The Decline of Western Civilization

In a book called the Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler he suggests 1914 was the beginning of the decline of western civilization. I feel more comfortable pegging the start of decline when the World Trade Center towers fell.  Progress was not a sure thing till then but it still seemed as if good decisions could ameliorate decline. So  it's not the end of history it's just the end of industrial/technological expansion.  Spengler's insight is that cultures have a natural life span, like people, and these  phases almost organically follow one another just as youth, adolescence, maturity, and senescence have a chronological order.  One stage follows the next.  

So when did the idea that Western Civilization (industrial society) was going to “collapse” first occur to me? It was in discussing Guns, Germs, and Steel with my Dad at our weekly lunches, thinking about how cultures become ossified and hard to change, realizing ours was one huge interlocking worldwide complexity and subject to many vulnerabilities.   Diamond's next book was Collapse!  So it was 2003-2004.  Growing up I assumed that things would continue getting better because they had always done so.  It was a bright and happy view of the future for a young person.   I make no Cassandra like claims that “I knew failure of civilization was inevitable” but I can report that in thinking about a socially productive career in the early 70’s,  I stumbled on Lester Brown’s article on the Coming World Food Crisis in Foreign Policy Magazine and was grabbed by the idea of an international policy career. A helping career.  A "social justice warrior (SJW)" career.   The article introduced me to Malthus for the first time.  Now Malthus had been a known quantity for a long time and his predictions of future mass starvation due to geometric population increase were made in the 1790’s. They have not come true.  We have only gotten richer, more comfortable and well fed. Conditions have changed however; the wilderness we inherited is gone to parking lots, factories, and suburbs. Our natural ecosystem has been substantially degraded in the last 50 years and environmental pollution has made the planet a lot less bio-diverse. Our air, water, oceans, forests are not as healthy as they were 100 years ago.  When I was born there were less than 3 billion people in the world and when I started my professional public policy career in 1975 there were not yet 4 billion.  Today we have 7 billion.  I sought to improve the condition of the world's poorest billion people through targeted development assistance but today there are more hungry people, despite all our growth and development efforts, than there were then. There is more war and more refugees.  We have demonstrably failed thus far at creating a roughly equitable and sustainable world.  Since it is not “sustainable”, it will decline, degenerate, or “collapse”.  All the same process just a difference in rate of change.
     The essential recognition then was that the USA used 25% of the world's resources and yet was only 5% of the world's population.  Fortune had put us in a sweet spot and if we were truly interested in justice-then WE would be getting a lot poorer in the pursuit of an equality that included all the world's people. I didn't think America wanted to face that Reality and my quick calculation in 1979 was that world p/c income was approximately $2,000 or 10x less than our p/c income of $20,000.  "Development" that aspired to bring the world's poor up to our standards with trade and aid were doomed to fail.  We needed another model that focused on environmental stewardship and economic sustainability.

      The oil crisis of 1973 was a wake-up call that our US economy was dependent upon ever more oil consumption.  Peak oil production for the USA was in 1972.  Alaskan oil has allowed us to cushion the rate of decline and  pretend it is Morning in America for another 30 years. Instead of conservation, we sold SUV's to suburbia.  Our current fracking effort has temporarily increased our declining production but it will not return oil production to early 1970’s levels. And even if it does it seems to be a last gasp scraping the bottom of the barrel type of effort.  Injecting chemicals underground to float out the last available hydrocarbons has big environmental costs and is not by any measure long term sustainable.    World peak oil production occurred around 2010.  Currently we are bumping along a plateau  in production with the price generally dependent upon the level of economic activity.  We are dependent on “cheap oil” to run our civilization but it is no longer cheap.  Our way of life needs a downsizing but our focus is still on increasing growth not fostering sustainability.  We have been incredibly wasteful over the years with our precious oil resources. "Price" does not completely capture the importance of a liquefied, dense, energy source. It may be a heretical idea, being a capitalist market economy and all, but our short term focus may not give oil its proper long term value.  It does not "count" the value in 100 years to our children.  A little careful utilization and a focus on efficiency would have gone a long way toward making the necessary decline in global interdependence and complexity less dramatic.  This “rightsizing” process is Collapse of the growth myth.  The process is actually one of simplification. We could say that our modern task is to de-construct our global interdependent world and  control our ragged stagger to sustainability.

