What advantage would I have as a user of a "digital pound", compared to a regular bank account? Increased surveillance? Money with an expiration date?
"At least 50% must be spent in your local district of your '15 minute city'. Purchases of alcohol, meat, and fossil fuels are prohibited. Unspent currency expires after 30 days and cannot be rolled over to the next month."
"Only senior management and above get paid in 'unrestricted' currency."
Food stamps via EBT...
As physical cash goes away the digital pound is meant to plug that gap, plus a load of other things I probably don't understand.
Ah. I see where this is going now.
Just wait and see what happens to your life if the state decides it doesn't like you.
which is the dystopia people fear
think about it, the vast majority of people break speeding laws. we are okay and on good days trust the cops to stop reckless drivers but let the morning commuters go.
apply the same logic to minor financial crimes
And in the same way, I think impregnating cbdc's with all their fears is just as silly.
over time it touched more and more people
even democratic governments can easily abuse their power so i’m off the mind to limit their power politically, financially, and technically.
In the USA at least, it can be difficult to get a bank account if you don't have much money. And since companies don't like writing checks, people working jobs at the lower end of the economic latter have to get special "paycheck cards" that extract relatively large fees for the service they offer.
Imagine making poverty wages, yet 2-5% of your paycheck is taken from you as a fee for not having a bank account (which you don't have because you make poverty wages).
Additionally, when I was living in poverty at least I often was living in legally precarious housing with no mail access and landlords that didn't want any "on-the-record" evidence and thus no proof of my address. KYC is a big expensive burden on the poor that blocks banking access.
Two largest groups of users will be:
1. People who don’t have access to pound bank accounts (folks who live abroad).
2. People who effectively give all this control and info away already by not using cash ever.
Note that we are in an economic battle/war right now with regards to crypto/digital currency in developing countries. The digital RMB, digital pound, digital USD, and perhaps others will be an efficient way for the currency distributors to influence/control foreign populations.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the west wins most of these battles simply by offering colonial digital currency with which folks can conduct transactions.