Currency is already managed by the elected government, and every democracy in the world traces electronic transactions. Some (like Italy) forbid cash payments in large sums altogether. So what's the boogieman here?
The boogyman is just what you described, and every democracy in the world absolutely does not trace electronic transactions.
Some have a more hands off approach, including size of transactions and flagged behaviour as indicators of when payment processors must report to the government.
The Goverment should absolutely have no idea who spends what, where. Warrants and court orders, check values should be required before anyone can know. The potential to suppress political opponents, to squelch legitimate protest, to interfere with elections, is too dangerous.
Simply because some countries, like the US after 9/11, decided to give up this aspect of a free people, does not make it right.
Governments have a monopoly on violence and thus technically the ability to do whatever they want. But it matters how theoretical that ability is and how publicly apparent misuse of the ability will be. Having all transactions flow through the government makes abuse both trivial and invisible to the public.
Currency is a barriers bond that affords a degree of decentralisation-in-operation and use that isn't afforded by digital payments, even crypto for practical purposes.
Yes, and this is a bad thing, and free societies are impossible without the possibility of payments that the government doesn’t want you to be able to make.
Cryptocurrency solves that problem well, which is why governments have moved hard to effectively nerf it everywhere.
Visa and Mastercard don't, but right now cash more or less does. If the state has a monopoly on digital payments, and can thus mass surveil all digital payments without any scrutiny, the state has a huge incentive to disincentivize or bar the use of cash. Then all it takes is a bad actor to come into power and abuse the system.
> Not relevant to the point I was making at all - the state running digital payments is no more an incentive to stop cash payments than Visa/MC.
Yes, it is. The state acting as a direct intermediary for all transactions creates new mechanisms of both mass surveillance and economic control that do not exist in the status quo where the state functions merely as the issuer of cash.
When private businesses create digital transaction systems that augment the cash economy, the state itself does not have direct access to or control over the transactions that flow through those systems, and must work within legal strictures to interact with the organizations managing them.
> User data is available from either and in the case of Visa/MC it also likely leaks overseas.
Perhaps, but the legal implications between the state obtaining access to illicitly leaked data and the state itself being the originator of that data are drastically different.
The Italian government has no power over foreign cards, and will be careful to not hinder those transactions lest they want to lose their tourism income.
When it comes down to it they do have power over the use of foreign cards in their jurisdiction. But the further indirection from the government does matter and makes abuse harder.
Realistically the most they can do is exercise power over cards issued by Italian banks. They can't do anything about cards belonging to Italians, which have been issued by foreign banks, unless they ban all foreign cards. In which case they will lose all tourism and destroy their country completely.
