Toward a cashless society.

In Looking Backward, his 1888 sci-fi novel-cum-utopian manifesto, socialist Edward Bellamy foretold the advent of "credit cards" and the advent of a cashless society by the year 2000. By the turn of the century, major strides had been taken in that direction, most notably the widespread use of electronic funds transfer (EFT). However, "the march toward cashlessness stalled due to wariness about invasions of privacy," complains David R. Warwick in the July-August issue of The Futurist.

Warwick, author of Ending Cash: The Public Benefits of Federal Electronic Currency, insists that those who "focus their efforts exclusively against invasions of privacy too often are oblivious to greater and more harmful social enemies," such as violent crime, drug trafficking and tax evasion. "It is patently wrongheaded to ignore these facts, particularly on the implausible expectation that electronically collected data might somehow facilitate creation of a totalitarian regime." Here Warwick hangs himself in a noose fashioned from his own words, since his proposal for a cash-free society would create a totalitarian regime--albeit one he insists would be benevolent.

Federal electronic currency, or FEDEC, would cripple "underground illicit activities" and "generate billions of dollars in previously unreported tax revenues," Warwick exults. Funds would transfer directly from one state-created account to another, and thus be "completely traceable."

Although Warwick doesn't admit as much, FEDEC funds could also be impounded or inflated at the whim of government, leaving those who depend on them entirely at the mercy of the state.