The Electronic Revolution

Revolution with Electronic Money

Technology provides the means for radical change to happen. Change is the result of combining technology with what already exists. Sometimes humans have played games with innovative technologies in one part of the world whereas in another part of the world that same technology is used as a war weapon. (Consider powder in China).

The agility of communication technology combined with what we call Information Technology sets up the base for radical change to occur in what we call the Financial Systems.

First there were coins made of scarce and durable metals. Then came along paper money. Each paper note was supposed to be backed by a scarce and durable metal. And finally printing money notes had no value but the value given by humans accepting them as payment for material goods and services.

This is where we are today. Nobody rejects American paper notes or dollars, unless you are in a country where the law has made it difficult and expensive to exchange them for local money. The payer holding American dollars cannot pay their bills using such notes. The payee is tempted to accept the traditionally green notes but ends up not accepting them: the need to immediately use local money indicates that there will be a loss for the payee in the process. These losses are profits for banks and currency exchange businesses.

Substitute American dollar for European euro and the same will happen in other parts of the world. For every currency exchange a profit is made by a bank or a currency exchange outlet involved in the process.

We accept profits made by entities that add value to our life. In the case of the currency exchange process there is no real value added to justify the profit. We feel something is not right when part of the value of our local money is lost to a profit for banks or currency exchange “businesses”. This feeling that something is wrong is exactly what an Electronic Unique World Currency would erase for good.

The percentage of people who travel across borders is low, compared to the general population:

About 1.4 billion yearly arrivals which amounts, in distinct passengers to 280 million—estimating an average of five trips per year. Only 3.5% of humans travel across borders. This percentage is global. Affluent economies have higher figures. If only 3.5% of humans need to use the foreign exchange services, the problem is small. We need to consider that these profits for banks and currency exchange businesses originate daily from billions of international commerce operations. This is an obvious indicator of a hidden cost for humans.

Every single hidden cost means more hours of unnecessary work for all humans. That is what it amounts to. When we free people from jobs that do not add real value to our society, we are freeing ourselves from some daily seconds of work needed to do necessary things for the benefit of those who are busy doing unnecessary stuff. We need not more jobs, but only jobs that add real value to human life. It is time what we must redistribute. This amounts to less working time per person per day or per person per year. Our life experience will be richer if we have more free hours per day and more free months per year.

By banning the usage of paper money, we cancel out the need to produce paper money. Printing paper money is an expensive operation. Moving it from place to place is another hidden cost that can be eradicated. It is expensive and dangerous. Exchanging currencies is a waste of time and energy.

If we discontinue using paper money, including coins, we will wipe out the hidden costs that we have to pay today enforcing tax declarations and tax audits. Any transaction between parties will automatically create the transactions to transfer taxes to the social accounts of governments from all levels:

• Local
• Regional
• National
• International

No Paper Ballots

Just as we do not need paper money, we do not need paper ballots.

This is another huge hidden cost we can now completely eradicate. Elections for all government levels should be carried out electronically. The World Currency Bank can double as an electronic electoral system for all. Each personal account will carry all the information necessary to validate the electoral capability of all.

I would suggest critical changes concerning elections, government, and social issues.

The electronic voting system will significantly facilitate citizen participation in local, regional, national, and international issues. Not all citizens will participate in all issues. Some citizens with certain skills and expertise will want to participate with suggestions and proposals related to their fields of knowledge and experience. All citizens will be able to observe and ask questions as proposals start to appear in each issue to act and invest resources.

The voting system will be useful for both, elections of officials and configuration of proposals to create projects for social actions. Nothing will be anonymous. If you need to be anonymous you will not be able participate. Anonymity hides issues.

What we know today as legislators will become final authenticators of discussed proposals that will have finally become official policies to execute. The execution of such approved actions will be the responsibility of experts in each area and not of a central executive figure. This will avoid an unnecessary concentration of power in one individual.

The experts to do professional work for all social administrative levels will remain in office if their work is productive and yields results.

What we call today judges will continue to do work related to information stored in the World Currency Bank only if physical behavior of persons generates violations of other persons’ rights. Financial crimes will not be possible. All operations will be supervised by the algorithms built into the WCB, not allowing actions that would violate the principles of the system.

Trusting Technology

Some education is necessary to teach people to trust information technology. All systems will be designed with the participation of Judges and any citizen who wants to witness their integrity. The initial process will be especially delicate.

Laws shall be approved that will guide and determine the system’s functional arguments. Then people will be publicly educated—using all mass media at hand—about the system’s inner integrity and why it is trustable.

This education in trusting technology will be extensive to the electronic electoral system. In democracy the practical possibility of citizen participation is crucial. This is what the system will render possible, making it a natural way of life for all.

Participation might not be universal, but the system will make it possible for the largest amount of interested citizens to participate; most of them by reading, a few even commenting. It is the participation of the experts, facilitated by the system, what will make a significant difference from what we have today. Eventually citizens will wonder how “in the past” they even dared to call “democracy” what they had—which unfortunately is what we have today.

But now we understand that technology can contribute to make life on Earth a better experience, for humans for the time being, but for the other species as soon as humans open their minds.