Jim Rickards, an economist with more than 40 years of experience in investment banking, has warned about a hypothetical social credit system in the U.S. powered by a central bank digital currency (CBDC). In his latest article, Rickards explains that issuing a CBDC would allow the government to get the data needed to construct such a system.

Rickards stated that the information collected by monitoring transactions on a CBDC would facilitate “the creation of a social credit system that allows governments to punish those who engage in unapproved activity such as buying guns, donating money to the wrong political party, buying unapproved literature, etc.”

While recognizing this might sound paranoid to some, Rickards compares these measures to the ones taken by the federal government to stop the Covid pandemic, declaring:

Before the pandemic, you probably wouldn’t have thought that any of this was possible. But it all happened. When you think of it in that light, you begin to understand that some type of social credit system in the U.S. really isn’t that far-fetched.

In Rickards’ hypothetical system, implementing a CBDC would allow the government to control or block people’s movement to other cities or countries, limit their liberties by nullifying their opinions on social media, and even target them via intelligence agencies. Using the CBDC would be the only way of paying, and a social credit score would be the tool for limiting these actions.

According to his forecast, this might be done deceptively, establishing measures to pursue extremists and criminals first. On this, he declared:

It’ll all be made to sound very benign, even necessary, to support ‘our democracy’ against MAGA types, white supremacists, climate deniers and domestic terrorists.

Others have also risen to criticize and sound the alarm against the issuance of a CBDC in the U.S. In May, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law prohibiting the use of CBDCs in the state. Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also been vocal against CBDCs “because they are instruments of control and oppression, and are certain to be abused.”

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。