Conditional Cash Transfers and Cybernetic Futures

There’s much discussion of central bank digital currency these days, of its future implications and its technological origins. I’ve noticed, however, there are not many examining its roots in social policy. The concept of programmed money didn’t show up center stage in time for the Fourth Industrial Revolution without considerable advance planning. Social scientists and behavioral economists used impoverished communities as testbeds for unscrupulous experimentation in the decades leading up to the crypto-bait and switch. Illustrious academic careers have been built on investigations into evidence-based public assistance “reforms” including Mexico’s Progresa and the World Food Program’s refugee iris-scan payment system.

A slide deck prepared by the World Bank in 2014 promoting conditional cash transfers shows programmed benefits reaching tens of millions of people worldwide. The program in Brazil, Bolsa Familia, started with 3.5 million people in 2003, expanding to 54 million a decade later. In the Philippines a conditional cash pilot serving 6,000 people in 2007 grew to 14 million participants in only seven years.