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Comment by prottog | Hacker News Reader

> The good thing about digital currencies is that'll actually take power away from commercial banks. Right now you need to go through someone like Barclays, HSBC, etc, to get your money. CBDC actually lets you keep your balance directly with the government ledger and avoid relying on banks for everything. This is a good thing.

"This is a good thing" is a very strange conclusion. Yes, let's shrink the private economy and make people deal directly with the government for the most basic unit of commerce, money. I can't possibly see how this could go wrong.

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Your argument relies on two strong assumption, "everything private economy is good", and "everything government is bad". Unless you add strong reasoning behind it such blanket arguments I default to scepticism.

No, it is really "competition" (banks compete for my money) vs "monopoly" (no other option than the government).

The assumption that CBDC is a good idea because the government is always benevolent and does what's best for the people is incorrect, as demonstrated by the horrible financial mismanagement in the recent 20 years.

I'm very strongly opposed to CBDCs, but they could certainly be a good thing with a good and trustworthy government. However they also open up a hugely tempting, dangerous, and damaging failure mode which would rapidly overwhelm all the positives. My concern is, how many successive good, responsible governments can we expect before one of them goes bad? And how much does the existence of this failure mode increase the chance that one of them will be tempted to reach for it?

I'm sure it will not fail right away, and there will be a sustained period of benefit. But I don't think it's worth the longer-term risk.

> a good and trustworthy government

Know of any?

> how many successive good, responsible governments can we expect before one of them goes bad?

Any system of government that relies on a successive chain of responsible people in power is doomed to fail more quickly than anyone thinks. This is why the American idea of "ambition must be made to counteract ambition" is so powerful.

You do realise that "money" (its creation, destruction, and value) is entirely in the control of central banks and the private banking sector, right? Unless you are bartering with gold or cryptocurrencies in your daily life I fail to see your point.

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