In December, Reuters reports,  India’s “digital rupee” crossed the milestone of more than one million transactions per day. Meanwhile, in early January,  the European Union’s central bank published a rulebook for, and Spain’s central bank  selected “partners” in a pilot/test program for, their own central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). In the US, CBDCs remain at the debate stage.

Governments around the world don’t like “cryptocurrency” very much, but they do like two things about it.

First, they like that Bitcoin, Ether, and other cryptocurrencies have popularized the “next step” of taking money into a completely digital paradigm … not just debit cards linked to bank accounts, in turn linked to theoretical dollars, euros, etc., but doing away with “cash money” (paper bills and metal coins) entirely.

Secondly, they like the idea that the average Joe may assume that CBDCs are just another kind of cryptocurrency, tied to secure/immutable blockchains and with at least some privacy baked into transactions.

To put it as succinctly as possible, no, CBDCs aren’t cryptocurrencies. They’re the digital opposite of cryptocurrencies in important respects. In fact, their main function is to serve as instruments of control over you, your activities, and your finances.

Less succinctly:

If you hold Bitcoin in a “non-custodial wallet” — that is, a wallet that you and no one else holds the cryptographic keys to — your account balance is secure, the transactions you enter into are irreversible, and anyone wanting to know who owns that wallet has to have more than the wallet address to find out. Bitcoin is not inherently anonymous in commerce (if you buy something that has to be delivered with your Bitcoin, for example, SOMEONE will know who you are and where you live), but it’s not immediately transparent to any centralized/authoritative third party.

A CBDC will be operated by a government or government proxy, and every last red cent you receive or spend will be instantly traceable to you … and, more importantly, instantly takeable FROM you.

Suppose, for example, that you’re a mechanic and accept CBDC “dollars” to work on someone’s Corvette. If the government decides that your customer is a drug dealer and resolves to confiscate everything he’s ever touched in an “asset forfeiture” action, the money you received can be instantly seized from your account.

Or suppose you say something in public that the government dislikes and it decides to “freeze your assets” while it investigates you for (to grab a current news hook) “material support of Hamas.” It’s a lot easier to “freeze” CBDC funds — with, pretty much literally, a computer keystroke — than to get hold of the coffee can full of gold Krugerrands you buried at your secret spot in Mark Twain National Forest.

Central banks are not your friends and their CBDC schemes are intended to increase their power over you, not enhance yourability to earn, save, and spend money.  At the political level, register your resistance as best you can. At the financial level, consider moving your finances into areas beyond their control.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

As 2024 begins, Mickey Mouse no longer remains under the full legal control of the Walt Disney Company. Meanwhile, their archenemy vies with an ex-President, who has pictured himself as a slacker cartoon frog, for the Republican nomination.

Ron DeSantis’s thin cloak of anti-corporate rhetoric covers a conventional GOP suit. Donald Trump is known more from hosting network TV than for inspiring dank web memes. But while this year beggars belief from the viewpoint of this year, it would have been unimaginable a quarter-century ago.

The House of Representatives passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act on October 7, 1998, forestalling the copyright expirations of Mickey cartoons that would have started in 2004.  Less than two months since the introductions of Rotten Tomatoes and Google, Florida Representative Bill McCollum argued that copyright effectively “promotes the creation of educational materials, widens the dissemination of information and provides countless hours of entertainment.” It hadn’t become apparent how networked creation and dissemination would mushroom past guaranteed returns on investment; a week later, FanFiction.Net provided a venue for “countless hours of entertainment” from amateur writers.

Meanwhile, New York Representative Jerry Nadler cautioned that “government should intervene in the free market when there is a real public policy purpose only … when the free market is not working right” to question, not lengthy copyrights, but the partial exemption of restaurants from music licensing fees, despite them being government-granted monopolies in the first place and their retroactive extension a handout to owners of existing works.

Archivists and activists were heeded even less than restaurateurs, but the next month, A Bug’s Life anticipated their potential power. “You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up. Those puny little ants outnumber us a hundred to one. And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life!”

By 2011, the web-linked hive mind derailed the Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act bills from following the Sonny Bono Act into enactment. Despite consolidation in the tech and media industries, nobody was truly in control, for better or worse.

Pepe the Frog creator Matt Furie told Esquire in 2016 of his doubts that “copyright laws have caught up to the wild west of the Internet” on which many “people can post Mickey Mouse on a blog and they’re not going to get a cease and desist from Disney.” Despite opposing the connotations that had tainted his amphibian since debuting on MySpace in 2005, “even if I did try to stop it, it’s like whack-a-mole” (itself a Mattel trademark colloquially decontextualized from the specific arcade game it originally denoted).

SOPA and PIPA couldn’t have driven crowds to early-2010s Disney turkeys like John Carter and The Lone Ranger. A decade later, Disney+’s financial losses — and its studio’s chances to revive its magic in the marketplace of ideas — don’t have much do with losing exclusives on one-reelers made during the Coolidge administration.

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

1. “Schlosberg: Where do you want to take a free mouse today?” by Joel Schlosberg, Dover, Delaware State News, January 4, 2024
2. “Where Do You Want to Take a Free Mouse Today?” by Joel Schlosberg, CounterPunch, January 5, 2024
3. “Where do you want to take a free mouse today?” by Joel Schlosberg, Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman [Wasilla, Alaska], January 5, 2024

In late December, US Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) packed her carpet bag and moved her 2024 re-election campaign. After supposedly representing her state’s 3rd district for two terms, she’s now seeking to supposedly represent the 4th.

Why? Well, it’s all about safety.

Not her constituents’ safety, her district’s safety, her state’s safety, her party’s safety, or even her personal safety, but the safety of her career climbing the ladder of the American political class.

After eking out re-election by about 500 votes in 2022, she’s not sure she can do it again … at least not where she is. The Democratic opponent she barely beat last time is back for Round 2, this time with a lot more money, a lot more name recognition, and several more public embarrassments under Boebert’s belt to eat away at that tiny margin of victory.

Naturally, Boebert blames “dark money that is directed at destroying me personally,” rather than anything she’s done or failed to do, for her situation.

Meanwhile, fellow Republican Ken Buck has announced his retirement, after five terms, from a “safe GOP” seat that Donald Trump carried by 16 points in 2020.

Sure, there are Republicans who actually live in the 4th District and are interested in replacing Buck, but for Lauren Boebert it’s all about Lauren Boebert.

While the particulars of her move are unusual, the general idea isn’t. It’s often the case that budding politicians will “shop” for, then move to, the districts or states they consider most likely to help launch successful careers.

Then there’s former US Senator Joe Lieberman.

In 2006, Lieberman lost the Democratic primary in his quest for a third term supposedly representing Connecticut. In response, he launched a “third party” campaign and ended up winning the general election with a plurality.

His choice of party name was telling. Most politicians would have gone with “Lieberman for Connecticut,” but in a refreshing fit of honesty he chose “Connecticut for Lieberman,” thus tacitly confessing that, in his view, the state of Connecticut existed for the sole purpose of providing  him with a Senate seat for as long as he darn well felt like sitting in one.

Which is pretty much what Boebert’s telling Coloradoans with her own House district move. And it just may work. Not for them, necessarily, but for her.

These people don’t work for you. They work for themselves. You’re just there to fund their paychecks and benefits. Don’t forget that.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY