War Reveals the Great Cost of Convenience

Andy Snyder|February 28, 2022

“I am at work. Where do I go?” the frantic woman cried out. “Somebody help me. Where do I go?”

The Russian missiles boomed behind her. The troops marched in with a foreign flag in their hands.

The lady was left with nowhere to go.

Nearby, her fellow citizens wanted to get out of town. But first they lined up at the ATM. They needed to turn their digital wealth into something a bit more useful… something the enemy would have a harder time taking.

(It’s just like what we saw in India when it suddenly destroyed its cash… video here.)

But in war, the people and their wealth come last. The government comes first.

The folks in the back of the line were too late. Ukraine’s central bank closed things down.

It put a strict limit on how much cash a person could withdraw. It made it illegal to convert cash into foreign currency. And of course, it closed the stock market.

Biden put sanctions on Russia. But Ukraine was forced to sanction itself.

For its folks, their wealth was limited to what they had on them.

For most… it wasn’t much – not enough to get out of the basement as the footsteps of the enemy tapped overhead.

The Global Death of Cash

Meanwhile, the story continues in Canada.

We took heat for bashing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s clampdown on the loonies.

With protestors annoying the citizenry, he locked accounts, canceled payments and used a mighty digital system as a weapon against the people who depend on it.

Suddenly, the convenience of easy spending came with a great toll.

Freedom.

But as we knew it wouldn’t, the story didn’t end there.

It never does.

This story gets flat-out dangerous.

It turns out that every person who donated funds to the protestors through GiveSendGo had their data leaked and their locations tacked to Google Maps.

Want to send a message to somebody with a different view? Just hop online and look them up.

It was a nasty move.

We’ve said it before. The death of cash creates all new pressures on the notion of what it means to be free.

Donate to the wrong political party, and somebody may just knock at your door.

That’s what happened to some poor Canadians.

Our nation’s thought keepers at The Washington Post took advantage of the leak and did some international “reaching out.”

“Your name matches a $40 donation. What motivated you to contribute to the campaign?” one reporter asked a Canadian citizen.

We presume the next question was equally ignorant and loaded… something like, “Have you stopped beating your wife?”

Dumb.

Meanwhile, folks in Ottawa are working to make some of the “more useful” tools that came out of Trudeau’s emergency declaration permanent… particularly the idea of forcing payment and crowdsourcing platforms to register with the government.

Once again… transfer some of your digital money to the wrong folks, and the folks in charge will want to know about it.

Convenience clearly comes at a cost.

Freedom.

The folks in Ukraine, sadly, are living that tragedy in real time.

They’re not protesting. It’s too late for that. The enemy has come to town.

The ATMs are shut down.

Cash might get folks out. But there’s none to be found.

Note: Think this isn’t a problem for Americans? Just watch the news on March 16. If things go the way I think they might, our nation could be in for quite a shock. The timing is perfect. Details here.