Rome and the Bilderberg Group.

Globalism wants to drag mankind towards a complete deindustrialization and to the end of work, as it was known in the capitalistic economies.

The end of work would basically deprive the individuals of their independence. Only those who will accept the universal pittance would be in the conditions to survive.

The masses flooded by private debts will be asked to renounce their personal belongings in order to receive this basic income. The end of private property will be one of the ultimate goals.

In the global dictatorship, a collectivist society would arise in which the idea of personal property will no longer exist.

If the masses refuse the universal income and the mandatory vaccine that should be distributed in the summer of 2021, they will be forced to stay in the quarantine camps until they will come to globalist terms.

The true nature of globalism as a satanic transhumanistic ideology

It is the final exteriorization of the globalist ideology in which there is no place for free will. There is only total submission.

The true nature of this philosophy is indeed satanic.

This plan has the stated objective to destroy mankind and to reduce us to “cattle” with no rights and devoid of any spiritual sense.

It is the antithesis of Christian religion which sees man as a being gifted of free will and spiritual sense that leads him to reject the blind obedience to evil represented in this case by the global totalitarianism.

The representatives of the global elites are openly speaking of this plan.

Klaus Schwab, a Davos member, has recently mentioned the Great Reset as a “fourth industrial revolution” able to reach total mind control through a microchip brain implant.

It may seem science fiction, but the system already disposes of this technology. In a recent report presented on Italian public TV, a video was shown where a microchip was implanted in the brain of a pig.

Through this technology, it is possible to manipulate the will of the animal. This is what the New World Order has in mind, but men would be in the pig’s shoes.

Freemasonry sees mankind as a mass of “useless eaters.”

It is an ideology that deeply despises mankind and wants to enslave it.

The Great Reset has this sole purpose, namely to pave the way to the last phase of the NWO.

Technology would deprive man of his identity and will render him as a hybrid between a machine and a human being.

It is this transhumanist philosophy, which is deeply intertwined to Satanic and esoteric ideology, which aims to destroy the original creation of God.

Now the plan has been completely shown to us in open sight. There is no “conspiracy”. What was bravely stated by some independent journalists and researchers some decades ago is taking place now.

The Great Reset could only take place through the direct participation of the US.

If America falls into the hands of corrupt politicians blackmailed by China, the leading globalist power, then the globalist cabal would have no more obstacles.

The world super government will be the inevitable result as the Great Reset which will enslave whole mankind.

The Secret War On Cash

What the "War on Cash" Is Doing To Your Income, Savings, Life and Liberty, And How To Survive It

A SWISS AMERICA WHITE PAPER

Introduction

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values."

-- Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged

The government of the United States and many of its global allies are fighting a secret war - a war to destroy your right to own and use cash.

You need to know why this war is underway, how its battles are being intensified and fought, and what WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) - call them Weapons of Cash Destruction - are being used to separate you forever from your tangible money.

You and your family are already on this battlefield, targets caught in this conflict, whether you know it or not. Wake up and you have the power to win; to take a few easy steps that can outsmart and defeat the forces that are trying to conquer you, confiscate your cash, and impose a new worldwide serfdom on humankind.

The United States is quickly going "cashless," with consumers buying most things from automobiles to hamburgers via bank loans and credit cards. Americans carry more than a trillion dollars on "debt cards." Banks, for the moment, still tolerate relatively small amounts of cash transactions; but they would prefer to move solely to "cashlessness" - in which more and more of what we need is not earned or saved, but borrowed on credit for high interest.

Visa and Mastercard in 2017 pocketed approximately $43 Billion in transaction charges for card use. [1] And a growing number of major merchants likewise want - and some demand - the security and ease of customers using only credit or debit cards, not cash or checks, for purchases.

Government, above all, has been pushing for the fast-arriving cashless society. Cash and its transactions can be hidden and kept private; despite your bank being required to spy on you and report to the IRS any "unusual" financial activity. Government wants every financial transaction you make to be taxable, trackable, hackable, blockable, and therefore usable as a tool to enrich and empower Big Brother. [2]

When a "cashless" government turns authoritarian, it can not only monitor and tax everything you buy, but also ban purchases - ranging from foods it deems unhealthful to guns it deems dangerous. Without the approval of Big Brother, you can be denied the ability to buy what you want and need. Purchasing or repairing once-legal firearms, for example, can instantly be made impossible by preventing your credit card from being able to pay for it.

This authoritarian "cashless society" forces people to depend on credit cards, and on renting things instead of owning them. It deems cash as something only outlaws use. Government then can control what people are permitted to buy by regulating and intimidating banks and credit card companies. This is already starting to happen in the United States in ways that circumvent and destroy our Constitutional rights.

How far can a power-hungry government go by using "cashlessness" to control its citizens? It can become more totalitarian than the dictatorships imagined by dystopian novelists George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. This ominous power is already beginning to be enforced in one of the world's most powerful countries.

Enter the Dragon

"The cashless economy is racing ahead in China," writes journalist Donna Lu, "and its model could be the future for the rest of the world".The system has been described as dystopian in Western media." [3]

Communist China's totalitarian government is replacing paper money with no "money" at all, with a "cashless society." And advanced nations around the world, from Sweden to the United Kingdom and the United States, are rushing to do likewise. This global "War on Cash," now being fought on many battlefields with a variety of weapons, will decide the future of human freedom.

"Gold is money. Everything else is credit," said banker J.P. Morgan in 1913. Gold needs nothing else to give it value, but paper money needs backing - usually from a government that makes it "legal tender" and, by printing excessive amounts, can shrink or destroy this fiat currency's uncertain worth.

China's "cashless society" will be based on financial credit combined with political credit. China's state-imposed system of "social credit" (shehui xinyong), which could rule up to 1.3 billion of its citizens by 2020 or soon thereafter, will assign each person a score based on their loyalty to the state and Communist Party. Patriotism, hard work, "pro-social behavior" - such as being a blood donor and a good driver - and buying Chinese-made products while avoiding "materialism" will be rewarded. Those who do best will receive "green channel" benefits from the state.

But woe unto those who are overheard speaking ill of the government, try to look up forbidden topics on the Internet, smoke, drink, or get traffic tickets. When journalist Liu Hu recently tried to book a flight, CBS reported, he was told he was banned from flying because he was on the list of "untrustworthy people." When ordered by a court to apologize for recent tweets, Liu did so - only to be told by the communist judge that his apology was "insincere." [4]

"I can't buy property," Liu says. "My child can't go to a private school. You feel controlled by the list all the time." The "Social Credit' system reportedly takes into account, "what books citizens read, what they buy, and how long they spend playing video games." Bad social credit could eliminate your possibility of starting a business, staying in luxury hotels, and buying or renting property. Under limited testing of this surveillance program, people with bad social credit have already been blocked from booking more than 11 million airline flights and 4 million high-speed rail trips. Worse, bad social credit could deny you health care from government-licensed doctors or hospitals. This political power to extend or deny you credit is literally the power of life or death; because in a "cashless" society the only thing you have is credit.

Today in China, computer algorithms will track citizens online to decide if they are worthy of social credit. The goal of this, according to Martin Chorzempa at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, "is algorithmic governance" that can brand you an outlaw that other citizens risk their own safety by helping. [5]

One version of China's system will automatically notify people via their smartphones if they are within five hundred yards of a "deadbeat" with bad credit who is to be shunned or "debt shamed." [6] This, of course, also reminds citizens that a brutal Santa Claus government in Beijing is always watching and can reward or punish them.

Big Tech Merges With Big Brother

China is creating this near-total surveillance of citizens by combining government data with the private corporate data by using artificial intelligence (AI). Google, a typically left-of-center company, has helped China develop Dragonfly, an advanced AI program to spy on China's citizenry. When it came to helping develop AI for the U.S. military's Project Maven, however, Google reportedly decided that to help the U.S. was wrong, and quickly gave in to radical pressure to drop the project. [7]

At the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, radical billionaire George Soros called on President Donald Trump and other leaders to oppose China's "social credit" use of AI, which he called a "mortal danger" that could "give Xi Jinping total control over the people." It will, warned Soros, "subordinate the fate of the individual to the interests of the one-party state in ways unprecedented in history." [8]

"I find the social credit system frightening and abhorrent," said Soros. "What I find particularly disturbing is that the instruments of control developed by artificial intelligence give an inherent advantage to authoritarian regimes". For open societies, they pose a mortal threat." [9] Yet in America, the leftist politicians Soros supports are imitating the "cashless" authoritarian tactics of Communist China to destroy constitutional rights.

