[Bo0kerDeWitt]

A disappointing development to be honest. This is one more way the government can exert control over the people. The downsides risks are horrendous.

I haven't yet read this publication in full, but last year I did read the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee paper on the topic[1]. The title was quite telling: "Central bank digital currencies: a solution in search of a problem?" This was authored by Lord King, the former governor of the BoE, amongst others. It seems the current BoE is taking a different course.

[1] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5802/ldselect/ldecon...

[garyclarke27]

More than disappointing - this is terrifying - even worse than China's social credit scoring on New Zealand's Cigarette prohibition. This would enable governments to monitor and control literally every penny you spend or recieve. I wrote a blogpost explaining who money currently works and warning about this development.

https://www.onedb.online/blog/what_is_money

[phphphphp]

The government already has high degrees of insight into and control over the money of most people in the UK. Most people in the UK (in my experience, at least) couldn't care less about the day to day privacy implications of banking, it's not on their radar. The suggestion that this would enable the government to monitor more might be strictly true because it enables new types of monitoring, but that is already practically true in every way for most people.

I find it difficult to understand why a digital pound is anything more than an incremental improvement (or worsening from your perspective). What does a digital pound enable the government to do that would interfere with the everyday person's life, that isn't already possible?

(Also, cigarette prohibitions and social credit scoring are hot button issues for people who believe in the sanctity of individual rights but they're not at all related in the context of this discussion. There's nothing terrifying about a cigarette prohibition to most people, especially in the UK, where we've literally had various cigarette restrictions imposed over the years to the point where a NZ style prohibition would probably not even register for almost everyone.)

[djfobbz]

You must not know anything about the Digital Yuan being tried out in China and the kind of restrictions it comes with...for example: expiring currency, spend it by mm/dd/yyyy or loose it! Oh dear govt, give it to me harder.

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/digital-currency-yuan-c...

[walterbell]

UK, June 2021, https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/bank-of-england-tells-

> Tom Mutton, a director at the Bank of England, said during a conference on Monday that programming could become a key feature of any future central bank digital currency ... what happens if one of the participants in a transaction puts a restriction on [future use of the money]? ... Sir Jon Cunliffe, a deputy Governor at the Bank, said digital currencies could be programmed for commercial or social purposes ... “You could think of giving your children pocket money, but programming the money so that it couldn’t be used for sweets. There is a whole range of things that money could do, programmable money, which we cannot do with the current technology.”

[tomatocracy]

This is stupid in so many ways but the worst thing is the idea doesn't even work - barter economies have existed since the dawn of civilisation and children are pretty used to them too, with trading cards, collectibles etc. All the child has to do is buy something of value they are "allowed" and then barter that for sweets with a friend whose money isn't restricted in that way.

[akomtu]

"... children ... money ... sweets ..." that's some neuro-linguistic programming right here: the sir-jon skillfully inserts thin needles into the three spots and the patient becomes a willing veggie.

[walterbell]

> sir-jon [-athan]

Good catch. Need a browser plugin that converts text to phoenetically similar terms.

[CuriousSkeptic]

Look up the Wörgl Experiment for more background on why this could be desirable.

Basically it was used successfully to keep a local economy going during the great depression.

[hakfoo]

The concept of expiring currency has been experimented with even in the era of paper notes.

Alberta, for example, tried circulating banknote-analogues that required a stamp to be added every week to remain valid; the goal was to encourage people to spend them rather than having to pay for the stamp.

In the context of something like economic stimulus payments, where the goal is to force jumpstarting the economy NOW, how would prevent people who can afford it from just setting aside their payment for later use?

[realce]

So your opinion is that the UK gov't has plenty of terrifying control over people's bank accounts, so a little bit more is a-ok?

[phphphphp]

My point is that it's hyperbolic to describe a digital pound as terrifying. A person may take issue with modern day banking granting the ability for people to be surveilled, and they might take issue with the UK's PAYE system which requires employers report their employee's income to the tax authority in real(ish) time... but that's nothing to do with a digital pound. A digital pound is a small incremental change in the context of privacy, and so ranting and raving about a digital pound being terrifying is the wrong target. People could waste years of their lives ranting and raving about the horrors of a digital pound, and convince the government to abandon all plans... and nothing about the actual privacy of day to day people would change.

[jkepler]

Wouldn't a digital pound give the government direct view of people's financial transactions?

Right now they don't they at least need a court order (i.e. they'd have to prove probably cause) to compel a bank to give them people's data?

Sounds like a big change to me, and further erosion in the protection rule of law theoretically provides people against tyranny.

[phphphphp]

I disagree with the framing you’re using: if the only protection today is policy, then a new technology (the digital pound) is immaterial. The government doesn’t need new technology to be able to change policy. Anyway, to answer your question, the tax authority here does not need a court order.