   So how fast are we declining?  Right now we are at peak.   In retrospect we may be able to pick a point but for now it is a plateau.  Our “decline” or “collapse” is personal not generalized.  The poor are getting poorer and the middle class is shrinking. More individuals are becoming worse off in the US/Europe than are becoming better off.  In poor countries it may be true that more are becoming better off ( I am thinking of China) but I think perhaps with greater vulnerability.   Many thoughtful commentators (Diamond, Catton, Heinberg,  Foss, Martenson, Kunstler, Greer, Orlov) feel major collapse is coming SOON but most people I talk to are content to believe in the future, believe in the political process and just go along putting money in their 401-Ks and sending their kids off to college to get a good job.  Their future sense is positive.  As in the past, the future will be better.  When civilization is ascending—our collective sights are set on the stars and the improving Future.  Our capabilities are like the engines of a rocket accelerating and blasting us higher but when the engines cut out we start coasting.  Our civilization is currently coasting. We have arrived where we have always been heading-masters of the illusions we created and now subject to the gravity of reality.  We are surveying the world from the heights of our achievement, but we are not headed higher. We will bump along the plateau for awhile trying to figure out which direction to go,  and then we will head down.  How far, how fast?  With the engines off and out of fuel, the direction is set but the trajectory is unclear, will it be slow or fast? A glide path or a stall?   Do I need to persuade you of this or do you already know it?  I think you already know it.  There is a possibility that Science, Technology, and Progress will “save” us but it is an article of faith and not demonstrably certain. Our belief in Progress or Science and Technology suggests we will continue improving and continue growing, like experience has taught us, but it is possible that conditions are “different this time” and we may not be attending to the most important facts.  Our faith in Progress may be an illusion.

It seems analogous to the mid-19th century when a God centered universe placed mankind at the center of his concern. It was obvious that Nature was all about us but Darwin told a different story. We are ephemeral and transitional.  The dinosaurs died after 120 million years roaming the planet and so might we.  Now the Faithful operate with a different set of beliefs.  Spiritual belief has many forms or paths to Truth, but its essential task is to free man from materialism and provide salvation by certifying the Good.  If, as they assume, the next world is all that really matters, many believers do not have to worry so much about conditions in this world. Perhaps we can just write this ephemeral experiment off as a failure. Prepare for the Second Coming.  Rapture. Reincarnation.  Christians have always understood us as sinners. Humans are flawed and will go extinct when  God takes back his own. Your only earthly project is to acknowledge your ultimate dependence on God and your human limitations.

    Collapse thinking requires a psychological state of acceptance like being told you have a fatal disease. You can deny it but eventually you have to do the Kubler-Ross thing.  (You do have a fatal disease, it is called being born.) You can persist in your illusions of permanence but it is not true. Our civilization has a support system that no longer works for the majority.  It works fine for the rich and well connected but not the poor, war torn refugees, slum dwellers, and the homeless. And maybe not for you and your children. So if this decline is happening and unavoidable why are our leaders not discussing it? They may still be gripped in the progress myth or they may know but don't have an alternative.  Perhaps they are preparing for things to be alright for them but they don’t have a plan for me and you.  They may be doing the best they can or they are clueless and craven opportunists.  I don’t think WE know what sort of leaders we need.  Changing conditions after centuries of progress have not shown us what we must do.  Sinking in a limitless sea we are unsure which way to swim for shore.

