PARTNERS' & EXTERNALS' PERSPECTIVE
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON MANDATORY DIGITAL CURRENCIES
Răzvan-Ștefan Bunciu
Member of ELSA Bucharest
After the financial crisis of 2008-2010, the digital currency market gained momentum to such an extent that I am wondering whether ‘cash’ will survive the following decades. There are several types of digital currencies that share some peculiarities: they can be accessed by electronical means, exclusively, and they are sometimes referred to as ‘cybercash’.1 I will use this term for digital currencies as it clearly portrays the contrast between this type of currencies and ‘traditional’ ones. The suggestion for mandatory exclusive use of cybercash is based on considerations such as the speed and simplicity of virtual transfers. In this respect, China gives an example of a state-led digital currency (e-yuan) that is aimed to create a society without cash.2 Nevertheless, the US and the EU also want to create digital versions of their currencies.3 These decisions seemingly have a purely economic scope, and they aim at high and sustainable growth, especially in the context of the struggle for global hegemony. The topic I discuss is whether it is ethical 1 Jake Frankenfield, ‘Digital Currency’ (Investopedia, 10.8.2021) <https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/digital-currency.asp> accessed 10.10.2021. 2 Andrew Browne, ‘Bloomberg New Economy: China Cashless Economy and Surveillance’ (Bloomberg, 20.2.2021) <https://www. bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-02-20/bloomberg-new-economy-china-cashless-economy-and-surveillance> accessed 10.10.2021. 3 Luca D’Urbino, ‘The digital currencies that matter’ (The Economist, 8.5.2021) <https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/05/08/thedigital-currencies-that-matter> accessed 10.10.2021. 20 | SYNERGY Magazine
to impose technology and force people to give up traditional means of payment (such as cash) in order to achieve a competitive economy. J.S. Mill, the father of utilitarianism, argues that a doctrine is moral if ‘actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness’.4 Therefore, utilitarianism has at its core the concept of happiness, which Mill sees as the sum of the happiness of all people, so ‘that each person’s happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the great aggregate of all persons’.5 Consequently, it is ethical to force the mandatory exclusive use of cybercash, as long as it brings more benefits. The idea that Rawls6 considers weak in utilitarianism is that a person must act according to the interests of the group, not according to his/her interest, so the case of how happiness is distributed within the group is not considered. Subsequently, a person acts morally if he or she perceives himself or herself as spectators and acknowledge the interests of the group which may therefore be to his or her disadvantage. Rawls argues that utilitarianism makes no distinction between people, and that happiness is different for 4 John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (first published 1861, The University of Chicago Press 1906) 9. 5 ibid 53. 6 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (first published 1971, Harvard University Press 1999) 19-22.
