The Use of Cash as the Cornerstone of Personal Sovereignty and the preotection of democracy
By Rosy Mylene Meza
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Rosy Mylene Meza is a doctor in United States Jurisprudence, an attorney and an analyst in international
affairs. She graduated from the University of Miami School of Law, cum laude, and has practiced in the
areas of criminal law and Federal administrative law in the United States. A lifelong and passionate
admirer of the principles of freedom and equality enumerated in the US Constitution, she has
contributed analyses of US politics and world affairs for digital publication in Spain from a dynamic,
multipolar perspective.
Historically, the use of physical cash has provided a robust, straightforward
and easy system to conduct financial transactions throughout the world for
over 4,000 years. The use of metal money, coins, has been traced to
Babylon from before 2,000 BC. The use of paper money can be traced back
to the promissory notes of ancient China, Carthage and the Roman Empire
over 2,000 years ago. The banknote, as known today, emerged in the 7 th
century during the Tang Dynasty in China.
The clear and present danger in Europe of adopting CBDCs as the only and
exclusive unit of financial transactions, eschewing and forbidding the use of
the tried-and-true physical cash, has severe and noxious implications for
the freedom of EU citizens as well as the stability of democracy in Europe.
It is with this danger in mind that a summary review of the American
example on the protections stemming from the use of cash can serve as a
reference and compass in adverting the catastrophic consequences of
officially installing techno-feudalism upon unsuspecting populations.
The American Constitution: The First Line of Defense
The United States Constitution provides a framework for understanding
the role of currency in American governance. From the early days of the
nation, this foundational document has guided the country’s approach to
money and finance. The US Constitution establishes the Federal
Government’s exclusive authority over money. Article I, Section 8 grants
the American Congress the exclusive power to “Coin money, regulate the
Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and
Measures.” State governments are therefore forbidden from coining or
printing money as legal tender.
The US supreme Court has not directly addressed the issue of CBDCs in the
United States. So far, the key cases on money include:
1) Knox V. Lee (1871): Upholding the constitutionality of the Legal
Tender Act of 1862, authorizing the printing of paper money as legal
US tender.
2) Hepburn v. Griswold (1870): This case ruled that paper money
violated the Constitution, but was overturned by Knox v. Lee.
3) McCulloch v. Maryland (1819): The Court decided that the Federal
Government has the right and power to set up a Federal bank and
that States did not have the power to tax the Federal Government.
Although the US Supreme Court has not addressed the issue of BBDCs
versus the use of cash in the United States, the overarching foundational
principles of the US Constitution offer a strong protection for American
citizens for the right to use of cash in financial transactions.
A case arguing for the establishment of CBDCs as the obligatory unit of use
replacing legal physical tender in the US, brought and certified for review
by the US Supreme Court, would therefore be a case of First Impression in
the US, setting an all-important mandatory precedent.
It is important to remember that the United States Constitution is unique
as a foundational document in that it established rights that citizens have
AGAINST their government. It is therefore a negative rights document.
This is key in understanding the prescient elasticity that has allowed the
rapid growth of a young nation. And most importantly, for the protection
against the abolition of physical currency as valid legal tender.
The Fourth Amendment, Clause I
The Founding Fathers were anxiously concerned that citizens be
guaranteed freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. This was an
explicit repudiation of the English policy of entering private premises
without search warrants and the illegal and arbitrary seizure of property.
The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, Clause I, clearly protects
individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. It
guarantees the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and
effects. In essence, this clause establishes a fundamental right to
privacy from government intrusion.
Constitution of the United States, Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath
or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
persons or things to be seized.
The discarding of cash as legal tender in the US would negate the 4th
Amendment’s right to privacy on its face. Individuals would no longer have
any privacy whatsoever in their daily financial transactions. Citizens would
be subject to impermissible intrusion upon their privacy by the
government.
The intrusion on privacy would also impinge on the privacy of the
individual’s political vote and party preferences. The right to cast a secret
ballot in public elections is a core value in the United State’s system of self-
governance. Secrecy and privacy in elections guard against coercion and are
essential to integrity in the electoral process. Secrecy of the ballot is
guaranteed in state constitutions and statutes nationwide.