As Heritage Foundation scholar James Roberts writes, China's dictator-for-life Xi Jinping is using Chinese companies such as telecommunications giant ZTE "to power his unprecedented and aggressive implementation of a "social credit' system" to achieve "world domination by 2049 - 100 years after Mao proclaimed that goal." ZTE has inked contracts to share its technologies and surveillance potential with North Korea, Iran, and - in a last minute effort to save Marxist dictator Nicolas Maduro - Venezuela. [10]

At Davos, George Soros also denounced Xi Jinping's global Belt and Road initiative, which has lured poor third world nations into borrowing huge sums from China for Chinese-built projects such as railways. When these projects fail to produce promised economic benefits, China has demanded repayment in the form of national ports and airports. China has already used such neo-colonialist tactics to demand ports or airports that extend its military reach in Kenya, Zambia, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. Its "cashless" credit control of individuals and small companies is akin to colonizing nations by debt. [11]

The world's governments are rushing to banish cash, to create their own unnatural shortage of freedom by making legal only those transactions that can be tracked. Economic privacy will vanish in a "cashless society" because every purchase is carried out via a cell phone or computer - and is monitored by the government. The government will know what you buy, what you eat, and where you are at every moment of purchase".and will judge you accordingly.

As we are about to show you, exactly the same pattern of social control in China is emerging in the United States and other countries rushing toward the "cashless society." Governments have already begun to tell us not only how much of something we can afford - but what we can and cannot buy. [12]

If only gold is money, and paper currency is at best only quasi-money in which you can at least make private purchases, then the credit card world that is our "cashless" future is no money at all. You cannot count on paper currency, paper investments, or paper promises of a government-guaranteed retirement, and you definitely cannot trust plastic credit, which the government can erase instantly.

Welcome to the dawning new dark age of "cashless" economics, as devised by China. Ironically, China in the 7th Century A.D. invented paper money, later forcing its residents to exchange their silver and gold coins for this paper money that the government could easily print in any amount it wished. China even invented paper money with an expiration date, much like our paper money today whose value is constantly devalued by deliberate government-created inflation and overprinting.

Your ability to live in the dawning economy may depend entirely on the political whim of those who monitor your life and politics to determine how much credit they will permit you to have. Your future freedom may depend on having the courage to take important precautions now, as you will see.

Humankind will eventually rediscover the Framers' constitutional money. We will return to the 5,000-year tradition of precious metal that needs no government or computer to give it value.

Taking the World "Cashless"

In September 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. The tiny Caribbean island, already struggling with a $74 Billion debt, fell into darkness as the storm knocked out its electricity. Bank ATMs and credit card verification stopped working, leaving people unable to buy food and other necessities with their credit and welfare cards. Store security guards admitted only customers who could pay in cash. The Federal Reserve was forced to fly "a jet loaded with an undisclosed amount of cash" to the stricken island, Bloomberg News reported, to meet payrolls and help avert disaster as peoples' money ran out. [13]

"In a cashless world, you'd better pray the power never goes out," says Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute. [14] If you thought Puerto Rico was bad, take a slightly different recent crystal ball glimpse of the future as it appeared in India:

Frantic customers shove their way into already-crowded shops. Many have fistfuls of cash they are desperate to trade for whatever their savings can buy.

Only minutes earlier, the government had made a surprise announcement - that two of the biggest paper currency notes would, within hours, become worthless.

In one shop panicked customers pay the equivalent of $2,800 for an ounce of gold, the ancient and reliable world money. In another, frenzied buyers reportedly are paying $2,294 an ounce for the precious yellow metal because the government money they had trusted was suddenly melting, losing its value minute by minute before their eyes. [15]

Could this scenario really happen? It already did, on November 8, 2016 in India. This was a glimpse of what our future might be as governments begin restricting and outlawing the use of cash.

This sudden action was to catch tax evaders who had large secret holdings of "black money" in cash, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, head of India's ruling Hindu Party. His surprise decree forced them to exchange their corrupt money for new currency at a bank - and be thoroughly identified in the process. Their alternative was to watch their money lose its value if they did not want to explain to the government how they acquired so much while paying so little in taxes.

Modi called this "demonetisation" because it involved losing the traditional money of India that people could have saved for generations. In its place, people would be pushed to accept new "money" - bank accounts, credit cards, and other transactions that the government could monitor and potentially tax.

India had been the opposite of a "cashless" society. 96% of transactions there are done using cash, compared with only 8% of purchases in the U.S. and 3% in Sweden. And 86% of transactions in India have been done with the 500 and 1,000 Rupee currency notes - worth roughly $7.50 and $15 - that Modi banished and was partly replacing with new bills.

The decree imposing currency controls plunged the huge nation of 1.3 billion people into chaos. ATMs and banks stopped issuing the old money, but the replacement currency was too big to fit in ATMs and, by design, too little was available.

Air Force airplanes and helicopters moved thousands of tons of new paper money to keep the country running, and a currency control strict limit of $60 per day in Rupees was imposed on how much most people could get from their bank. [16]

India's "demonetisation" was a large-scale test of what globalist Progressives call the "cashless society," their ideological vision of the human future. Some believe it was done at the urging of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) "Catalyst: Inclusive Cashless Payment Partnership" and related globalist activists. [17]

In a cashless world your transactions would be an open book, and government can track you or even turn off your ability to buy and sell via your computer, cell phone or credit card links....like the Bible's Book of Revelation (13:17) describing only those with "the mark of the Beast" being able to buy or sell. [18]

Historically, gold money was replaced by unbacked paper fiat currency, through which you can be taxed simply by inflation; by government printing more money out of thin air. Soon you will have only electronic blips in a bank computer that can be changed into world government currency at the flip of a switch. Saving will become impossible, so your account will measure only your credit, debt and interest payments.

How close are we to such a future? Consider a few examples of how the government now confiscates cash:

*Denny Hastert became a prisoner of this War on Cash. The former Republican Speaker of the House was caught in a legal trap [19] used in this war. Hastert foolishly believed he was free to withdraw his own cash money from his own bank account without notifying the government. He was convicted of this once-innocent act that has become a crime. As a result, at age 74, Hastert in June 2016 was sentenced to serve 15 months in prison and pay a $250,000 penalty.

*Near Muskogee, Oklahoma, sheriff deputies pulled over Eh Wah, manager of a Christian rock band from Burma. In his car they found $53,249 cash in band earnings, CD and souvenir sales, personal money, and donations earmarked to go to a Christian church in Burma and a Christian orphanage in Thailand. The deputies took it all when they were dissatisfied with answers from Wah, for whom English is, at best, a second language. This put the burden of proof on him to show that the money was legal. [20]

*In Arlington, Virginia, Army Sergeant Jeff Cortazzo had been saving from his paychecks for his daughter's education since around the time of the financial crisis in 2008. After several years, he decided to redeposit this cash in a bank but was afraid it might be taxed again, so the bank teller told him to make deposits of less than $10,000. After he took this advice, the government seized his $66,000 college fund. After a long and costly legal battle, it returned only $45,000. This innocent man who committed no crime lost $21,000. [21]

*Virginia State Police stopped Victor Luis Guzman for speeding, then confiscated $28,500 in his car. A Pentecostal Church secretary, he was carrying parishioners' donations. The police refused to return this money until an attorney who served in the Justice Department's Asset Forfeiture Office during the Reagan Administration took the case pro bono. [22]

*In Athens, Georgia Andrew Clyde, a Navy veteran, saw the government seize nearly a million dollars from the bank account of his small firearms store. His "crime" was having an insurance policy capped at $10,000, so he and his staff never carried that much in cash when going to the bank to make deposits. It cost Clyde more than $150,000 in legal and other expenses, plus a fine of $50,000 to get the rest of his money back. "I did not serve three combat tours in Iraq only to come home and be extorted" by my government, Clyde told a congressional hearing in February 2015. [23]

*In Fairmont, North Carolina, country store owner Lyndon McLellan saw the IRS seize $107,000 from his bank account. The IRS then offered to return half his money if he signed an agreement to let them keep the other half. He refused and, with growing publicity about his case on Fox News and elsewhere, the IRS finally returned his money without explanation. [24] During legal battles, McLellan noticed an affidavit from a state official. The Department of Justice has an Equitable Sharing Program that gives state and local law enforcement agencies a share of the proceeds of forfeiture opportunities they give to the Feds.

Today's "Army" of Cash-Grabbers

The government now confiscates cash and other property from those who used to be regarded as law-abiding citizens, but who now have reason to fear merely carrying cash.

Welcome to the world of civil asset forfeiture, which in 2015 saw police confiscate more than $5 Billion from people. This was more than all the money stolen that year by burglars.

"The Civil Asset Forfeiture program has its roots in English law that American colonists rebelled against," writes Fox News reporter Doug McKelway. "Their rebellion was ultimately codified in the Fourth Amendment, which reads, in part: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated"'"

"Despite that unambiguous language, civil asset forfeiture was revived in the 1930s Prohibition era against bootleggers," McKelway continues. "It was revived again in the 1980s war on drugs and continues to this day." [25]

In civil asset forfeiture, a police officer can confiscate a citizen's cash or other property; charge the money but not the citizen with criminal activity; and keep the money if that citizen is unable to prove that he or she legitimately owns the cash.

This process circumvents constitutional rights. You are not "innocent until proven guilty." You are typically not even charged, so you have no right to a day in court. The burden of proof is on you to prove that your money or other property did not come from criminal activity.