So if we do not give Malthus any credit for being prophetic about future famine and collapse then let’s single out Hubbert—a paper in 1955 predicting world peak oil production in 2005 (close to when it occurred).  In the 60's & 70’s, nuclear energy  was going to take up the slack in energy production but of course it was expensive and dangerous.  Even after 40 years of experience with nuclear, I do not want to increase its role in energy production, I would like to decrease it like Japan and Germany have attempted to do. I'd like to go further. Clean up the toxic mess at all the nuclear facilities while we still have resources to do so.  Who wants oozing radioactive sites when the electricity grid fails?  Another Cassandra was Rachel Carson.  We don’t even know how many or how bad the toxins in our environment are:   nano-plastics, pesticides, GMO's, top soil loss, fresh water quality/aquifer depletion.   Donella and Dennis Meadows modeled Limits to Growth in 1972 and pegged 2015 as the crossover from falling resource availability to rising pollution costs.  Those predictions have been roughly accurate and show that we are now entering the age of contraction.  The Soviet Union “collapsed” in 1990 and numerous other countries have politically fractured:  Somalia, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Ukraine.  Other countries have “wobbled” and are limping along:  Argentina, Cyprus, Venezuela, Greece, Spain, Italy.  The global interdependent world system is on the ropes.  Is there another system?  Is there another idea about how to organize things?  The elite tend to think more centralization will be helpful.  This is obvious, they run things. A world government, a world financial system with a common currency is suggested. I think not.  I think we are in downsizing mode.  There is nothing we can all agree on so it’s take care of your own backyard.  We could call this the managing decline model.  A new localism.
    The image that accompanies "collapse" is running people.  When a society collapses we call these people refugees.  We have a lot of refugees because of failing societies.  First we have to stop this war nonsense.  We have to make where people live, livable.  If we destroy the infrastructure in all these countries, where are the people going to go?  We already know that when we turn Mexico into a drug supplier for our bad habits then the crossfire is going to send them HERE.  Blowing up Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya has put millions of people in untenable environments.  And that is not counting Egypt, Sudan, and the rest of Africa.  Is S. America any better?  Brazil is trying to host the Olympics in a Zika frenzy-well we’ll see how they do and Argentina has the usual inflation problems but they both pale beside the oil rich Venezuela that is sliding toward disaster.  I have not heard that things are going well in Central America—too many people, too few opportunities.  They have gang problems as well.  So a number of areas are struggling with what could be called societal breakdown. Some of it is a result of interference from outside interests that are acquiring resources or exploiting gains from trade.  Other breakdown is a result of factions within the country.  These divisions can be roughly broken down into legitimate opposition and criminal opposition.  Criminal opposition to state power is present in every country and organizes to protect itself.  It becomes "organized crime".  All the rackets present in every country from drugs, to gambling, to sex trafficking, to protection, to counterfeiting products, to running scams and tax evasion are narrow hierarchical systems that employ and prey upon those left out of the status quo.  If we have seen The Godfather movies we know the basic structure of this kind of social organization.  One's primary loyalty is not to the disembodied State or the ideals of democracy, it is fealty to the leader.  It tends to assume a zero sum solution, with us or against us. Political opposition in a country is a little different.  It operates under laws that specify the rules of the game to acquire political power. Private companies seek rules that benefit them.  Not too surprising there. Lobbyists, interest groups, activist groups, and political parties make up this "legal" influence on State action.  These battles are constant:  who gets regulated, who gets taxed, who gets subsidies, who gets contracts.   So we have outsiders, insider factions, and criminals who have "interests" in every locale.  There is no "Away".  We are all in the game.

What may be dawning on us and is different than the recent past here in America is our understanding that the status quo is not benign and supportive of our wish to pursue our private individual interest.  Government appears to be interested in defining "us", as Bush the younger tried, with "you are either for us or against us" or in categorizing us as members of a group:  WASP, Latino, Gay, Evangelical, Democrat .   Although I am "for" the fight against terrorism I am "against" how we are pursuing it.  Thus we are free as long as we follow the rules  and do what we are told.  These requirements could get gradually more onerous.  Yes you are free--send me 1/3, no 1/2,  of your income, buy health insurance or you can't see a doctor, register for the draft. Someone decides we need a toxic waste dump and we have decided to put it in your neighborhood.  We need a wind farm off-shore of your beach house, fracking companies need to drill in your area.  States are required to provide prisons of an acceptable standard with no funds to do so.  Immigrants from wherever must be housed, given a court date and hearing and sent to schools at your expense.  You should report anything suspicious--spy on your brother now. Do what is asked of you or be cast down with the sodomites to quote a notable jailer.  There is no "right" to be left alone.  Demographically and politically we are defined into groups and manipulated against one another, all the better to manage us.  If we accept the category assigned to us then we are provided the proper response against the evil (or just misguided) "others".
   America defines itself as the land where categories melt into E pluribus unum.  This has always been more of an ideal than a reality though 100 years of increasing income has solidified the central ideal that America is about a future of "Progress".  It is both the exceptional and indispensable nation.  We are neither but seem predisposed to meddle to prove to ourselves that we matter.  The ideology of "growth" funds the belief in Progress but if the majority of people are not improving, the future of individual freedom is in danger of being lost.This notion of individuality and melting pot unity has reached a state of extreme psychosis in the national mind.  What is America beyond "show me the money"?  It is an "opportunity" without a coherent narrative anymore.  Diversity leads to Balkanization, not to unity.  A right to something is necessarily someone else's obligation to provide it.
    The term "collapse" is a terrifying image.  It seems to me that TV and movies have taken upon themselves the artistic challenge of presenting  various alternative images of collapse.   For the last 10+ years we have been given images of dysfunction and dystopia:  Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Hunger Games to prepare us psychologically for a shift in our living conditions.  Years of being "entertained" by violence and sex" have left us expecting a world where that rather than justice matters.  Is it even possible to walk back to a world that honors virtue more than avarice?   What road could we plausibly take to return to a world of trust and hope that does not seem ironic or hypocritical?  Our leaders do not seem predisposed to deliver it.  Decline is manageable with good leadership but collapse is certain without it.  Whither America?  

