While too much went on over three days to cover here, let me offer a couple of things. Electronic surveillance, although illegal, is also widespread. Dulles went from Princeton into the foreign service, which by default doubled its diplomatic function with intelligence gathering. The luncheon speaker was Richard Rahn who talked about his book, The End of Money and the Struggle for Financial Privacy, Discovery Inst, 1999. E-money, he told us, will soon replace government minted currencies and that is an important policy issue.
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 f 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. These sites carry original content from many contributors, and this content and those opinions are of the authors, and do not reflect the opinions of Communication Links, Inc. its contributors or advertisers.