Submitted by: Lady Byrd
How
The Coming Cashless Society Will Allow Unprecedented Government Control Over
Your Life
Econgularity,
shorthand for economic singularity, is an ugly word I created to describe an
unfortunate approaching moment in time when our current technological snooping
prowess, the ease of big data manipulation and our sprint to a cashless economy
will converge. This will happen in such a way as to permit governments to
exercise incredibly powerful control over all human behavior.
While this
may sound like a paranoid doomsday scenario to some, as a real world finance
professional, I believe that this scenario is not only eminently possible, but
most of the technology is already available — albeit not yet fully marshaled —
to frighteningly make it reality.
Technological advances have led to the
creation of algorithms that can instantaneously review financial transactions,
determining the nature, location and even the appropriateness of a purchase
decision. These have been freely used by credit- and debit-card
companies.