Comment by omgponiezzz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by omgponiezzz | Hacker News Reader

Nice to see clear thinking on the topic. Hope this gains a lot more traction before it is too late.

CBDCs in the Chinese digital yuan vein (and that _IS_ the dream of policy makers, make no mistake) are similarly nefarious to policies regarding 'the transition to EVs' - incentives first, then measures to compel (taxes, onerous / impossible to comply with regulations, outright bans) and finally baked-in redefinition of vital concepts like ownership, privacy, right to repair etc...

Central banks and big government desperately want malware-style CBDCs - you have your money until it is voided for x.y.z reasons, full financial records transmitted to every government agency under the sun, only transactions to approved merchants, only money on govt authorized software platforms etc.. etc..

This is a radical redefinition of a great many concepts vital to modern liberal democracies - ownership, privacy, freedom to name a few - that needs to be slowed to a crawl so that the nuances of what this means for these core tenants of democracy are fully considered and that we don't end up massively concentrating power into the hands of the wrong people.

Agreed. The abuse potential here is far too great. Not asking for this and don’t want it forced on me. Anyone who has or thinks they might ever have a minority position should oppose this.

Countries like India are so far ahead of the US in terms of digital transactions and it's a ridiculous game changer.

India has eliminated something like a 2-4% drag on its economy by making digital money transfers and transactions almost completely free, while all US transactions pay a tax on the credit and debit cards they use.

Someone with the equivalent of Venmo on their phone, can transfer money instantly, securely, and freely, to someone else with the equivalent of Zelle on their phone, even if the receiver doesn't have Venmo. Or to someone's bank account, or your vegetable vendor, or to make payments through a variety of applications.

The removal of a physical dollar is a real concern. You know what would help to prevent that from happening? Protesting against any efforts to eliminate a physical dollar. Protesting alternatives that are genuinely beneficial because they may slippery slope their way into eliminating cash only serves to make it easier to eliminate cash.

All that happens is that a whole bunch of people will complain about the creation of a digital dollar, because of their slippery slope fallacy about it leading to the elimination of physical cash, but what people will see is that the digital dollar was implemented, and none of the concerns came true, and serve to discredit these people.

So when the government actually tries to eliminate physical cash, all the people basing their protests on a slippery slope fallacy have lost credibility and the number of credible voices protesting the actual problem of the elimination of the physical dollar is much reduced.

You worry worts don’t realize you already live in the scenario you describe. Didn’t a country last year have all it’s dollars seized? Every financial power / data you have is a judge signature’s away from being taken already.

CBDCs offer benefits, and the downsides we already deal with. The digital money we transact with now is just as “antifreedumb” as you make CBDCs to be.

Hard disagree. What you're saying is true of my money that is stored in a bank or other financial instruments that I have no tangible control over. However, to take away the cash I own (the green and the shiny stuff) the police or the feds need to come to my house and physically take it from me and figure out where I've hidden it. They also have no way of knowing exactly how much I have and no way of reasonably tracking how I spend physical currency in most situations. Particularly with peer to peer transactions, they are nearly impossible for the government to track or restrict in any meaningful way.

All of this goes away with CBDCs. The government can track everything. The government can take away everything instantly. The government can decide I'm not allowed to spend my money on certain things they don't agree with.

Trying to save up for the down payment on a house or a new car? Nope, that tax return we gave you expires in 3 months to force you to stimulate the economy. Bought a gun that was completely legal at the time, but the government has since decided you shouldn't have it? We have a record of you buying it, so we'll send the ATF to raid your house for it. Said something critical of the current president on social media? We've frozen all your money until we reeducate you.

It's not a matter of if this will be abused, it's a matter of when and how badly.

> Trying to save up for the down payment on a house or a new car? Nope, that tax return we gave you expires in 3 months to force you to stimulate the economy. Bought a gun that was completely legal at the time, but the government has since decided you shouldn't have it? We have a record of you buying it, so we'll send the ATF to raid your house for it. Said something critical of the current president on social media? We've frozen all your money until we reeducate you.

As you mentioned, these scenarios would be theoretically possible currently with cash held in bank accounts—or, put differently, the vast majority of cash held by people. If government wanted to do these things, or alternatively, thought they could get away with them, why would we not already be seeing it?

the point is to make enforcement extremely onerous and adding hoops for authorities to jump through so they're forced to prioritize the worst offenders due to lack of resources

> If government wanted to do these things, or alternatively, thought they could get away with them, why would we not already be seeing it?

It already is happening. For example, Canada froze the bank accounts of unpopular protestors.

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/bureaucrats-who-froze...

The "criticized the president" scenario is already simply a violation of the first amendment and not done, and the gun thing is plausible with or without CBDC.

I'm not stumping for CBDC, but these examples seem to carry the assumption that the government would be doing them were it not for practical barriers that CBDC permits them to bypass. But I think the government could do them now, it just doesn't.

I'm not actually sure what the social media thing has to do with CBDC at all actually.

Teaching big O notation to software developers was a huge mistake. In the real world things like scale and friction absolutely matter.

Canada's consumer debt problem is much worse than in the US. Far more Americans do things like keep cash in a safe and we also hoard gold and silver. Normal savings held by Americans is more than twice as much as held by Canadians.

Trying to pull that shit here would guarantee riots and runs on banks.

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