32 States and the District of Columbia now allow some form of internet
voting, typically for overseas citizens and military personnel. A clear
recognition of the potential danger of intrusion on the secrecy of ballots is
the signed waiver required of voters when internet voting is used.
Compulsory use of internet-based CBDCs married to internet voting is the
deathknell of voter privacy. Further, even with non-internet voting
mechanisms, a perusal of voter’s financial transactions would make is
extremely easy to profile voters individually for party affiliation and
nationally for the purposes of voting manipulation and election fraud.
The use of CBDCs, therefore, is an anti-Democratic mechanism that can be
easily subverted to defeat the Democratic will of the people in American
elections by created interests.
Other Protective Clauses in the US Constitution for the Use of
Cash as Legal Tender
The Equal protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
The Equal protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects against
discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, and alienage. These
are deemed “suspect classifications” and are subject to strict scrutiny,
meaning that government actions that discriminate against any of these
groups are unconstitutional unless they are narrowly tailored to serve a
compelling state interest.
Although The 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, while directly
applying to states, is also applied to the federal government through the 5th
Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The Supreme Court has held that the
Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause guarantees equal protection under
the law against the federal government, mirroring the protections afforded
by the 14th Amendment.
A cogent Constitutional argument can be made that CBDCs do not afford
equal protection of suspect classifications based on race, as the use of cash
is overwhelmingly represented by racial minorities in the US.
As of 2022, 26% of black adults reported using cash for most or all of their
purchases
The Penumbras of the Commerce Clause
Some of the most creative cases in US Constitutional Law are to be found in
the “penumbras” of the Commerce Clause. The string of cases arguing that
racial discrimination impermissibly interfered with interstate commerce
were creatively used by skilled jurists to defeat racial segregation in motels
and other public accommodations. The US Supreme Court in its brilliant
holding in the case of Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United Sates (1964) upheld
the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial
discrimination in places of public accommodation. The Court’s reasoning
centered on racial discrimination in motels and other public
accommodations discouraging black Americans from traveling and
participating in interstate commerce, thus having a substantial impact in
interstate commerce.
It can reasonably and cogently be argued that prohibiting the use of cash by
individuals would impermissibly interfere with interstate commerce by
having a substantial effect on travel by blacks and other minorities within
the United States who utilize cash as their main means of financial
transactions. Cash is an easy and direct physical financial unit that does not
require other mechanism of exchange or agency other than the physical
unit itself, which facilitates interstate travel and commerce.
Statistically and culturally, the underprivileged and racial minorities in the
United States use cash over every other means of exchange. The
underprivileged, persons with disabilities, the elderly and minorities would
be subject to discrimination should the straightforward and easy use of
cash as means of exchange be abolished. In effect, an underclass, composed
of those without digital access and the most vulnerable in society would be
left without means of obtaining their basic needs, of assuring their very
survival.
The First Clause of the 14th Amendment Revisited, a
Philosophical Reflection
The holder of legal physical tender, cash, is the owner of the value of that
currency, without an intermediary agent. The use of CBDCs in effect would
nullify true ownership of property, of cash money, because a CBDC is
fundamentally different from cash, inter alia, in that CBDC’s are a promise
of payment, that banks can interpret, delay of suspend. There is a
fundamental difference between the promise of a payment, the conditional
promise of a payment, and the payment, or cash, which is property itself,
non-conditional, non-delayable, and absolute.
Canada: A Prime Example of Governmental Digital Coercion
The case of the 2022 Canadian Freedom Convoy, where truckers initially
opposed the COVID vaccine mandate for cross-border truck drivers are a
case in point. The Canadian Government froze 76 bank accounts linked to
the protests under the Emergencies Act. The truckers, who were peacefully
demonstrating against being forced to be injected with an experimental
Covid gene therapy, euphemistically called COVID vaccine, were blocked
from accessing essential funds. The freezing of the bank accounts By Justin
Trudeau’s government was a patent use of political coercion by a political
power or faction to force the hands of dissenting citizens by threatening the
very means of their survival: access to funds. There is no easier way to block
access to necessary funds than to have a digital currency replace the
physical, tangible use of money. Cash is much harder to confiscate and
divest the ownership of. There is therefore, no easier way of subverting
democracy than by forcing the use of CBDCs on the general population.
