Send your comments, critiques, or reviews to the author, or share your own ideas about the shape of the coming world. Your response may be featured on our website. This world is not science fiction, but the world that increasing numbers of people will come to enjoy over the next couple of decades, according to the new book, The End of Money and the Struggle for Financial Privacy , by Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Richard W. Rahn.
Technology has fast outpaced governments' ability to maintain control of electronic finance.
Advances in fiberoptics, encryption, and smart-card technologies make it ever easier to transfer funds from one person to another anywhere around the globe almost instantaneously, and without the use of paper and coins. Global financial networks and systems allow any asset whose value is recognized and guaranteed by a reliable financial institution to be instantly transferred from one person to another. Unfortunately, this new world of digital money is fiercely resisted by many government officials. The full benefits of digital money will not be realized unless people are left free to move their financial assets around the globe in a private fashion. His vision is radical, liberating and readable.