Via International Man - October 23, 2025

International Man: Recently, the State Bank of Vietnam deactivated more than 86 million bank accounts as part of its shift toward a new national digital ID system.

Officials call it a ‘security upgrade,’ but it effectively cut off millions from their own money overnight.

In Thailand, we’ve seen a similar push to tie financial and online activity to state-issued digital IDs.

Is this part of a coordinated global push toward centralized control through digital ID systems?

Doug Casey: Without doubt.

Money is a primary manifestation of personal freedom. Money isn’t just an economic good; it’s a moral good. It represents the hours of your life you spent earning it, and all that you hope to provide for yourself and others in the future. It is, in effect, congealed or crystallized life.

Those who want to control other people—collectivists, statists, Marxists, the Woke, socialists, and the like—naturally want to limit the uses and the value of money. Enforcing the use of fiat currencies issued by central banks is the ideal way of doing that. It amounts to a giant fraud. But the average person stupidly accepts it as part of the cosmic firmament.

People have been told that in a democracy, they’re the rulers. In reality, democracy in today’s world is just mob rule dressed up in a coat and tie. It amounts to a secular religion, where the State is a god, and politicians are its priests. When it comes to financial matters, the public has become accustomed to doing what they’re told.

This is nothing new. Few remember that when Roosevelt confiscated gold in 1933, he used an Executive Order—the same vehicle that Trump uses for so many things today. You’d have thought that, almost a hundred years ago, Americans would have resisted the president’s wholesale theft. But they were already used to the Federal Reserve issuing currency, and the government collecting income tax. When ordered to turn in their gold, they acted like obedient little lambs.

The average American is even more supine and indoctrinated now than he was then. So I expect little resistance to digital currency, which will be a final nail in the coffin of economic freedom.

I’m not a religious person, but it may yet turn out that the New Testament, Revelation 13, is correct where it says: “He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”

That verse is quite predictive.

International Man: In the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently said people won’t be able to work without a digital ID.

What does it tell you when access to employment becomes the leverage point for forcing digital ID adoption—and could we see the same tactic used in the US?

Doug Casey: Absolutely. Governments would prefer everybody to be an employee. They don’t like entrepreneurs because they have too independent a mentality. Entrepreneurs and independently employed people are in a much better position to avoid or evade taxes and regulations. Employees have taxes extracted from their paycheck before they even see it. Then, when they file their tax return and get a refund for overpayment, they stupidly see it as a gift from the government.

Furthermore, big government likes big corporations partly because government employees can easily move laterally into a big corporation to cash in on favors done. This doesn’t happen with small entrepreneurial corporations. Only big corporations can act effectively in a highly politicized environment, because only big corporations can afford the lawyers and accountants to interpret the regulations, and subtly bribe the politicians to have laws passed in their favor.

Having every individual use a digital ID helps to pigeonhole them, make them less independent, and easier to control. In a bureaucratic world where everything is computerized, if you don’t have a number, you don’t exist.

International Man: In the US, we’re also seeing early steps—things like digital driver’s licenses, biometric airport programs, and proposals tied to central bank digital currencies.

How close are we to a comprehensive digital ID system? How could that unfold? . . .

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