The "Ease" and "Sophistication" of E-Money

       Is the elimination of cash convenient for exchange and a good idea?  No.  It is not.  It is a very palpable loss of freedom. It is foolish because it is complicated and more subject to abuse and manipulation.  We hear daily reports of hackers and credit data bases being compromised.  We have Lifelock advertisements pitching us to protect our online identity.  The digital payments world is a jungle that threatens your financial well being.  Now in fact we actually make a lot of exchanges without actually using paper money and given the option of both e-money and standard currency can freely choose how to protect our wealth.  By value I would surmise that 90% of transactions are done with checks or electronic payments.  Perhaps measured by number of transactions  more small transactions are done with cash. Cash normally completes the deal.  When it changes hands, the contract  is done.  Cash is the paper note form of the legal tender. It is actually as necessary as gold WAS to an honest monetary system.  What can it possibly mean for the government to claim that the money cannot be touched or held but only assigned to your electronic ledger as a number? "Dollars" become "numbers" that the Bank says you can spend in approved ways.  How many ways can that "right to spend your own money" be limited?   Do you have money if you cannot use it? The variability and undefined nature of money subjects the users to potential abuse.  “Flexible” money is subject to manipulation.  Fixed money is subject to shortages.

         The whole question of a “good” monetary system turns on the definition of money.  Is money a thing or an idea?  Money to be truly useful (and honest) needs a specific definition.  A vague idea is certain to be misunderstood or manipulated.  So despite money being a medium of exchange and store of value it is also a unit of account which is the characteristic that requires a specific definition.  Quantities of abstract things are nonsensical viz. how much do you love me?  Our money, a dollar, is undefined. You are paid in dollars that are undefined. You save in dollars that are undefined. But a foot is this far.  A pound weighs this much.  That’s what a “standard” is.  This matters to me but does not seem to be a major concern to most people.  Essentially the approximate historical value of a dollar is good enough for it to “work” for most people. I want to know who gets to define it and what prevents them from re-defining it when it is convenient or necessary. Who gets to say what a dollar is; you, your bank, or the government?

      I confess to being a hard money guy but let’s look at the ease and convenience of electronic money.  It is being touted as “better than cash”.  So you work at a job to earn money and that is Real.  You have to put in the hours. And what do you get for that?  Chits that allow you to buy things. When you are young your parents may have given you an allowance that you either did chores for or were responsible for spending for some defined needs to teach you budgeting, saving, and managing money. The allowance was “conditional”, if you did what you were supposed to, you were allowed to continue receiving it.  If you failed at managing it in some way, say by buying marijuana rather than clothes, your allowance could be stopped.  Your ability to spend was controlled by your overseers (parents).

  Electronic money is somewhat similar to an allowance.  Your money is “yours” in a provisional sense, someone else (the bank) must agree that you have it to spend.  You can make only certain kinds of transactions.   Every transaction is a banking act; Buying bubble gum, Paying a babysitter, selling used goods at a garage sale, loans to friends.  Every transaction must be certified and approved to be you.  The rules to prove that it is in fact you require you to be dependent upon another party (your bank) agreeing that you are you and have authority to spend your own money.  Every transaction is almost like a credit approval. “You” are the “credit score” or “ID proof” that is allowed to spend the money  in your account.  A dollar is merely a unit of account number in your bank account.  You can spend until your bank says you do not have any more.  Do you have money or credit?  Is there any difference?

Frankly I have a problem with the complexity.  Think about it.  Every transaction needs the internet.  To properly certify the transaction both parties must have a computer.  Each computer must be connected in some way to a certifying bank.  If either personal computer(or phone) is down—if either  bank computer is down –if the internet is down or not available—the transaction cannot be accomplished.  Let’s go further,  what if the power is off? Do you have money?

