Kevin Bird
I know, I know, finance and policy matters are complicated. They give most of us a headache but if you want your money to remain yours, then it is time to pay attention.
In recent times our government has rather sneakily made us a guinea pig pilot nation for a WEF digital direction experiment. “How did this happen?” and “Why weren’t we consulted?” you may ask. These are fair questions that have an answer in a political narrative along the lines of, “A digital blockchain currency direction is inevitable, so we may as well lead the way.” The government allege things like “The traditional monetary system is failing”, but cannot actually prove such a statement.
Most of us want to be ‘modern’ and ‘progressive’ and to keep up with modernity, as long as any change is positive. But what we have been told little about is our government’s exploration of a “social credit” system like they have in communist countries in various forms. Most would not care if a digital dollar was the same as a real dollar with no strings attached and no ‘big brother’ controls or restrictions in its use. But that is not what the Labour Government is exploring.
Instead, this Labour Government is exploring a programmable currency system that would allow monitoring, and which could restrict or control what you spend your money on. In other words, your freedom to use your own money would be stolen by the state. Your life-long savings would be subject to state-sanctioned approval of your activities, spending choices and who the recipients of your money should be. Effectively your money would become their money which you would have a technical allocation of (if you behaved yourself and complied with whatever their requirements were).
This is a giant step toward a digital dystopia: Big Brother in disguise.
Don’t believe me? Read these papers and research it for yourself:
1. WEF white paper listing New Zealand as a pilot nation.
2. (hidden in the statistics department) Our Algorithm charter (which I didn’t know existed), which does not even mention “New Zealand” in its name.
3. The Reserve bank “consultation” on a move to programmable digital currencies, which may be used to take people’s money, and control their spending.
https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/notes-and-coins/future-of-money/cbdc
4. How MSD regards PHRaE techniques in their part of the New Zealand experiment.