Texas police seized over $200,000 from the family of Lisa Olivia Leonard, although neither she nor her relatives were ever charged with any crime connected to the cash. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider her case, Leonard v. Texas, but Justice Clarence Thomas wrote of it: "This system - where police can seize property with limited judicial oversight and retain it for their own use - has led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses." Because "the law enforcement entity responsible for seizing the property often keeps it, these entities have strong incentives to pursue forfeiture." [26]

A national study reported by Fox News columnist Barnini Chakraborty "found 60 percent of the 1400 municipal and county agencies surveyed across the country relied on forfeiture profits as a "necessary' part of their budget." [27]

Civil asset forfeiture is a ""gold mine' that lets the government take "little goodies,'" is how former New Mexico city attorney Pete Connelly described the process to USA Today. [28]

The worst asset forfeiture law reigned briefly in the city of Helper, Utah, where individual lawmen could receive 25 percent of whatever money or assets they seized. All that an officer needed to confiscate someone's million-dollar house or luxury car might be to find a fragment of a marijuana cigarette on or in the property.

When the highway robber wears a badge, some victims are too poor to hire a lawyer and fight back. Other citizens despair of regaining their cash when they cannot prove the seized money came from their private savings, and the legal case would pit their word against a law enforcement officer's.

Consider some other recent incidents:

*A law enforcement officer pulled over 81-year-old Nevada resident James Huff over a minor traffic violation. The officer asked Mr. Huff if he had any illegal substances "or large amounts of currency," according to the Heritage Foundation. The officer seized $8,400 in cash, then "immediately presented Mr. Huff with a "Disclaimer of Ownership' form, attempting to convince the octogenarian to sign away all legal interest in his money right there on the side of the road."

"Huff refused, intending to challenge the seizure," writes Jason Snead of the Foundation's Daily Signal. "Six months later, the Apache County Attorney's Office published a generic notice in a local paper that the office intended to forfeit "$8,400 in currency.'"

"The notice gave no specifics, so Huff and his lawyers did not know that the notice was for his money. As a consequence, he missed the deadline to file a claim, and a judge ruled that he had lost the opportunity to challenge the seizure. The money was ordered forfeited by default." [29]

*Phil Parhamnovich was pulled over in Laramie County, Wyoming for improper lane use and not wearing a seatbelt. The state Highway Patrol officers then asked if he was carrying "a large amount of cash," a weapon, or specific illegal drugs, according to the news webzine Vox. The officers seized and kept $91,800 that Parhamnovich had saved to buy a music studio. [30]

"We're going to let you go as long as you sign this waiver," the officers said. The waiver stated that the signer would "desire to give this property or currency, along with any and all interests and ownership that I may have in it, to the State of Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation, to be used for narcotics law enforcement purposes. If the property or currency cannot be used for narcotics law enforcement purposes, I desire that the property or currency be disposed of as the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation sees fit, in accordance with law."

As such waivers make clear, officers are now hunting for cash they can seize and are quick to ask people they have stopped to sign over the rights to their money without consulting a lawyer.

Frightened and unable to get an answer as to what the officers would do if he refused, Parhamnovich says he signed the waiver and was let go with only a $25 ticket for not using his seatbelt. He went through a prolonged fight he describes as "complete hell," including a court hearing he says he was never notified about, trying to get his money back.

*Robert Miller of Illinois was pulled over for speeding in Wyoming, but faced no criminal charges. Police, however, seized $470,000 in cash, claiming it was somehow associated with drug trafficking. The state refused to return his money. [31]

Some small towns used to be "speed traps" that picked the pockets of motorists passing through. Thanks to asset forfeiture, some towns and states now are "cash traps" that squeeze thousands of dollars from people never charged with or convicted of any serious crime.

*Californian Tan Nguyen was pulled over for going 78 mph in a 75 mph zone by a deputy who, according to his dashcam video and audio, reportedly asked Nguyen, "How much money you got?"

Nothing illegal was found in the vehicle, but the deputy took $50,000 in cash and $10,000 in cashier's checks. When Nguyen, who had won the money at a Nevada casino, questioned why his car was being searched, the deputy replied:

"Because I'm talking to you"well, no, I don't have to explain that to you. I'm not going to explain that to you, but I am gonna put my drug dog on that (pointing to money). If my dog alerts, I'm seizing the money. You can try to get it back but you're not". You'll burn it up in attorney fees before we give it back to you."

(A drug-sniffing dog can also be trained to "alert" to subtle officer cues. The law has authorized the asset forfeiture of objects carrying detectable traces of cocaine or other illicit drugs, however small, which reportedly is the case with as much as 90 percent of U.S. currency notes in circulation. By this standard, up to 90 percent of the cash in your wallet can be "linked" to drug use and seized right now.) [32]

The deputy then offered Nguyen a deal: If he surrendered the cash, the deputy would let him keep the cashier's checks and his car. If not, the deputy would seize it all, have the car towed away, and Nguyen "could walk," be left alone on foot in a desolate stretch of desert. [33]

The Feds Expand Their "License to Steal" Your Cash

On July 19, 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued an order greatly expanding Federal-State-Local cooperation in forfeiting assets. He called the order "federal adoptions," a program that allows state and local officers to seize cash or other property, then collect up to 80 percent of the proceeds by turning it over to the Federal Government to forfeit under federal law. [34]

"With care - we've gotta be careful - and professionalism, we plan to develop policies to increase forfeitures," said Sessions. [35]

Reining in this power has 84 percent public support, as well as the bipartisan endorsement of the 2016 Democratic and Republican Party platforms, according to Nick Sibilla of the Institute For Justice. Attorney General Sessions' move to enlarge forfeiture was opposed almost three to one by those in a Morning Consult/Politico survey, with only 19 percent supporting Sessions. [36]

"More than half the country has enacted civil forfeiture reform since 2014," writes Sibilla, with eight states restricting or banning adoptive forfeitures. But in other states, improperly-seized assets can be made legal if transferred to the feds for forfeiture under federal law. By this means, wrote one USA Today columnist, "in adoptive forfeiture cases, agencies can bypass state protections for innocent property owners." [37]

"The fact that Attorney General Sessions is going all-in on this really is offensive," said Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul. But when the 2018 Omnibus spending measure arrived, it contained no language reforming civil asset forfeiture, a measure widely popular with the public but not necessarily popular with local law enforcement. Or perhaps lawmakers privately agreed with Sessions that such punishing "wealth redistribution" from the "bad guys" to the "good guys" might sometimes be abused, but that it should continue. [38]

You, too, are a casualty of this war if you have a bank account and do not know that your bank is required to spy on you. We are rushing into a future where merely possessing cash, tangible money, could soon be a crime.

Cashing In

The Fed was chartered to furnish an "elastic" currency. [39] Progressive politicians had been frustrated that the inelastic, hard money gold standard prevented them from printing endless quantities of dollars to expand the government. The Fed has "protected" our currency so well that today's debased U.S. Dollar, no longer backed by anything, has roughly two pennies of the purchasing power of the 1913 dollar.

The Fed in little more than 100 years has become a central planner in the U.S. economy. Most Fed policymakers have been Keynesians, acolytes of the late British economist John Maynard Keynes. Booms and recessions in the business cycle could be leveled out, Keynes taught, if central banks injected stimulus money into a down economy and increased taxes during up times. (Later we shall discuss what today's socialist Members of Congress prefer: Modern Monetary Theory, which looks Keynesian at first glance, but which advocates perpetual government stimulus spending and never-ending higher taxation.)

A dollar taxed from the rich and given (via government) to the poor should generate a "multiplier effect" of up to $1.50 or more worth of economic stimulation, Keynes believed, because the poor had to spend this money immediately, not save it. This is supposed to increase the "velocity" of dollars from one person to the next, thereby boosting prosperity. By this same logic, Keynes wrote of the "paradox of thrift," that it is bad when people save money, because this slows its circulation in the economy.

Keynes' theories have failed in the real world. His stimulus works only in primitive economies. In advanced societies, every dollar of stimulus spending produces only 29 cents or less of growth; a terrible investment of taxpayer money. But his ideas have made government bigger and more intrusive, and the economy more distorted.

Cashing Out in Wonderland

The Fed has largely used up its bag of such monetary tricks. Like an addictive drug, its injections of newly-minted money no longer stimulate. Its debt manipulations such as Quantitative Easing no longer work.

The Fed drove the interest rate at which government and the giant corporations can borrow to almost zero for President Barack Obama's 8 years. Even the Fed's economists know that in the long run this will destroy the economy for those needing interest income, such as elderly bank savers and lenders. The government, however, is totally addicted to borrowing at zero interest and lacks the revenue to cover its huge debts if interest rates rise.

The Fed and other Progressive central banks around the world have an odd solution that brings us back to cash: let the interest rates fall below zero. Fall through the looking glass with Alice in Wonderland, many neo-Keynesians now promise, and somehow these even-steeper negative interest rates will cause amazing new economic stimulus.

"Like chemotherapy, negative interest rates are a harsh medicine," writes Bloomberg Business reporter Peter Coy. "It's disorienting when people are paid to borrow and charged to save." [40] It only works when money becomes a drug that distorts reality. Only one thing stands in the way of this Central Bank miracle solution, writes Coy, and that thing is cash. "As long as paper money is available as an alternative for customers who want to withdraw their [bank] deposits, there's a limit to how low central banks can push rates," writes Coy.

"In the absence of paper money," writes MoneyAndBanking, "central banks can reduce the nominal interest rate as far as they want" Very negative interest rates could help battle deep economic slumps like the Great Recession that began in 2007." The biggest borrowers, the government and giant corporations, could have money at essentially no cost, paid for by interest that used to be paid to thrifty savers. But if people have the option to withdraw their bank savings in cash, millions will do so rather than earning no interest while paying a hefty fee to the bank. The cashless society makes us prisoners. Cash limits our bank's ability to lower interest rates, because we are free to take our savings in cash and leave. [41]

The Hot War On Cold Cash

If people wish to withdraw their cash, why would the banks not just let them take their dollars and go? The answer is that doing so might unravel today's economic grand illusion and bring the whole game crashing down.

Total cash in the U.S. financial system is in the neighborhood of $1.36 Trillion. Americans also hold perhaps up to $10 Trillion worth of "money" in accounts in banks and other niches of the financial system.

The nightmare here is that market equities, bonds, mortgages, commercial paper and other wealth based on debt, and derivatives, add up to roughly $337 Trillion. If even a tiny panic or "run" on the system drove people into trying to cash out even 1% of these holdings, notes one research firm, these institutions would not have the physical cash to do so. [42]

This is what made the 2008-2009 crash so dangerous. Many people rushed to convert paper holdings to paper cash, which almost crashed the system and the dollar. The "War on Cash" is happening because cash has become intolerably dangerous to the giant money mirage built mostly out of debt paper. See the paper moon? See the cardboard sea? It's all make-believe, Alice. It's faith-based economics, magic that works only as long as people believe the illusion.

Our unbacked fiat currency itself is also an illusion. Do not be surprised when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) takes away the U.S. Dollar's monopoly as the Global Reserve Currency and gives the Chinese Yuan a share of that once-exclusive status. You will not want to be wholly invested in dollars or dollar-denominated stocks, etc., if or when that day comes - unless you have diversified a portion of your savings into gold.

Imagine a run on banks and digital funds, with millions of panicked people demanding dollars instead of the investment paper they already have. Cash could crash the whole system. This, say Progressive globalists, is why cash ultimately must be killed. People must stop believing that they have the choice to flee into cash. That option must soon be diverted, thwarted, blocked and ultimately eliminated forever.

Stigmatizing Cash

The United States Government is fighting against cash on many fronts, including its apprehension of former Republican Speaker of the House Hastert. Since 1970 the government has required banks to report any cash withdrawal or deposit of $10,000 or more.

In recent years a secondary crime was created called "structuring," which means withdrawing or depositing some amount less than $10,000 with the intent of avoiding the transaction being reported to the government. As we noted in a research paper, this is almost Orwellian, the sort of thought crime one finds in George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. Hastert was indicted for "structuring," for the crime of withdrawing less than the amount that must be reported to the government. [43]

Your bank is required to report to the government any financial behavior on your part it deems "suspicious" or "unusual." If you withdraw $500 over several weeks for big weekend yard sales, your bank might report this as "unusual," flagging you for government surveillance. Withdrawals and deposits in cash - and especially in $100 bills - will arouse more suspicion than doing your banking by check, credit card or electronic transfer. The aim is to make cash too troublesome to carry for large purchases, and to make government financial control absolute. [44]

Between 18% and 19% of total reportable income in the United States is effectively off the books, hidden from the government, according to a study by Edgar Feige of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Richard Cebula of Jacksonville University in Florida. [45]

This income - from drugs, prostitution, private gambling, home repairs, and a thousand other things paid in cash - could, Feige and Cebula estimate, have harvested half a trillion dollars in tax revenue for the government.

Cash makes it easy for criminals to thrive in an economic underworld of untraceable illicit transactions. A cashless society, say advocates, would drag this underworld out of the shadows and into disinfecting sunlight. In a cashless society, they say, crime would not pay as well as it does today.

"Do you see what is happening?" wrote libertarian journalist Lew Rockwell. "Simply using cash is enough to get you branded as a potential criminal these days." [46]

Cash and Carry Tax

In a future cashless society, as we have written, everything will be "hackable, trackable and taxable." [47] If a government official wishes, he can know within seconds your whereabouts and everything you have recently bought or sold.

Cash will eventually be outlawed or restricted, with capital controls already coming down hard in Sweden, Denmark, France, Greece, and many other places. Eventually those caught carrying more than a pittance in cash might be subject to its forfeiture...or even to imprisonment for committing "CashCrime."

Cash can be killed or made impractical in other ways, too. In 1999, another version of such a "Carry Tax" on cash was set forth by Marvin Goodfriend, a Senior Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia. Such a feasible tax, he wrote, "would serve as a powerful deterrent to hoarding currency." [48]

Goodfriend understood full well that our money already has a time-bomb tax ticking away inside it and lowering its value. That tax is the inflation deliberately created by the Federal Reserve by printing money in excess of our nation's productivity. This debases the money you earn and save.

Today the Federal Reserve punishes savers with "financial repression," the economist term for deliberately holding the rate of interest banks pay depositors below the real rate of inflation. This guarantees that savers in America today lose part of the value of their savings every day they keep their cash in the bank. This benefits banks and government, but not savers. Rates are going up, says the Fed, but real inflation may already be 10%.

Most investors now painfully understand that the Fed has been punishing nearly every traditional safe haven for savers - who are now losing value by having a savings account and keeping their money in inflating dollars.

Most now recognize that Americans are being systematically herded, like sheep, into higher-risk investments full of moral hazard - especially the stock market and wildly volatile cryptocurrencies.

Perhaps everything is going through Alice's looking glass and being reversed. We used to save, but saving is now by design a path to financial punishment. The new game appears to be to get us away from cash and into the equivalent of casino chips. Credit cards are casino chips that trick us into more spending and debt.

And we, whose ancestors knew the value of saving, are now expected via student loans and other offerings, to spend our lives not accumulating cash but accumulating credit, which we convert into debt. Your Social Security number is now your ear tag in this herd of sheep. Welcome to the new "cashless" feudalism that Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek warned was at the end of our road to serfdom.

Hayek wanted us to have the right to use whatever currency, cash or money we wish - to end the dollar monopoly and make these denationalized moneys compete. [49] President Trump could make America great again and rein in government power by restoring Constitutional cash, a dollar backed as it originally was by gold. Restoring the gold standard today, of course, might push gold's value above $5,000 an ounce. [50]

We could also restore our own gold standard by investing in gold, recognized as global money for thousands of years. We need to understand that the Secret War on Cash is actually a war against all of us....against our prosperity, freedom and independence.

Cash "is at the heart of how we choose to organize society," the economics website MoneyAndBanking.com acknowledged. [51]

"Cash is a vehicle for freedom".[that] can liberate people," wrote MoneyAndBanking, freeing them from oppressive governments. It can turn individuals from serfs into sovereigns, able to reassert control over their own lives.

"Cash is unique among payment instruments in that anyone can transact any time, any place, with no third parties. With this freedom comes strong privacy protection"." concluded a study by the Fletcher School at Tufts University. "This freedom creates a parallel economy outside the banking system." [52] (Our Emphasis)

And the "cashless" banking system has become key to creating all-pervasive, all-controlling global government surveillance and power over each of us.

This is why governments are so eager to impose a "cashless" society before their citizens understand the vast increase in government power, and loss of individual freedom, that come when cash goes away.

Look at the case and evidence in this study, and decide for yourself whether America should "cash out" or "cash in" our future. Recognize that for this brief moment in history, you still have the power to save at least your own family, and perhaps America, if you act decisively.

Outlawing Cash

Experts estimate that the average American inadvertently commits three felonies a day. [53] Odds are that if the government wished, you could be convicted of a crime.

The United States Government since 1970 has required banks to report any cash withdrawal or deposit of $10,000 or more, and now to report if you withdraw or deposit some amount less than $10,000 with the intent of avoiding the transaction being reported. Are bankers psychologists trained to identify your intent? As we noted, this law in a sense makes people criminals for violating an Orwellian "thought crime."[54]

"Federal regulations require banks to file "Suspicious Activity Reports' or SARs on their customers," writes Kevin Dowd, a Professor of Finance and Economics at Durham University in the United Kingdom and Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute. "Banks have minimum SAR quotas that they need to submit to the government: if they don't file enough, they can be fined and their executives and directors can be jailed for non-compliance. There is no penalty if bankers claim that a transaction is suspicious when it turns out not to be - and hence no disincentive to file false reports - and banks are not even allowed to inform suspects that they are under investigation." [55]

In late 2017, Bank of America and Wells Fargo followed JPMorgan Chase in banning cash deposits into other peoples' accounts, as one customer was shocked to learn when he was unable to deposit $50 in cash into his child's account. For two years prior to this new rule, Bank of America required a government-issued ID from those making such cash deposits. The banks, according to San Francisco Business Times reporter Mark Calvey, are responding to "security concerns" such as money-laundering. Fear of regulatory pressure and penalties, however, may have prompted these major banks to impose an ever-tighter stranglehold on customer use of cash. [56]

If you think it is getting harder to put cash into the bank, as we explored in our book Don't Bank On It! The Unsafe World of 21st Century Banking, try taking out cash that you believe is yours - but that government now regards as an asset of the bank's. Odds are that your bank will resist and delay your request to make any sizeable cash withdrawal from your account. This is partly because banks nowadays often have little cash on hand, and partly because of the government paperwork your withdrawal requires the bank to complete. Even innocent cash transactions at a bank can now land citizens in a world of hurt. [57]

Terry Dehko awoke one January morning to discover that the IRS had seized the entire $35,000 bank account of his small Michigan grocery store. Dehko's "crime," he learned, was that he could only get insurance that would cover $10,000 or less of cash losses, so he had employees make frequent cash deposits of less than $10,000 at the local bank across the street to be safe from robbers. As the law requires, that bank flagged his deposits for the IRS with a "Suspicious Activity Report," on his business.