If the authorities were to eliminate cash for our ease of use, then what exactly “is” a dollar? “Numbers” in an account.  A dollar, just a floating idea of what everybody thinks it is.  Its value is what the two parties engaged in exchange agree that it is. This value may or may not remain constant and so makes it difficult to consider it a store of value.  When you have a Rewards account with an airline or credit card the ‘rewards’ can be adjusted by requiring more ‘digits’ for a flight or can be phased out by a particular date.  This complicates the idea of “saving” since it is not clear what the future value could be.  Can the government produce all the dollars it wants with a magic Aladdin’s lamp?  Then they are not bound by the numbers they have in their accounts.  If they want something—they rub the lamp(push a digital button to put more numbers in their  account).  I have  to work, they rub the lamp. Taxes are not necessary if the government can produce all the money it needs or wants.  Stupid me, I work--the government (through a fair and impartial system) puts money in its own account. Then it can give it to whoever it wants!   Some might consider there is a fairness issue here.  I consider a system like that-Unjust. 

E-money is completely dependent upon a functioning electricity grid and the internet.  All transactions then become embedded in a web of contract law that makes them provisional.  All transactions take place over time rather than settle with an exchange at a particular point in time. In short, when exactly do you buy something?  When you hand over the cash, the item is yours.  With e-money, ALL transactions are “reviewable” for their appropriateness.  They become “approved” transactions that happen over a period of time.  They enter a legal world.  Let me give an example.  Several years ago, as a dentist, I had a new patient who required a small surgical procedure.  He had insurance that we checked and it paid 80% of the cost.  The remainder was the patient’s responsibility.  So on the day of service we did the procedure the patient paid his 20% and 3 weeks later the insurance company sent us the balance due of the fee.  Transaction done.  One year later I received a nice note from Blue Cross that they had recently done an audit of their accounts and realized they had inadvertently provided coverage to patients who in fact did not have coverage.  My patient did not have coverage when we provided the service and so they were billing us for the payment they had made.  Wait a minute I protested—you said he had coverage you can’t expect me to pay you back?  Well yes they did and they had a means of enforcing it.  I have other patients with Blue Cross coverage and they would deduct what I owe from those payments.  They would “pay” Mrs. Smith’s claim that they owed me and apply it to the balance I owed.  Sweet(for them).  They said I could collect from the former patient.  Right.  Money thus enters this nether world of contract law. 

For 40 years I have been aware that I have a “battery” problem.  I don’t mean I beat my wife.  I mean when I am ready to use some device or machine, the battery is dead.   I jump in my car, the battery is dead (or stolen).  I want to take a cute video of my son.  I haven’t used the camcorder in a month, dead. I forget to charge my phone overnight, the next day I am on fumes.  It winks out.  How do I buy lunch when my phone is dead?  Go to plan B.  Credit card.  Debit card.  Suppose there are transaction fees or limits or I forgot my card.  Do I go hungry?  E-money becomes inconvenient. 

What about Simplicity?  Suppose I would like to buy a donut from a street vendor?  He takes Apple-Pay and I don’t have the app.  I suppose the critic would say the seller should be savvy about all the ways a customer could pay but he may be charged for it and not want to.  Once encumbered in this manner, the fees begin to mount.  With no cash a seamless web of payments would be nicked for fees all along the payment scale just as now an ATM visit dings the holder for $2-$4. 

The government considers itself responsible for producing the legal tender.   It is illegal to transact in any other private money.(That is a separate rant and one that would entail a large change too)  The reason is obvious—a purchase entails taxes and a payment for labor especially creates “obligations”(worker’s comp) and  taxes as well. If you transact privately, government has missed a tax opportunity.  It considers this illegal.    Every exchange has a transaction cost associated with it.  With a cash payment this responsibility is hidden.  E-money makes it easier to ensure the authorities are paid their required fees and it creates the possibility of transactional costs added by the facilitators of the exchange—banks, credit card companies, etc.  With e-money—money only exists in banks.  It can be exchanged but it cannot be removed from the system.  You are not allowed to take your own ball and go home.

     It seems to me that E-money will necessitate a black market currency.  I guess it is possible to buy heroin with a bank card if you call it something else (I myself don’t know) but people would necessarily be unwilling to do black market transactions with the legal currency.  So two currencies would likely develop—undercutting the usefulness of e-money. 

Cash is the paper note form of our money the dollar.   It is a shared social idea of value.  We all agree it has some rough value in exchange for any other good.  It’s “worth” 1/100^th of a shoe or an apple or 7 inches of copper pennies.  It itself is not defined.  It used to be defined as so many grams of silver—specifically 371 g of silver but gradually that definition has disappeared.  When dollar redemption for gold in 1933 was suspended domestically and then internationally in 1971, the dollar became “an idea” of value.  Who decides what a dollar is worth?  We all do by our acceptance of it.  Where do dollars come from?  Most of us know the answer to that question; the Federal Reserve, banks, and people based upon the power to do so.  I create dollars when I charge shopping purchases and banks create dollars when they make loans.  The central bank makes dollars when it credits dollars and accepts “assets”.  There is no limit to the number of dollars that can be created.  I find this paradoxical.  There is a fixed amount of fresh air, clean water, land, and resources and they are essential to life but they have a dollar value while a dollar that is imaginary can be created in unlimited quantities.  Curious.

