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Phoenix
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This may end up being a Controversy Corner thread....
Well it can't be good either way for liberty. "It'll only be used on criminals. We promise." That's how it always starts. I'm all for catching the bad guys, but consider City 17's dystopian police state, with floating cameras that watch everything you do. How far a stretch is that really, when London already has cameras on every street corner?
The concept of the Mark of the Beast has been interpreted by many to be a subdermal microchip implant, much like Applied Digital has done with Digital Angel and the Verichip, linked to GPS satellites and remote RFID scanners. Here's the nightmare scenario that's been predicted. Tie it all into a massive computer database. Everything you buy, or sell, every place you go, everything you do - it can all be tracked. No more cash, no more checks, you just place your hand on the panel and you buy your groceries (which also have RFID - Radio Frequency Identification - tags in every item), or your clothing (likewise), or fix your car (which also has a GPS "black box"). Think of the economic and social engineering benefits this system would have to governments around the world. You could eliminate crime because you could track everyone and - more importantly - if someone does not have a chip, you have thermal and biometric scanners tied in to the RFID scanners that alert the authorities to an "anomaly". Taxes cannot be avoided, and earnings and expenditures can be completely tracked. "Under the table" cannot happen in a cashless society. Illegal drugs can no longer be sold because how can you buy them without cash? You can't escape nor cheat the system. Anyone trying to hack it will run into redundancy checking probes that detect the hack, and of course all computer activity will be tracked so those trying to outsmart it will be dealt with severely. Anonymity becomes non-existent. Liberty dies. Fear of "disordered" behavior coerces pacification of the population, because any minor infraction - of which all will commit at some point - can be used against you and they will know everything. Blackmail and extortion become easy for those who know every little vice, every little sin, every little secret about you. Do you really want your wife to know where you spent last night, and with whom? Or how about those nasty words you said about your boss behind his back? How about all those times you skirted the speed limit a few miles per hour - that adds up in fines you know, but we can ignore it if you cooperate with us. A totalitarian, socialist dystopia is exactly what will result from this - Orwell's Big Brother come to life at last.
Of course, who in their right mind would accept such a society? Who wouldn't resist it? Look about you. Look at the commercials from VISA where everyone is happily, blissfully, swiping their cards in a merry little dance, all in some synchronized almost orgiastic spasm of commercialism, then suddenly it all stops. *Gasp* SOMEONE took out a check book or some cash! All the formerly happy, blissful idiots now level accusing stares at the offending "freak". Look at what Christmas has turned into. All that's bandied about is how are retail profits and the economy doing. Anyone remember that baby in the manger anymore? They have "pay by touch" scanners at grocery lines now. A friend of mine told me they went in several months back where he gets his food supplies. Convenience will sell it to many, and coercion to the rest when the time comes. How? I can explain that too.
Look at the world's economies. The US economy is on the brink of collapse. I don't like to scare people, but it's true. The US dollar is worth next to nothing, oil is becoming increasingly unaffordable, the housing market is non-existent, and when financial institutions as large as Citicorp require a foreign bail out to keep from collapsing, that's not good. Add to this the specter of inflation - which is very real, they just don't like to include energy costs in it because it looks better on paper - and the fact that the "cheap labor" countries like China and India are industrializing, meaning they will no longer be cheap anymore, and the ever increasing amount of personal debt... Well, the higher you build a house of cards, the less it takes to knock it down. I think the major economic powers know this. I think they want it, too. I think that, at some point, there will be a massive breakdown of the world's stock markets over some crisis, either real or engineered. Then, someone will step forward, a man, a figurehead, once the misery reaches the right point where people will do anything just for a slice of bread to eat and to keep from freezing in the cold at night. He will have The Solution. He will bring forth the new plan for the world's economy, a fair plan, a plan where everyone is rewarded for their contributions, where everyone is given a job to do, and everyone can participate and not be left out in the cold. All that is required is that they cooperate, and participate willingly. He will come forth to help, but will need their help in return, will need your help in return.
If you think this is absurd, Adolph Hitler did the exact same thing in Germany, and his rise to power was meteoric. Hitler was worshiped like a god by his most loyal followers, and hailed as a hero by the Germany of the day. The truth is, if you subject people to enough misery for long enough they will beg for a solution - any solution - and they will look for a savior in all the wrong places. So you see, it is possible, and the technology exists today for such a system to be implemented. Not prior to today was there global communications, and massive computer processing capable of tracking everyone and permitting or forbidding ALL people from buying or selling. The concept of the Mark of the Beast makes sense when the description in Revelation is compared against today's technology and what can be done with it. I've done my best at observing the times and connecting the dots, and while I cannot say with certainty when this will happen, I can say this: I know how governments think, and what they ultimately want. I know how people behave when they are subjected to suffering. I know that the economies of the world are inherently flawed and eventually doomed to utter failure at some point, and that the chief economic architects of the world will know this as well and already have a plan in place to replace the old, failing system once it's brought down. To me it's only a matter of when this happens and what triggers it, not if. All it will take is one nation to do something very stupid to set the whole thing off. A coup in Saudi Arabia, or a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran... One terrorist with a suitcase nuke in Tel Aviv could trigger a war that would crash the world's oil market, and everything else would follow like dominoes.
Of course I could be wrong, and I would rather be, but I see no way out of the box that the world has backed itself into. Time is all you have, and I think not so much anymore. I would hope that more people would understand that liberty is a precious gift bought with the blood of those willing to lay down their lives to buy it for others. As long as governments are allowed by their citizenry to take away more and more liberty, the harder the fight to preserve what's left will become.
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