CBDCs Negate Private Property
Democracy and the stability of any workable political system centers on
private property. Private property assures individuals within a system self-
sovereignty due to their control of the means of production, protection and
survival. Money, as the legal tender means of exchange, provides economic
stability, furthering domestic and foreign investment and national growth.
The US dollar has been the reserve currency of the world for decades
precisely because it has never confiscated its cash. In other words, the value
of a $100 bill of a hundred years ago is still honored today. No responsible
nation will invest its sovereign riches in a reserve currency that has been
confiscated via abolition of cash as legal tender.
CBDSs Increase Risk of Theft and Cybercrime, and Threat to Life
in Extreme Situations
The risk of exposure to cybercrimes of CBDCs versus cash can be
extrapolated from the risks inherent in crypto currencies and the vastly
documented literature on cyber thefts of depositor’s bank account funds
worldwide as well as the personal information connected to the accounts.
As per the International Monetary Fund, a CBDC creates a vast and
complex ecosystem that amplifies existing risk exposures and surfaces new
ones.
There is also the risk inherent in extreme situations such as war, power
failures and natural disasters, when failure of the energetic grids or banks
make access to funds impossible for survival. This fact alone should
argue for the imperative preservation of cash. Access to cash
directly translates into the preservation of life in extreme situations. There
is no possible guarantee that anything but a physical, non-agency
dependent means of exchange will preserve life in times of dire need. Only
cash and gold serve this essential purpose.
CBDCs Establish and Legitimize a Techno-Feudal Social Credit
System, The Chinese Example
The danger of CBDCs opening the door to the establishment of a feudal
social credit system cannot be underestimated. This would put the ruling
party within a country, the members of its Central Bank, the upper tech
class, and the bankers as feudal lords to the serf citizenry.
The Chinese Social Credit System is a national system that assesses the
trustworthiness of individuals and businesses by tracking their behaviors
and assigning them a social credit core, This score can impact access to
various social benefits, opportunities, and even result in penalties.
Restrictions on travel, access to meaningful employment, difficulty
obtaining loans and public shaming, among other penalties may follow a
negative social credit score. The Chinese system gathers data from various
sources, including financial data.
Doubtlessly, CBDCs will facilitate the imposition of a social credit to further
the ruling powers cultural, legal and religious mandates upon a population,
further eroding the individual’s right to privacy and potentially even
freedom of speech.
The Indian Example
Cash rules in India despite digital payment boom.
In November India abruptly scrapped two banknotes constituting 86% of
its circulating currency, a move aimed at combating corruption and
undeclared funds. Years later, cash continues its relevance and is mostly
favored by individuals for everyday transactions despite the proliferation of
digital payment platforms. It is also favored by Indian households for the
storing of wealth.
Perhaps the most tragic example of the confiscation of cash by the Indian
government resulted in the deaths and suicides of Indian women, rural
farmers and the unbanked poor who were unable to navigate the
complexities of digital payment systems.
The Final Analysis
In the final analysis, cash is printed freedom. The decision to adopt CBDCs
as the exclusive means of exchange represent the transition from
democracy into a new, and extremely dangerous, feudalism. The fight to
preserve and enshrine the use of cash as legal tender is the fight to preserve
democracy and the core individual freedoms within that democracy.
Nothing more and nothing less.
History has shown that it is the solidarity between peoples that has
propelled humanity forward. During the American Revolution, it was
France’s diplomatic support and critical supplies of arms, funds and troops
to George Washington’s beleaguered Continental Army that proved the
tipping point in the war. It is highly that without France’s timely support,
the United States would not exist. In the spirit of friendship, may the
examples and protections of the American Constitution be a useful compass
to preserve the freedoms of our French cousins, and through, them, may
they be expanded throughout Europe.
“Wherever civil rights are not respected by the government, cash –much
more than digital payments, help opposition activists to protect
themselves from the illegitimate use of public power, from surveillance
and intimidation.” Heike Mai, Deutche Bank