So for 45 years we have had a currency unit that is not defined.  This could be considered unusual especially since a number of very important decisions are based on what value it has.  Everybody cares how much they get paid.  Most people consider saving money to be a good thing but it does not make sense if in the future it may have a different (lower) value.  If money is a social construct, it is not entirely “yours”.  If someone else can decide what YOUR money is worth—could we not argue that its value is suspect?  So I am not comfortable that money is simply a practical social idea used for exchange managed by government for the good of all. What are the dangers of this definition?  Danger #1 is changing the definition.  Danger #2 is producing too little or too much of it.  How much IS enough?  Danger #3 is its relative social importance.  Is having money more important than being honest?  I do not mean they are mutually exclusive –why not both- but its centrality to exchange in a complex society gives it a fundamental value similar to health.  How much health is enough?  Personally I want a fairly high standard for what is ‘healthy’. I also want a high standard of value.  If I am sick how much does health cost?  What is it worth?  Like the pearl of great price, everything I have.  In short to live in this society I have to care about money.  As someone once said about war—you might not be interested in war but war is interested in you.  You might not be interested in money but others are interested in your money.  If you have “no money” it could be said that your participation in our current civilization is marginal.  Money defines what you can do and so defines you.  If you don’t accept the label there may be a LOT you cannot do.  So go ahead and "drop-out" become a hunter-gatherer or self sufficient farmer.  Join a gift economy. The rest of us will talk about cash.

For years I have heard money managers talk about stocks bonds and cash.  As in, the market is getting over-valued and it is time to “go to cash”. Inconceivable.  I don’t think they mean what I mean when they use that word.  Cash means dollar bills in your mattress, wall safe, or wallet not money market funds, short term treasuries or bank CD’s.  Cash is federal reserve paper notes.  Going to cash in an investment account to my way of thinking is not possible.  You can go to money instruments but you do not hold cash in a Schwab or Vanguard account.  You do not have “cash” in the bank.  Everybody knows you have loaned the bank your money and the bank has loaned it out.  We’ve all watched Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life and there is some cash in the vault but it is not “yours”.

Having physical cash is a check upon the unlimited power of a bank to create loans and therefore money.  A monetary system without cash is one more remove from a defined unit of exchange.  A dollar reserve note is not redeemable for anything but another note BUT digital money is NOT even in your possession.  You own the right to the money but it is not “yours”. It is a social construct that can be re-defined by someone else.  A subtle but very important difference.

So let me make one more point about the “ease” of electronic money.  Let’s envision a system similar to an EZ Pay toll app that simply deducts numbers from your account as you go about your daily affairs;  picking up a magazine, buying a coke, getting lunch, it all just comes automatically out of your account as you do things.  Money goes into your account from however you earn it and it goes out as you do stuff.  This is easy.  Is it desirable?  Where is your say so in what comes out of your account?  Could you be charged for breathing valuable air?   What if they make the sidewalk downtown a toll road?  What if the price of things changes randomly so called “peak hour pricing” for certain goods or activities?  The algorithm is determining what goes into or out of your account.  You have the “freedom” to monitor it carefully or simply pay whatever is expected of you.  I am looking in vain for the freedom that would attend a system like this.  I see it as a lure to drain whatever numbers(money) you have into the reservoirs of the mega-rich and put you on a treadmill of debt.  I do not consider e-money an improvement to our current system which is itself seriously flawed. As I said, I tend to be a hard money advocate, preferring fixed money to flexible money. The big problem with defined money is the amount that goes into “hoards”.  If savings can be freed up to flow into other uses, then we have discovered the system that will permit the maximum amount of freedom for each and every one of us.  The essential problem is that we need a "tether" of value otherwise the rules of the game can be changed capriciously to some (or everyone's) detriment.  So let us ask, if we eliminate cash, Cui buono? You?  because you don't have to soil your greasy hands with it or someone else who can create what they need and siphon off what you have.  And if all else fails and they need it, well they can just take it.  Pass a law that what is yours is now mine.  So call your Congressman--who is paying him?