Dehko and his children had run their little market for 35 years and faithfully reported and paid taxes on their income. Audits showed no tax law violations.

Nevertheless, the IRS saw these multiple deposits of just under $10,000 as "structuring." It seized his operating capital and filed a typical asset forfeiture case not against him, but against the cash accused of involvement in lawbreaking: United States of America v. $35,651.11 was the official legal case name. [58]

The "Cashless" Future

Sweden had been enthusiastic about becoming the world's first entirely "cashless" society. By 2018, however, the Swedes became frightened at the power this gives government - not only their own, but Russia's should it launch an invasion by hacking, scrambling, or shutting off Sweden's computer networks as it did Ukraine's, leaving Swedes helpless, without access to either cash or credit. [59]

In India, where 1.3 billion people made 96 percent of their transactions in cash, the government's surprise announcement on November 8, 2016, hit like a thunderbolt. It meant that those with no proof of where their cash came from were unable to exchange it for the new currency; in effect, their untaxed, undeclared cash would within hours become unconvertible and hence forfeited.

This "demonetization" caught millions who held fortunes in "black money." They ran to the precious metal stores, reportedly bidding up the price of gold to as much as $2,800 an ounce in paper currency that to them would become worthless at Midnight. It was a shock treatment designed to force India into compliance with the cashless society. [60]

The European Central Bank is eliminating the 500 Euro bill. Australia is aiming to dump its $100 bill. Leftist Venezuela purged its largest-denomination 100-Bolivar bill, inflation-shriveled to a value of less than the cost of printing it. The multinational company Apple wants to kill cash, perhaps because its cell phones would then for millions of customers take the place of cash in making purchases. [61]

American economist Larry Summers has joined other globalist Progressives barking to abandon the $100 bill. Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz wants to bury all U.S. currency, from the $100 to the $1 bill. Economist Kenneth Rogoff wrote a book titled The Curse of Cash. Their aim is to make cash too risky and troublesome to carry for large purchases, and to make government financial control absolute.

United States currency once had $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills, all of which were terminated in 1969. President Richard Nixon, who severed the dollar's last convertibility to gold in 1971, purged the $5,000 bill explicitly because "criminals" found its use convenient.

The U.S. Dollar is the world's reserve currency. Approximately $580 Billion in American cash - 65 percent of all paper dollars - is used outside the U.S. This includes up to 75 percent of all $100 bills, 55 percent of $50 bills, and 60 percent of $20 bills - mostly in Latin America and the former Soviet Union. Seven countries have adopted our dollar as currency - and 89 others keep their currency "in a tight trading range relative to the dollar," according to Kimberly Amadeo of The Balance. [62] As America goes cashless, the impact will be felt around the world.

Will Our Future Be "Encryptoed"?

Some have sought privacy and prosperity not in the dollar but in new cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies - from the same root word for "secret" as encryption codes and burial crypts - rose from an obscure idea to become a market where these digital entities sold for less than 25 cents apiece, then to a speculative fad and frenzy that saw this two-bit money-substitute soar to an astonishing $19,000 apiece before plunging in value. Financial analysts compared it to the tulip mania of the Netherlands in the early 1600s, where before the hypnotic spell was broken, people were frantically paying the cost of a house for a single tulip bulb.

The impulse driving buyers to Bitcoin is not entirely irrational. Most of us sense that something is fatally wrong with the paper dollar, that its political overvaluation is insane, unreliable, and doomed to collapse. Most of us understand that the cashless society with its political control and government surveillance would take us quickly down a road to serfdom and to the end of our rights as Americans. Our distrust of paper money and "cashlessness" is healthy.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies also appeal to an unhealthy get-rich-quick fantasy that in many people's minds replaces hard work and prudent risk-taking with high-risk gambling and luck as primary values. Bitcoin may have already had its meteoric rise and fall, speculators say, but other cryptocurrencies might yet offer an almost free ride to enormous wealth.

This kind of thinking is like betting your retirement money on the nearest state lottery, which celebrates a handful of people who guess the winning numbers - but never mentions the millions of losers whose luck fails and rent money is wasted on a pipedream. The Lotteries tell you how rich you would be if you had picked the correct handful or so of numbers in the right order; they do not tell that the odds of doing this are a tiny fraction of your chance of being struck by lightning on a sunny day. To government, Lotteries are its tax on stupid people.

Your "lucky" number for cryptocurrencies today is roughly 1,564, with a purported combined "value" of over $300 Billion. That is the number of "cryptos" from which customers can now choose.

Just as companies have IPOs, Initial Public Offerings of stock, so cryptocurrencies have ICOs, Initial Coin Offerings, of their proto-products to raise working capital, with more coming all the time. Early 2017, for example, saw 902 ICOs, 418 of which quickly failed, suggesting that many were outright scams. [63]

But will even one of these new cryptocurrencies repeat Bitcoin's magic - leaping from a cost of mere pennies to a peak price around $20,000 apiece? Not likely. By the time a cryptocurrency demonstrates any market success, it is probably no longer a bargain"and in any event will be risky and volatile.

"Bitcoin is the greatest scam in history," wrote Bill Harris, founding CEO of PayPal, in April 2018. "It's a colossal pump-and-dump scheme, the likes of which the world has never seen." He notes that Bitcoins are accepted almost nowhere, and some cryptocurrencies nowhere at all. Their value can swing by 10 percent or more in a single day, making them "useless as a means of payment".and undesirable as a store of value." Bitcoin, like the dollar, has "no intrinsic value," wrote Harris. "It only has value if people think other people will buy it for a higher price - the Greater Fool theory." [64]

Cryptocurrency trading exchanges are, Harris wrote, "far less reliable and trustworthy than ordinary banks and brokers." Their history is a cautionary tale, from Mt. Gox in Japan, whose 24,000 customers in 2014 were defrauded of $460 Million; to NiceHash, looted by hackers of $75 Million in 2017; to Coincheck, hacked and robbed of at least $534 Million in 2018. [73] Even when working normally, most exchanges are slow, can charge high fees, and are far quicker turning your money into Bitcoins than your Bitcoins into money. [65]

Here are a few points to consider: Bitcoin's mysterious origin may be the U.S. Government itself. [66] Nearly half of all Bitcoins may be "owned" by only 1,000 people, who can manipulate the market. [67] The Internal Revenue Service is already beginning to tax it, and MIT's Technology Review reported in April 2018 that tracking cryptocurrency criminals is much easier than people used to think possible. [68] In April 2018, MIT's Technology Review suggested three ways to destroy Bitcoin. [69]

Will cryptocurrencies survive? Probably, because central banks, governments, and their crony investors are considering ways to issue their own versions resembling Bitcoin. [70] Arizona has begun the legal process to let residents pay taxes in crypto. So has Ohio. [71] These coming cryptocurrencies will be entirely trackable, taxable, and blockable, and might function like a hybrid between a government bond and a credit card. Is Bitcoin opening the way to escape from government-controlled "cashlessness," or is it a cunning trap luring the sheep to precisely where government wants them to go? As Stevie Wonder's song "Superstition" warns: "When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer."

The Power Brokers of Cashlessness

As of 2019, Americans carry more than a trillion dollars of debt on credit cards, often at double-digit rates of interest. More than one in five of us now have more high-interest credit-card debt than savings. [72] A CareerBuilder survey found that 78 percent of American workers - nearly 4 out of 5 - are currently living paycheck to paycheck. [73] And as the 2019 Federal Government partial shutdown showed, among those living on the high-debt, high-risk cliff edge of destitution were large numbers of government workers whose income in wages plus benefits is roughly $126,000 per year; many apparently believe that they can be as addicted to high spending and reckless debt as politicians.

The 2018 Federal Reserve Board's Economic Well-Being Report found that 40 percent of American households do not have enough money to pay for an unexpected $400 expense, and 61 percent lack the cash to cover a $1,000 emergency, such as a hospital emergency room visit or urgent car repair. [74] Other recent research found that 39 percent of Americans are already "cashless," having nothing in their savings. [75]

America's politicians are beginning to imitate China's methods of controlling citizens in a "cashless" society. In early 2018, liberal Democrat and New York State Comptroller Thomas J. DiNapoli, who controls where the state invests its $209.1 Billion pension fund, sent out a letter. It went to institutions that control our credit cards and borrowing - Visa, MasterCard, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, American Express, Discover Financial Services, and others.

