eCash Lesson of the Week #2
“They know more about you than you might know about yourself”
You may know about this already. Mega-corporations do collect your data. Be it social media giants like Google or Facebook or financial service providers like Mastercard and many more. It is simply part of the deal, you get a convenient package of all kinds of utilities and services, which make your life easier and more fun in many aspects — mostly for little to no cost at all — and they get to collect and utilize all of your activities you make on their platforms.
All your activities are collected in one or the other way and their thirst for data seems endless: Exactly which locations did you visit and which routes did you take at what point in time? You turned off your location feature? Well then which local WiFi did you connect or pass by? Who did you talk to or message with your phone? When was the last time you bought toothpaste? Yes, they can get obnoxiously nosy about even the most minute detail of your activities.
They collect and store details about you, which you won’t remember in a week or haven’t even considered in the first place. For many, this is of course nothing new; It is how some of the giant digital corporations of our age got so big in the first place and for most, it had not much negative impact on their lives, yet.
It’s true, the intention of “Big Data” collecting anything they can get from your digital activity and identity is certainly not malicious in itself. Big Data “only” wants to make money by making your daily activities easier while doing everything in their power to be law abiding, keeping your data safe and even anonymous, when possible. Since they value your data so much, they don’t even just sell the data they collected from you. They rather rent out the ability to other companies to put what their algorithm deems to be “relevant” into your social media. This is almost a win-win situation. Almost…
With great power comes great responsibility — And they ain’t
Indeed, the issues with this seems to be too abstract for you and even me to really get worked up about. But consider this simple truth: Giant, powerful mega-corporations and their customers value your data, a lot. That alone should make you think about how much of it you are willing to share, especially when you are getting only scraps in return.
However, the part that scares me the most — apart from them not giving anything back and getting far too irresponsible and intrusive with the collection of your data — is that there is always the other giant, power hungry institution that likes to have a hold of your data. In fact, that one institution pretty much lives off of controlling and administering your identity and all your activities. I am talking about governments.
And since control over its citizens is the bread and butter of governments, they obviously have a huge incentive in having a say in the fact of mega-corporations’ ability to collect and share your data. When doing so, they as well package it as a noble act of regulating big corporations and helping you — the little man.
But the fact is, while big corporations collect your data to ultimately just sell more relevant ad space, governments tend to think it is their job to regulate your behavior and therefore are quite interested in collecting your data to be able to create profiles on you and anyone you interact with. This is the underlying reason, why they pressure giant corporations as we’ve seen with Facebook for example.
Government always used the possibilities of science and technology for their needs early on. Be it photography since the 1870s or the fingerprint method since the beginning of the 20th century. All forensic methods led to the creation of lists and files that were soon subdivided into special files.
History speaks for itself of what these files were used for and how many people suffered from their identity being stored in them, even if the list was originally intended for their own protection. In many cases it simply fell into the hands of ruthless rulers over time, who had whole other intentions of what to do with such lists.
Mind you, there was a time, where liberal values were more common among the people. Folks knew, what it might entail, when the government stored their data, be it a health- or identity pass or how many guns they owned. There were times, where citizens of a nation would critically see such things as health-passes and identity cards as something devious and unthinkable. Rolling out such things would’ve been a reason to rise up against their ruling class.
Yet today, governments just rolled out “digital identitiy” under the justification of fighting the pandemic™. And tomorrow they will tie it to your digital central bank money and run you through their social scoring system, closing off ever more avenues for you to really, freely do something without the fear of reprisal of any kind, today, tomorrow or in ten years.
Meet “the Combine”
In the digital age, having giant corporations controlling your data and the state claiming legitimacy to control them, we are worsening the already pretty dystopian cocktail that we’re forced to drink as global citizens: Global elites, corporations that try to cover themselves from being slashed by government institutions and governments with global aspirations all have incentives and tendencies to work together and wash each others hands going forward down a rather totalitarian path.