[jackson1442]

Agreed. A better question- how can we build a government which we can trust with unprecedented levels of centralized information?

The centralization of information is going to happen one way or another (the powers that be wouldn't have it any other way), and we've already been on this trajectory. So how can we build a system that actually respects privacy and upholds the common good?

[version_five]

That's a dumb question, sorry. We can't. That's why government's powers and role are constitutionally limited, and why the explicit limitations (even though the government is not supposed to have any powers other than those explicitly given to it) need to be updated as technology changes. The idea that we could build a government we can trust is absurd. It's equivalent to suggesting we could build a police force that can monitor everything we do, but will have some kind of structure that makes it not abuse that power. It's not even wrong, it's too ridiculous to even give the time of day to

[artificialLimbs]

>> respects privacy and upholds the common good?

That's not how consolidation of power by a government works.

[int_19h]

You decentralize the government. The result might not be much better on average, but then at least people who believe that privacy is a common good can find a space for themselves and be left alone by the rest.

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

>> The centralization of information is going to happen one way or another

This is not necessarily the case, thanks to encryption, which plays on the side of the weak. A weak can encrypt data that a strong can never decrypt.

[User23]

There's no nice way to say this, so I'm going to be blunt. You and people like you are part of the problem here. You are why this kind of overreach is even on the table.

[phphphphp]

I’m fine with that, because I’m responsible as part of the majority. The majority don’t care about any of this. There are far greater issues facing real people, and getting lathered up into a froth over something that has no material impact on the day to day lives of most people is not a productive use of time.

Any doom-mongering about a hypothetical future in which The Government is doing Bad Things because they know what you’re doing with your money is, well, ignoring the thousands of bad things that we don’t need to theorise about because they’re happening at this very moment.

For example, our government has starved our national health service over the last decade and there are very real threats to its long term survival: I care orders of magnitude more about that than I care about the hypothetical world in which the government make money expire or deduct from my social score because I exceeded my quota of beans at the grocery store this week.

[Spooky23]

Opposition to cigarette bans is usually just reactionary nonsense or grousing from people selling the cigarettes.

Gold standard advocates passionately debated about terrible problems with silver in the 19th century. Crypto demonstrated that digital cash has value - even when that is backed by various grifts.

[Spivak]

> New Zealand's Cigarette prohibition

Is brilliant and the only way to realistically ban cigarettes without screwing over entire generations who are already addicted to nicotine.

Let's give a real example. My great aunt in her late 60s has a 40 year pack a day smoker. There is zero chance whatsoever she would be able to quit before she dies and it would be cruel to try and make her. There is no way you can pick a single date after which smoking is banned for everyone, it will be so loudly, and rightly, fought that it would never pass. I don't want to live in a world where a not insignificant percent of the population simultaneously goes through nicotine withdrawal. Because I've seen my friends quit and patches and gum don't keep you from being miserable.

If you don't think cigarettes should be banned, fine. Valid stance. But if you think they should this is the way.

[OkayPhysicist]

The problem with fine-grained approaches like this is that they are much easier to get passed: people are much more willing to restrict the freedoms of other people rather than themselves. For a ban like that to be ethical, it would have to have been voted on by the people it would apply to, i.e., the people below the age cutoff (who in this example, can't vote at all).

[LadyCailin]

They can vote to repeal it later, it isn’t a permanent thing. Unlike fucking up the planet, which is.

[OkayPhysicist]

Sorry, did I miss something? The "fucking up the planet" thing seems to be a non-sequitur, unless you're suggesting that people smoking are fucking up the planet, which doesn't seem like it's the motivation for the bill as much as "stopping people from fucking up themselves" is.

Regardless, I disagree with the line of reasoning that because it can be repealed it's okay to pass it in the first place. The core problem is creating laws that artificially inflate their support by making them only apply to some sub-group. Passing laws that only restrict a minority due to practical reasosns is bad enough. For example, cities' anti-camping laws basically only apply to the homeless, because no-one chooses on a whim to camp in downtown Los Angeles. That's not great, because its a tyranny of the majority situation, but at least in theory the general populace has to weigh the loss of their ability to camp in downtown against the pros of not having homeless camps in downtown.

In a situation where the law explicitly only applies to the minority, especially a minority that no one in the majority could ever eventually belong to, the majority get to have their cake and eat it, too, leading to artificial support for your bill. If you can't find the political support to ban cigarettes outright, back-dooring democracy is not the right way to do it.

[jefftk]

> laws that artificially inflate their support by making them only apply to some sub-group

The NZ smoking case is interesting, though, because over time it will apply to the majority.

> If you can't find the political support to ban cigarettes outright, back-dooring democracy is not the right way to do it.