DiNapoli's message was about as subtle as a guy wearing a pinstripe suit, black shirt, and white tie saying: "You gotta nice place here. Too bad if anything happened to it. But maybe I can provide you some, er, protection if you cooperate."

DiNapoli suggested that these companies should consider whether gun transactions should be classified with restricted high-risk purchases like pornography, illicit drugs, and cryptocurrencies. "If gun violence continues unabated in society," he wrote, "public outcry...may grow and create significant financial risk for the company."

DiNapoli suggested that these companies look into implementing ways to block all credit card purchases of firearms, ammunition, and gun accessories. The implied threat was clear: stop extending credit to gun and ammunition buyers, or risk having New York State investment money taken away from your bank or credit company, because the Left wants to ban guns. [76]

The Federal Government has already tried such intimidation, as we explained in our book Don't Bank On It! The Unsafe World of 21st Century Banking. President Barack Obama implemented "Operation Choke Point," which threatened big regulatory problems for financial institutions that did not withhold banking and credit services from firearms and ammunition-sellers, among others. Such sellers were to be cut off even if they had never been found guilty of any criminal wrongdoing. [77]

This was the naked weaponization of regulatory power to injure or kill ideological targets. Consumer Research analyst Beau Brunson noted that Operation Choke Point "used reputational risk as a tool for bank coercion." Now so does DiNapoli. With "cashlessness," when customers have no other way to buy, such "nuclear warfare" can destroy businesses and products.

In August 2017, President Donald Trump halted Operation Choke Point, but as The Hill observed, "a program terminated unilaterally can be resumed unilaterally." On the day Progressive Democrats regain power, this is one of ten thousand kinds of authoritarian force they immediately will put back into law.

In a "cashless society," government can not only monitor and tax everything you buy, but also ban specific purchases - ranging from foods it deems unhealthful to guns it deems dangerous. It can destroy the ability of targeted companies and even whole industries to sell to customers.

All credit will become politicized and ideological by government. Soon the nanny statist Progressives will be able to use "cashlessness" to dictate everything you can buy or donate to"for your own and society's good, as they define it. Big Brother could never have such power if Americans privately were able to use cash.

Like the power to tax, the Progressive power to regulate is the power to kill. At a certain point, "private" banks are so regulated that they become like utility companies whose "profit" is guaranteed but whose policies are almost entirely dictated by government bureaucrats. For all intents and purposes, the government will "own" the banks - or, as cynics say, the banks will "own" the government, as we discussed in Money, Morality & The Machine. The bottom line is that the government will control all credit and banking, just as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels proposed in 1848 in The Communist Manifesto.

We have good reason to distrust government paper money, an unreliable store of value that our politicians debase by at least 2 percent each year through deliberate inflation. The dollars you save will have at least 20 percent less purchasing power each decade, and over a 40-year working lifetime will lose roughly 80 percent of their value. This politicized "cash" comes with built-in obsolescence, and its value can be destroyed anytime the government decides to print or digitally create tens of trillions more dollars out of thin air.

Modern Monetary Theory

Once upon a time, when America was a nation of free enterprise, the money was honest and flowed voluntarily to those businesses that offered the best products and services for the price. This made an innovative, independent, and prosperous nation. Elections were contests between two centrist, pro-capitalist political parties that cooperated to make America succeed.

Then, a bit more than 100 years ago, our politics began to be polarized by Progressives; collectivists who are essentially socialist and bent on re-engineering our society and human nature itself. When in office they took money coercively via high taxes and oppressive regulations. Their aim was to "redistribute the wealth" not based on merit, but by giving it to their cronies and voters. This has increasingly made America like the unfair lands our ancestors left in search of freedom and opportunity in America.

These Progressives have turned America into a land with a pro-enterprise party and an anti-capitalist socialist party. This has turned every election into a game of Russian roulette, making investors reluctant to build new companies or hire people because if the socialists win they could confiscate investor property.

The best known of the self-described socialists who have hijacked the Democratic Party is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who says she favors "Modern Monetary Theory" (MMT). Few had heard of it, but we clearly saw where Progressivism was headed and devoted an entire chapter of our book The Great Debasement to MMT. [78]

Modern Monetary Theory assumes that all currency is always the property of the government, which may permit you to use it with the understanding that government can always reclaim its money via taxation, inflation, or outright seizure. The government, which can never go bankrupt, can print as much money or create as much credit out of thin air as it needs or wants, thereby creating prosperity and solving all financial problems.

New Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez thus believes that government can pay for never-ending government programs to provide healthcare, college education, and other benefits for all - because government can print all the money needed to pay for hundreds of trillions of dollars in such social programs. Deficits, according to MMT, are not a curse but a blessing.

Our nation has not one coin of the realm but two. One is the coin of money, and Ocasio-Cortez calls those who earn much of it wealthy. But to the productive, money is capital, green energy that can be invested to create things. This socialist congresswoman nevertheless wants to use force to confiscate and redistribute what these producers have earned. This is easily done since the government enacted Progressive taxation and regulation which can be targeted on individuals.

The second coin of the realm is power, the coin in which Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is wealthy. Power is not taxed, but it can command everything and more than money can. As the Soviets showed, Communist leaders live "cashlessly," but they live in seacoast villas, are driven by chauffeurs, and have every material wish fulfilled. In her first stint as House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi kept standby pilots and an Air Force corporate jet at her beck and call, stuffed with the most expensive caviar, wines, and other costly delicacies at taxpayer expense.

In Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's socialism, all are equal but, as George Orwell said, some are more equal than others. Note that she advocates redistributing other people's wealth"but she never proposes redistributing government power back to the people that government was supposed to serve. Instead, she wants all power and wealth transferred to the government, led by people like her. We know where this path leads: to an impoverished, dictatorial society with an all-powerful ruling class whose citizen-serfs are moneyless and in ever-deepening debt.

You have a far better alternative - real cash, as the Framers of America's Constitution specified: cash that was precious metal, silver and gold. Only Mother Nature produces this kind of "cash," and in very small quantities, so politicians cannot debase it. Our Framers wanted a future in which government remained small, and individual Americans would forever be independent and free to grow as big as they are able.

You can win the War Against Cash by converting a portion of your debased government money into the real secure store of value and independence our Framers specified. They wanted us to have constitutional cash with a proven 5,000-year track record of security, liquidity, and privacy that requires no government or computer to give it value. You will not only defeat the Progressive scheme to impose serfdom, but also turn honest money into a new American Revolution for your family's and nation's independence and liberty.

Footnotes:

[1] Sidney Fussell, "Who Wins When Cash Is No Longer King? It Won't Be the Poor," The Atlantic, December 21, 2018.

[2] Sarah Jeong, "How a Cashless Society Could Embolden Big Brother," The Atlantic, April 8, 2016.

[3] Donna Lu, "Scan Here to Pay," New Scientist, January 12, 2019.

[4] Ben Tracy, "China Assigns Every Citizen A "Social Credit Score' to Identify Who Is and Isn't Trustworthy," CBS New York, April 24, 2018.

[5] Paul Mozur, "Inside China's Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras," New York Times, July 8, 2018.

[6] Amelia Heathman, "This Chinese App Tells You If You're Within 500 Metres of Someone in Debt: The App Is Part of China's Vision for a Social Credit System by 2020," U.K. Evening Standard, January 23, 2019; Tyler Durden, "China Starts "Debt Shaming': New App Warns Users If They Are Walking Near Someone in Debt," ZeroHedge, January 22, 2019.

[7] David Samuels, "Is Big Tech Merging with Big Brother? Kinda Looks Like It," Wired Magazine, January 23, 2019; Yuval Noah Harari, "Why Technology Favors Tyranny," The Atlantic, October 2018 issue.

[8] Tom Simonite, "The "Mortal Danger' of China's Push Into AI," Wired Magazine, January 24, 2019; "Soros Calls China's Xi "Most Dangerous' Foe of Free Societies," France24, January 24, 2019; "Soros Warns China Uses Algos to Find Threats to One-Party Rule," Swissinfo.ch, January 25, 2019.

[9] Ibid.

[10] James Roberts, "Opinion: As Maduro's Grip On Venezuela Slips, China's ZTE Helps Him Cling to Power," ZeroHedge, January 27, 2019.

[11] Tanner Greer, "One Belt, One Road, One Big Mistake," Foreign Policy, December 6, 2018; "China Rules: How China Became a Superpower," New York Times, November 18, 2018; James Griffiths, "Are the Wheels Coming Off China's Belt and Road Megaproject?" CNN, December 31, 2018; Maria Abi-Habib, "China's "Belt and Road' Plan in Pakistan Takes a Military Turn," New York Times, December 19, 2018; Tyler Durden, "How China Colonized An Entire Continent Without Firing a Single Shot," ZeroHedge, January 5, 2019; Ben Mauk, "Can China Turn the Middle of Nowhere Into the Center of the World Economy?" New York Times Magazine, January 30, 2019.

