We are all slowly losing something we barely realized we had: the right to trade. Decades ago, it would have been unthinkable for an overbearing government to freeze payments as a means of social control. Today, a system of widespread censorship of trade is emerging to complement the widespread censorship of speech.

Zelinar XY, aka ZXY, is a writer, software developer, and greengrocer. He is the author of "The Right to Transact," available on Amazon. Follow him on Twitter or email him at zelinarxy [at] proton [dot] me.

Countries have long used economic censorship and sanctions as a means to suppress dissent. Is it any surprise, then, that today's governments exploit the new affordances of digital technology to expand the reach of data collection, surveillance, and asset seizures?Early last year, for example, the Canadian government declared a state of emergency. , ordered banks to freeze the assets of anti-lockdown protesters.
See also: Who is really benefiting from CBDC? It's not the common man | Opinion The steadily increasing digitization
of payments means that breaking glass and invoking emergency powers and submissive private banks Governments may soon be able to carry out such interventions routinely, without having to ask for help.

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), which are in various stages of development around the world, will have the ability to freeze or confiscate funds built into the currency itself. The kind of programmable currency envisioned by CBDC proponents could allow states to ban the use of their currencies altogether, regardless of the banks or payment providers they choose to do business with. You no longer only risk being treated unfairly by your company.

This may not happen, and in fact some central banks have stated that they do not want to have complete control over how users interact with their money. But the simple fact is that CBDCs open the door to that level of control, and without a complete takeover of CBDCs, many of the social policy objectives behind CBDCs (such as improving tax collection and reducing financial crime) ) would probably be next to impossible.
Commercial banks, who stand to lose revenue if the government gets involved in private banking, will no doubt be upset. But in any case, many people will end up using CBDCs, at least in part, exclusively, and if the words of central bankers themselves are any guide, users will be treated disastrously. It will become: universal KYC using iris scans and fingerprints, with fund locking and routine monitoring, arbitrary rules “programmability features” built into currency etiquette.

And code speaks louder than words. Brazil's central bank has released documents and software related to a pilot CBDC that would allow the government to freeze a user's balance, "move" a user's balance to another account, or even "suspend" the currency entirely. Released.

関連項目:お金が言論であるなら、CBDC は自由のためのツールであるべき| 意見
お金の基本的な性質に対するこの根本的な更新の正当性は、悪い人々がお金を使って悪いこと、つまり脱税、マネーロンダリング、その他の不特定の「違法行為」を行うことができるということです。大丈夫。しかし、自動車が麻薬、武器、人身売買に最適なツールであるにもかかわらず、私たちはまだ、中央政府機関によってすべての自動車をマイルごとに追跡することを要求していません。
私たちは、障害をもたらす全体主義的な安全の名の下に、通貨を完全に監視し管理するプログラムを拒否しなければなりません。中央銀行家は経済学者です。彼らに法律を解釈し施行する資格は何でしょうか? 具体的にはどのような「違法行為」を管轄することになるのでしょうか？彼らは神のような官僚的権力を行使する前に司法制度の指示を待つのでしょうか、それともただ行動するのでしょうか？

彼らは法律（私たちが選挙で罷免できる代表者によって可決された法令）を執行するのでしょうか、それとも責任を負わない官僚によって文書化された「政策」を執行するのでしょうか？
私たちは最悪の事態に備えるべきです。

Or you can recognize and defend your right to trade. It is something we have simply enjoyed from the earliest times to living memory. If declining educational institutions wish to take away this natural right, let them state their case. It's definitely going to be disjointed.
The right of people to trade freely does not somehow make something illegal legal. Bad behavior will still be policed, but not through arbitrary, centralized control over the medium of exchange itself. And of course we must pursue the only real route available to countering the slide into the financial panopticon. It is about introducing and using cryptocurrencies.