Requiring all public buildings to immediately retrofit for wheelchair access wasn't practical, but in the US proponents were able to get support for requiring this for new and heavily renovated buildings (the ADA). Having a gradual intermediate choice makes a lot of sense in cases where a full ban is really bad for people (or buildings) that are dependent on the old way and we also don't want to continue to allow it indefinitely.

[LadyCailin]

I’m not suggesting smoking is fucking up the planet. But I am suggesting that in general, there are tons of policies in place that further contribute to climate change, which will also only affect younger people and on. Except those are even worse, because one cannot simply reverse climate change by passing a new bill.

So, I get your point, and I don’t necessarily disagree. But if we agree on that logic, then I care far more about stopping climate change, for the sake of future generations democratic welfare, than I do about allowing them to smoke.

Having said all that, I don’t know how NZ ranks in terms of climate policies, perhaps they are already the best in the world.

[grumpyprole]

To me, it's less terrifying than Facebook or Apple monitoring and controlling every penny I spend or receive.

[FpUser]

Facebook can monitor but they can not yet take away your money. The bank can / government can.

[riffraff]

but the bank and the government already can, nobody keeps their life savings in cash. It's literally small change that they cannot already trace.

[FpUser]

This gives them even more instant control. Being raped does not mean wanting to increase ways of raping one

[Spooky23]

We already have had this with credit cards, drafts in various forms and crypto.

All this would do is get rid of the middleman and the defacto tax assessed on all commerce, both direct or indirect through sale of data.

[f38zf5vdt]

It will cause people to stop using government money. There are many other ways to barter and exchange goods. I expect it will only increase tax evasion as less transactions are even reported.

It's no surprise to me to see government gold buying on an absolute tear. [1] The powers that be are well aware of the importance of having real physical goods for the sake of trading and maintaining wealth.

[1] https://financialpost.com/commodities/mining/central-banks-b...

[iamben]

> There are many other ways to barter and exchange goods.

Genuinely curious - what do you think will happen (and what would be used)?

I genuinely can't imagine most of the people in my life (be that older relatives, non-tech friends, whoever) using anything but whatever 'money' is convenient. None of them care the government might be watching, and if they were going to barter for anything they're probably already doing it ("you help me with this DIY, I'll take you for dinner").

FWIW I'm in the UK, so perhaps my perspective is skewed?

[f38zf5vdt]

Whatever is readily available to be converted into digital "cash" when needed will be used. Wealthy people maintain most of their assets outside of cash in property of various types. When they need "on the books" spending, they bring it into the cash economy with on/off ramps.

I don't know if the UK is different from much else of the developed world, but here there is a tremendous amount of off-by-book transactions in the largest industries such as farming and construction. I do not think that the disappearance of cash will remove this economy, but it will have to migrate to other assets with similar qualities.

[starkd]

Maybe for large significant transactions, but barter economy is next to impossible for consumer goods. If a lot of the economy goes off the books, it will come with greater friction between transactions, less overall liquidity.

[tomatocracy]

Fortunately though there are lots of substitute currency-like instruments out there. Prepaid debit cards, Amazon gift cards, etc. Or even foreign currency cash like US dollars.

[d110af5ccf]

you can "barter" with something like XMR though. that seems to be even lower friction than physical cash in some ways

[JumpCrisscross]

> government gold buying on an absolute tear

China and Russia buying non-dollar reserve assets has nothing to do with “people…using government money.”

[starkd]

This is indeed a scary prospect. However, let's be frank about the benefits of such a currency: better control over counterfeiting, financial convenience with low cost transactions, etc. If we can ensure anonymous 3rd party transactions, there could be enormous opportunities.

[int_19h]

The whole point of those systems is to ensure that there's no such thing as an "anonymous transaction" as far as the government is concerned, no?

[tastyfreeze]

> better control over counterfeiting

Remember, it is only counterfeiting if you do it. It is "good" monetary policy when the government does it.

[olddustytrail]

Assuming you live in the UK or the USA, all your money is created by the government (though usually indirectly through commercial banks).

It's counterfeiting when you try to pretend your own currency is government produced.

[Finnucane]

yes, it is not counterfeiting money when the agency legally authorized to create money does that.

[tastyfreeze]

The effects of me printing dollars and the government printing dollars are the same. They just don't want me cutting in to their profit.

The US government is only authorized to coin money. That is making coins out of metal.

[Finnucane]

Party like it’s 1799, dude!

[globular-toast]

So I assume you get paid in physical cash? And you pay your rent in physical cash? Or perhaps you have a mortgage which, of course, was lent to you as physical cash which you delivered in a wheelbarrow to the previous owners of your house?

Unfortunately 98% of the money we already use is digital and controlled by the private banks. What's worse, the government or private banks? You could argue that we go back to physical cash only. Good luck with that. Or you could argue that we move to trustless decentralised digital cash like Bitcoin. Most of us who were in favour of that have given up at this point.

Government controlled digital money might just be the least worst option we have at this point.