[12] Conor Friedersdorf, "The Hubris of Trying to Eliminate Cash," The Atlantic, June 6, 2014.

[13] Jonathan Levin, "New York Fed President Sent Puerto Rico a Jet Filled With Cash," Bloomberg, October 9, 2017. URL: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-09/fed-s-dudley-sent-puerto-rico-a-cash-filled-jet-as-money-ran-low

[14] Ryan McMaken, "In A Cashless World, You'd Better Pray The Power Never Goes Out," ZeroHedge, October 11, 2017. URL: http://www.zerohedge.com/print/605093

[15] Jayant Bhandari, "Scenes of Panic In India As Gold Price Skyrockets After Currency Ban," ZeroHedge, November 16, 2016. Page 11. URL:http://www.zerohedge.com/print/577732; Jayant Bhandari, "Gold Price Skyrockets in India after Currency Ban," Acting-Man.com, November 9, 2016. Page 2. URL: http://www.acting-man.com/?p=47768

[16] Tyler Durden, "India Uses Helicopters, Air Force Planes To Deliver Freshly Printed Cash," ZeroHedge, November 21, 2016. URL: http://www.zerohedge.com/print/578326

[17] Norbert Haering, "A Well-Kept Open Secret: Washington Is Behind India's Brutal Experiment of Abolishing Most Cash," ZeroHedge, January 12, 2017. URL: http://www.zerohedge.com/print/585012

[18] Craig R. Smith and Lowell Ponte, The Great Debasement: The 100-Year Dying of the Dollar and How to Get America's Money Back. Phoenix: Idea Factory Press, 2012. Page 222.

[19] Craig R. Smith & Lowell Ponte, "How Hastert's Secret Sex Scandal Touches You: Your Bank Spies On You, Too, For the Government," Western Journalism, June 1, 2015. URL: http://www.westernjournalism.com/how-hasterts-secret-sex-scandal-touches-you/

[20] Christopher Ingraham, "How Police Took $53,000 From A Christian Band, an Orphanage and a Church," Washington Post, April 25, 2016. URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/25/how-oklahoma-cops-took-53000-from-a-burmese-christian-band-a-church-in-omaha-and-an-orphanage-in-thailand/?utm_term=.09e960da0384

[21] Shaila Dewan, "Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required," New York Times, October 25, 2014.

[22] Nick Sibilla, "Cops Use Traffic Stops To Seize Millions From Drivers Never Charged With A Crime," Forbes, March 12, 2014; Sarah Stillman, "Taken," New Yorker, August 12, 2013.

[23] "Small Business Owners Forced to Battle IRS Over Seized Bank Accounts," Fox News, February 11, 2015.

[24] Melissa Quinn, "The IRS Seized $107,000 From This North Carolina Man's Bank," Daily Signal (Heritage Foundation), May 11, 2015.

[25] Doug McKelway, "Has Asset Forfeiture Gone Too Far? Truck Seizure Case Sparks Outrage, A Call for Change," Fox News, September 20, 2017.

[26] Damon Root, "Clarence Thomas Attacks Civil Asset Forfeiture, Lower Court Follows His Lead," Reason Magazine, June 21, 2017; Edgar Walters and Jolie McCullough, "Texas Police Made More Than $50 Million in 2017 from Seizing People's Property. Bit Everyone Was Guilty of a Crime," Texas Tribune, December 7, 2018.

[27] Barnini Chakraborty, "Despite Promises to Cut Back, Fed and State Governments Press Asset Forfeitures," Fox News, January 30, 2018.

[28] Sheldon Gilbert, "Asset Forfeiture: Rap Albums and Hard-Earned Cash Are the Government's "Little Goodies'," USA Today, March 13, 2018.

[29] Jason Snead, "4 Startling Forfeiture Abuse Stories," The Daily Signal/Heritage Foundation, September 29, 2015.

[30] German Lopez, "'It's Been Complete Hell': How Police Used a Traffic Stop to Take $91,800 From An Innocent Man," Vox, March 20, 2018.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Craig R. Smith and Lowell Ponte, The Great Debasement: The 100-Year Dying of the Dollar and How to Get America's Money Back. Phoenix: Idea Factory Press, 2012. Page 219.

[33] Glen Meek, "I-Team: I-80 Cash Seizures By Sheriff's Office Raises Questions," LasVegasNow.com/Channel 8 News, June 24, 2015; John Kerr, "When the Highway Robber Wears a Badge: Civil Forfeiture Allows Law Enforcement to Steal from Innocent Americans," Washington Times, August 15, 2014.

[34] C.J. Ciaramella, "Justice Department Rolls Out New Policy to Seize More Money Under Asset Forfeiture," Reason Magazine, July 19, 2017; Deborah Connor, "Policy Directive 17-1," Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice. URL: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3897281/Asset-Forfeiture-Policy-Directive-17.1.pdf

[35] Barnini Chakraborty, "Despite Promises to Cut Back, Fed and State Governments Press Asset Forfeitures," Fox News, January 30, 2018.

[36] Nick Sibilla, "Congress Killed Efforts to Undo Sessions's Civil Forfeiture Expansion, Despite Unanimous House Votes," Forbes, April 2, 2018.

[37] Sheldon Gilbert, "Asset Forfeiture: Rap Albums and Hard-Earned Cash Are the Government's "Little Goodies'," USA Today, March 13, 2018.

[38] Barnini Chakraborty, "Despite Promises to Cut Back, Fed and State Governments Press Asset Forfeitures," Fox News, January 30, 2018.

[39] Craig R. Smith and Lowell Ponte, Don't Bank On It! The Unsafe World of 21st Century Banking. Phoenix: Idea Factory Press, 2014. Pages 83-95.

[40] Peter Coy, "The Death of Cash," Bloomberg Business, April 23, 2015. URL: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-23/negative-interest-rates-may-spark-existential-crisis-for-cash

[41] "Has Paper Money Outlived Its Purpose?" MoneyAndBanking.com, August 4, 2014. URL: https://www.moneyandbanking.com/commentary/2014/8/4/has-paper-money-outlived-its-purpose

[42] The $1.47 Trillion estimate of U.S. currency in circulation is as of February 22, 2017. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, "How Much U.S. Currency is in Circulation?" Current FAQs. URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12773.htm

[43] "Why Central Banks HATE Cash and Will Begin to Tax It Shortly," Zerohedge, May 18, 2015. URL: http://www.zerohedge.com/print/506627

[44] David Crouch, "'Being Cash-Free Puts Us at Risk of Attack': Swedes Turn Against Cashlessness," U.K. Guardian, April 3, 2018; Maddy Savage, "The Swedes Rebelling Against a Cashless Society," BBC News, April 6, 2018.

[45] "Why Central Banks HATE Cash and Will Begin to Tax It Shortly," Zerohedge, May 18, 2015. URL: http://www.zerohedge.com/print/506627

[46] Craig R. Smith and Lowell Ponte, The Great Debasement: The 100-Year Dying of the Dollar and How to Get America's Money Back. Phoenix: Idea Factory Press, 2012. Page 219.

[47] Josh Barro, "When It's a Crime to Withdraw Money From Your Bank," New York Times, June 5, 2015. URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/06/upshot/when-its-a-crime-to-withdraw-money-from-your-bank.html; Conor Friedersdorf, "Why Is It a Crime to Evade Government Scrutiny?" The Atlantic, June 2, 2015. URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/when-evading-government-spying-is-a-crime/394640/

[48] Marvin Goodfriend, "Overcoming the Zero Bound on Interest Rate Policy." Richmond, Virginia: The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, August 2000. Pages 12-15. URL: https://www.richmondfed.org/~/media/richmondfedorg/publications/research/working_papers/2000/pdf/wp00-3.pdf; see also Declan McCullagh, "Cash and the "Carry Tax'," Wired Magazine, October 27, 1999. URL: http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/news/1999/10/32121

[49] Craig R. Smith and Lowell Ponte, The Inflation Deception: Six Ways Government Tricks Us"And Seven Ways to Stop It! Phoenix: Idea Factory Press, 2011. Pages 216-218.

[50] Craig R. Smith and Lowell Ponte, "Bracing for a Trump vs. Fed Money Crisis: It's Time to Grab Your Wallet," Pontificationblog, March 13, 2017. URL: https://pontificationblog.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/bracing-for-a-trump-vs-fed-money-crisis/; Ralph Benko, "President Trump: Replace The Dollar With Gold As The Global Currency to Make America Great Again," Forbes, February 25, 2017. URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2017/02/25/president-trump-replace-the-dollar-with-gold-as-the-global-currency-to-make-america-great-again/#2756cb5e4d54; John D. Mueller, "Trump's Real Trade Problem Is Money," Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2017. URL: https://eppc.org/publications/trumps-real-trade-problem-is-money/ or https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-real-trade-problem-is-money-1485302886; Nathan Lewis, "Limited Convertibility: Something New For A 21st Century Gold Standard," Forbes, March 8, 2017. URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanlewis/2017/03/08/limited-convertibility-something-new-for-a-21st-century-gold-standard/#11264e847999

[51] "Has Paper Money Outlived Its Purpose?" MoneyAndBanking.com, August 4, 2014. URL: https://www.moneyandbanking.com/commentary/2014/8/4/has-paper-money-outlived-its-purpose

[52] "Cost of Cash," Fletcher School, Tufts University. URL: http://fletcher.tufts.edu/InclusionInc/Programming/Research/Cost-of-Cash

[53] Harvey A. Silverglate and Alan M. Dershowitz, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. New York: Encounter Books, 2011.

