[crazygringo]

Incorrect. The benefits come from more informed macroeconomic policy, more targeted economic tools, and potential benefits around more targeted and effective sanctions against international bad actors.

The idea is that the benefits to the user are a more stable economy (lower inflation, higher employment), a more effective safety net (politicians more likely to approve payments that can't be spent on gambling), and greater peace (targeted sanctions as an alternative to war).

Whether any/all of these will work effectively is debatable of course, but there are legitimately good reasons to think they would. And no, there's no alternative that does them better, and crypto certainly doesn't. Again, the individual merits can be argued, but the idea that it is "all bad no good" is simply not the case here.

[PatentlyDC123]

That gives a lot of weight to the idea that officials in the Fed (or your country's central bank) and government will make the best decisions for everyone given increased data produced by a digital currency. History doesn't really show that officials make the right decision even with sufficient data. For a small example, until a few months ago many US Treasury and Fed officials insisted that any inflation would be "transitory" at worst. Now many admit they were wrong, but still argue about the state of the economy given such inflation and whether or not the US is in a recession. On a larger scale, many US officials were blatantly wrong about their conclusions regarding the markets going into the 2008 financial crisis, a few have even admitted as much. Even if we assume officials would only make the "right" decision given the right data, it seems unlikely that a digital currency would give officials sufficient knowledge of many factors for the 2008 crisis, e.g. swaps and other financial instruments used by large banks, and the so-called "shadow banking" system.

I could be wrong, but I don't think many citizens would vote for a policy that would give up so much of their privacy, autonomy, and civil rights for the hope that central banks and government officials will make the right economic decisions next time given the data a digital currency provides.

[crazygringo]

Central bank policy isn't perfect, because human beings aren't perfect. But it's far, far, far better than having no policy at all -- economies used to follow crazy harmful cycles of booms and busts, bank runs, runaway inflation, and so forth. It's easy to take for granted how effective central bank policy is because many of us haven't experienced the lack of it at home in our lifetimes.

The central bank doesn't have a crystal ball to know with certainty where inflation will go. Much of that depends on historical events outside the US that are by definition unknowable -- how will food and energy prices be affected by war in Ukraine, for example?

But central banks are able to plan and then adapt appropriately as circumstances change. And citizens have long voted for effective central bank policy -- economic fears about inflation and recession are reliably the #1 popular concern. If a digital currency can help this, most voters will be very happy with it. After all, for people (like myself) who already make 99% of their purchases with credit cards, they're not giving up much.

[landemva]

You may be confusing USA Congressional fiscal policy with central bank monetary policy. Federal Reserve (private contractor with no federal government employees) could spend more resources on regulating banks instead of bailing out banks via purchases of bank's underperforming debts.

[colinmhayes]

I don't believe that having more data will lead to worse decisions. I could be wrong, but I believe the vast majority of the population doesn't care about privacy and is willing to sacrifice marginally more than nothing to keep it.

[StanislavPetrov]

>For a small example, until a few months ago many US Treasury and Fed officials insisted that any inflation would be "transitory" at worst. Now many admit they were wrong,

That government officials are fallible and incompetent is (in my opinion) the weaker argument. Even if they were extremely competent and had a crystal ball that predicted the future (they don't), nobody should trust the intentions or the goals of government agencies with such ubiquitous and unchecked power.

[landemva]

> more effective safety net (... payments that can't be spent on gambling)

> there's no alternative that does them better

State-run EBT cards exist and seem to be working OK.

Federalizing more things reduces people's ability to usefully vote with their feet by moving to a different State when people don't agree with State government policies.

> more stable economy (lower inflation, higher employment)

Speculative and seems unlikely. Do you have examples where a CBDC helps pay for projects better than the existing payment rails?

[StanislavPetrov]

>but there are legitimately good reasons to think they would.

There is no good reason for the government to have complete control over all of your finances and purchasing decisions on a granular level (if you value human freedom, autonomy and dignity at all).

[AbrahamParangi]

One might as well discuss the user-benefits of nerve stapling.