No evil mastermind conspiracy is needed, mind you. It is simply the incentives of the power-hungry at play. They were always playing a board game and you, your family, your house, your credit and your data and identity were always part of that power-currency. And today, they’re playing the digital and improved version of the very same game.
I use to describe this machinery as “the Combine”. A merger between powerful corporations and evermore authoritarian government. You don’t have to be a cynic to define this as what it is. It is fascism, at the very least in the economic sense. But whatever you want to call it, it basically acts as the worst of both the “capitalist” and “socialist” realities our civilization has ranged into, using today’s technology to achieve, what infamous rulers of the past started but failed to accomplish. I don’t want to dive too deep into what will or can happen, if the Combine gets too powerful or its aspirations too grand. Just look at the policies of the last 2 years and imagine a world, where the electronic shackles and systems of control are even tighter woven into your daily lives. I won’t go any further into that…
Dont’ hate the player — hate the game
Let me add a quote in order to explain to you that the issue is not that there are “evil elites” and we just need to find some “good” ones, to help us out. The alternative is not just to vote in new players at the top of the pyramid and think anything will change:
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
It does not matter if you interchange one elitist with another. It won’t change anything in the grand scheme of things, if “Elon Musk buys twitter” for example. You might like him more than Bill Gates and he might even try to be less devious with his “cataclysmic philanthropy”, but in the end nothing will change, it may even get worse, as you are giving him even more trust and free reign than you would otherwise. The issue here is not the player — it’s the game.
What’s the alternative?
This is why we’re building a decentralized alternative to this digital game of thrones. One that removes the throne at the center as a set peace to fight over altogether. We remove the notion of the ruling class and power elites, without compromising on the notion of leadership and merit.
To achieve that we set our primary goal in creating an alternative to what was always the most fundamental part of this entire game: The financial system. We create one that does not try to fight the old, but provides you a new alternative you can opt-in to. One that does not subject you into a rigged and controlled machinery under the guise of “financial inclusion”. One that “unbanks” you first, so that banks have to change back into working hard again to gain your trust, rather than rely on the fact that you are depending on them.
An efficient, convenient, modern, safe global system without the need of a handful elitist ‘philanthropists’ and ‘representatives’ at its helms who are one step away of cheating — or worse — breaking the entire game because they didn’t like the outcome, so they can start it all over. It will be a “massive multiplayer” online game, where everyone can join and play and no one has to give up their rights, their identity and soul to someone, who thinks he knows better how the world has to be run.
It is meant for you to connect to and use it for your benefit as you see fit, without asking anyone for permission. It is meant to be a real public good while not being manipulated by representatives. A world currency that has no regulators which control (i.e. inflate) the money supply to pay for their giant international aspirations (i.e. territorial domination and wars). A payment network that is just as convenient and more efficient and viable than any other you are using today. It is meant to be all that, without you having to give up your digital identity, your rights — or your soul for that matter.
And we won’t stop there. There are already social media protocols being worked on that are out to be just as useful, if not more, in creating a safe and convenient digital environment, getting you all the “relevant” media in your feed and removing the noise, without you losing control over your data.
All of this is possible, through the use of eCash-technology. And all of it can be build starting right now and in no time, if we gather enough support and contributions of people sharing this goal.
You may feel the sense of urgency in my words, but I am not trying to just paint a grim picture of the future. I am trying to be realistic of the giant pink elephant in the room, which most people are too afraid to see or tackle. And yet, I am very much optimistic about how we can fix it and opt out into an alternative, that gives us the best of both worlds, which just drives my sense of urgency.
It is a giant relief to me that this technology has been introduced to us in the form of Bitcoin in 2009 and how far it has come. With the development ongoing on eCash and ambassadors gathering all around the world, the idea of a peer-to-peer cash system for the world is here to stay and it can only get better from here. Let’s come together and speed up the process, before the combine has finished gobbling up our civilization.
Thanks for reading, happy Easter, till next week,
- Kousha
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