Speculative Value

The speculative value of cryptocurrencies is hurtling towards their intrinsic value of zero. A suspicious number of those who decry us sceptics of the cashless society also claim that we are under constant threat of cyberattacks, and a surprising number of those who are forthright against the cashless society are enthusiasts for cryptocurrencies, about which the clue is in the name.

In the cashless economy, every penny that we spent would be tracked. Cryptocurrencies are beyond democratic political control. The combination of the two would be, and increasingly is, that level of tracking by those who were thus unaccountable.

Indeed, we have already surrendered far too much democratic political control over our economy. No one accountable to us made this week's decision about interest rates. And for what? Even lower economic growth, and even higher unemployment. Was it not supposed to have been impossible to have both mass unemployment and galloping inflation? Funny how well we seem to be managing it.

From the point of view of the people responsible, that is as it should be. Almost all Labour and other MPs regard it as neither a failure nor an accident, but as something to be engineered and celebrated, as it has been and as it is being, since the fear of destitution is fundamental to their control of the rest of us. They are the Heirs to Blair, whom Margaret Thatcher identified as her greatest achievement.