The claim is a bit of cliché but like most cliches, it became one because there’s truth in it. You have heard it said, “Technology is not good or bad. It depends on how it’s used.” While I think too often this nugget papers over some more subtle dangers of this technology or that, it’s still fundamentally true.
A few weeks ago the Prime Minster of the UK publicly announced his intention to pass legislation that would require all citizens to have a digital ID. He insisted that not a single soul would be free to work in the UK without one. This, he said, would solve the problem of illegal immigrants crossing the English Channel and assorted other unnamed problems. The good news is he has received significant pushback. The bad news is it hasn’t been nearly enough.
I don’t doubt that certain problems would be alleviated by digital ID. We would all reap some significant benefits. Our increased convenience, however, would be far outrun by our decreased liberty, by the state’s increased convenience in not only monitoring all that we do, but controlling what we do. Digital ID becomes the central hub of all our economic activity, and whomever controls it controls us.
The same principle applies to CBDC, central bank digital currencies. Lots of benefits for citizens. Complete control for Big Brother. End of the world kind of control- no buying or selling without Uncle Sam’s approval. Because we increasingly seem happy to trade liberty for convenience, there are those who support these kinds of measures. They make the argument that our gain is greater than the government’s gain.
Here’s how we know they are lying. If digital ID brings greater benefit to us than not having it, why in the world would the state need to mandate it? Did any government require all of us to get smart phones? Did they, back in the day, mandate all businesses to install fax machines? Did the feds come around to make sure everyone bought a refrigerator? No. Because people wanted those things they purchased them freely.
It was the inimitable sage President Reagan who quipped, “The scariest words in the world are, ‘we’re from the government and we’re here to help.'” He understood, as we all ought, that the state does not see itself as those called to punish evil doers. They see us as cattle to be herded, butchered, and put on their table. Digital ID is each of us walking through the chute on our way to the slaughterhouse.
Many nations around the world, none more draconian than communist China, already have digital ID. Pilot programs operate in multiple countries testing CBDC. And now we have the political head of the United Kingdom insisting digital ID is going to be mandatory in his nation, and soon. Do not just assume that this is just one more technological advance. Do not assume that because you like the guy in the White House there is nothing to worry about. The price of liberty, our founding father Thomas Jefferson warned us, is eternal vigilance. May we not sleep on our watch.