[54] Josh Barro, "When It's a Crime to Withdraw Money From Your Bank," New York Times, June 5, 2015. URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/06/upshot/when-its-a-crime-to-withdraw-money-from-your-bank.html; Conor Friedersdorf, "Why Is It a Crime to Evade Government Scrutiny?" The Atlantic, June 2, 2015. URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/when-evading-government-spying-is-a-crime/394640/

[55] Kevin Dowd, "Killing the Cash Cow" (Briefing Paper), Adam Smith Institute (London). URL: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56eddde762cd9413e151ac92/t/58e261e0725e250f97324ece/1491231222152/Kevin+Dowd+paper.pdf; Kevin Dowd, "The War on Cash Is Even Worse Than It Seems," Mises Institute, July 13, 2018.

[56] Mark Calvey, "Big Banks Ban Cash Deposits Into Others' Accounts," Bizwomen, November 28, 2017. URL: https://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2017/11/big-banks-ban-cash-deposits-into-others-accounts.html?page=all; Lee Boyce, "Why Won't Nationwide Building Society Let Us Put Cash Into Our Grandchildren's Savings Accounts?" ThisIsMoney, April 30, 2018.

[57] Craig R. Smith and Lowell Ponte, Don't Bank On It! The Unsafe World of 21st Century Banking. Phoenix: Idea Factory Press, 2014.

[58] Terry Dehko, "Bullied by the IRS," Washington Times, September 26, 2013; Radley Balko, "The Federal "Structuring' Laws Are Smurfin' Ridiculous," Washington Post, March 24, 2014.

[59] David Crouch, "'Being Cash-Free Puts Us at Risk of Attack': Swedes Turn Against Cashlessness," U.K. Guardian, April 3, 2018; Maddy Savage, "The Swedes Rebelling Against a Cashless Society," BBC News, April 6, 2018.

[60] Jayant Bhandari, "Scenes of Panic In India As Gold Price Skyrockets After Currency Ban," ZeroHedge, November 16, 2016. Page 11. URL:http://www.zerohedge.com/print/577732; Jayant Bhandari, "Gold Price Skyrockets in India after Currency Ban," Acting-Man.com, November 9, 2016. Page 2. URL: http://www.acting-man.com/?p=47768; Tyler Durden, "India Uses Helicopters, Air Force Planes To Deliver Freshly Printed Cash," ZeroHedge, November 21, 2016. URL: http://www.zerohedge.com/print/578326; Norbert Haering, "A Well-Kept Open Secret: Washington Is Behind India's Brutal Experiment of Abolishing Most Cash," ZeroHedge, January 12, 2017. URL: http://www.zerohedge.com/print/585012

[61] Don Feisinger, "Apple's Next Goal Is Killing Paper Money Once and For All," Fortune, October 17, 2016. URL: http://fortune.com/2016/10/17/apple-tim-cook-cash/

[62] Kimberly Amadeo, "Why the Dollar Is the Global Currency," TheBalance.com, February 19, 2018.

[63] Bill Harris, "Bitcoin Is The Greatest Scam in History," Recode, April 24, 2018.

[64] Ibid.

[65] Samuel Gibbs, "Head of Mt Gox Bitcoin Exchange on Trial for Embezzlement and Loss of Millions," The Guardian, July 11, 2017; Robert McMillan, "The Inside Story of Mt. Gox, Bitcoin's $460 Million Disaster," Wired, March 3, 2014; Steven Perlberg, "The Statements from People Who Lost Their Money on Mt. Gox Are Seriously Sad," Business Insider, March 4, 2014; Alexandra Harnewy and Steve Stecklow, "Mountain of Trouble: Twice Burned - How Mt. Gox's Bitcoin Customers Could Lose Again," Reuters, November 16, 2017; Rishi Iyengar, "More Than $70 Million Stolen in Bitcoin Hack," CNN Tech, December 8, 2017; Reuters, "Japan Seeks to Clean Up Cryptocurrency Markets After $530 Million Coincheck Heist," Fortune, January 29, 2018.

[66] Kate Beioley and James Pickford, "Bitcoin Investors Struggle to Cash Out New Fortunes," Financial Times, January 12, 2018; Rich Newman, "Here's a Big Bitcoin Problem I Just Discovered," Yahoo Finance, December 7, 2017; Kate Beioley, "Investors Face Barriers Trying to Turn Bitcoin Profits Into Pounds," Financial Times, January 16, 2018.

[67] Sophie Bearman, "Bitcoin's Creator May Be Worth $6 Billion - But People Still Don't know Who It Is," CNBC, October 27, 2017; Taryn Tarrant-Cornish, "Bitcoin "Created As Dollar 2.0 by US Government to Fund Secret CIA and MI5 Missions'," U.K. Sunday Express, January 20, 2018.

[68] Olga Kharif, "The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market," Bloomberg, December 8, 2017.

[69] Jen Wieczner, "Bitcoin Investors Aren't Paying Their Cryptocurrency Taxes," Fortune, February 13, 2018; Douglas Heaven, "Sitting With the Cyber-Sleuths Who Track Cryptocurrency Criminals, MIT Technology Review, April 19, 2018; Molly Jane Zuckerman, "MIT Comes Up With Three Ways to Destroy Bitcoin," CoinTelegraph, April 24, 2018.

[70] Mike Orcutt, "Governments Are Testing Their Own Cryptocurrencies," MIT Technology Review, September 25, 2017.

[71] Marie Huillet, "Bill Allowing Residents to Pay Taxes in Crypto Passes Arizona House Committee," CoinTelegraph, April 23, 2018; Yogita Khatri, "Ohio Becomes First U.S. State to Allow Taxes to be Paid in Bitcoin," Coindesk, November 26, 2018.

[72] Maria LaMagna, "1 in 5 Americans Have More Credit-Card Debt Than Savings," MarketWatch, February 22, 2018.

[73] Michael Snyder, "78% of Americans Live Paycheck to Paycheck (Including Many Government Workers Affected By The Shutdown)," ZeroHedge, January 10, 2019; Danielle Paquette, "'I See No Way Out': Living Paycheck to Paycheck Is Disturbingly Common," Washington Post, December 28, 2018.

[74] Nicole Lyn Pesce, "Why 4 in 10 Adults Can't Cover a $400 Emergency Expense," MarketWatch, May 22, 2018.

[75] Ibid.

[76] Lowell Ponte, "How a 'Cashless' America Could Become 'Gunless'," American Thinker, April 12, 2018. URL: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/04/how_a_cashless_america_could_become_gunless.html; Maria LaMagna, "Could Credit-Card Companies Ban Gun Sales?" MarketWatch, March 3, 2018; Andrew Ross Sorkin, "How Banks Could Control Gun Sales If Washington Won't," New York Times, February 19, 2018; Glenn Blain, "State Urges Banks, Insurers to Stop Doing Business with Gun Industry," New York Daily News, April 18, 2018. See also Mark Hendrickson, "Farewell to Cash," Forbes, May 28, 2015; Kevin Dowd, "Killing the Cash Cow" (Briefing Paper), Adam Smith Institute (London). URL: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56eddde762cd9413e151ac92/t/58e261e0725e250f97324ece/1491231222152/Kevin+Dowd+paper.pdf; Kevin Dowd, "The War on Cash Is Even Worse Than It Seems," Mises Institute, July 13, 2018; James Setterlund, "Get Ready for a Financial Assault on the Second Amendment," National Review, January 10, 2019.

[77] Craig R. Smith and Lowell Ponte, Don't Bank On It! The Unsafe World of 21st Century Banking. Phoenix: Idea Factory Press, 2014. Pages 156-159.

[78] Craig R. Smith and Lowell Ponte, The Great Debasement: The 100-Year Dying of the Dollar and How to Get America's Money Back. Phoenix: Idea Factory Press, 2012. Pages 101-129, "The Age of "Modern Money'." See also Mark Jeftovic, "The Disturbing Rise of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)," ZeroHedge, January 21, 2019; Karl Smith, "The Uses and Abuses of Modern Monetary Theory," National Review, January 11, 2019; Bob Murphy, "Bob Murphy Exposes the Upside-Down World of MMT," ZeroHedge, January 25, 2019; Josh Barro, "Modern Monetary Theory Doesn't Make Single-Payer Health Care Any Easier," Intelligencer, January 9, 2019; Michael Strain, "'Modern Monetary Theory' Is A Joke That's Not Funny," Bloomberg, January 19, 2019; Eliza Reiman, "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Says the Theory that Deficit Spending Is Good for the Economy Should "Absolutely' Be Part of the Conversation," Business Insider, January 7, 2019; Ben Hunt, "Modern Monetary Theory (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love The National Debt)," ZeroHedge, January 18, 2019.