Thank God I Live in Europe

Ten years ago, when I first heard about China's surveillance payment system, I genuinely felt sorry for Chinese people. The government could track every single transaction. Every coffee, every bus ticket, everything.

I remember thinking — thank God I live in Europe.

Then came the cameras. Facial recognition everywhere. Cars with built-in location tracking. And the West was shocked. Politicians gave speeches. Journalists wrote op-eds. Everyone agreed: this was Orwellian. China was the villain. We were the good guys.

That was then.

If you've read 1984, you remember O'Brien. He presents himself as a friend, a protector, someone fighting for the right side. He was the hero of the story. And then you find out he was the enemy the whole time. The cruelty wasn't a bug — it was the point.

The European Union is O'Brien.

It spent years wrapping itself in the language of human rights, democracy, and privacy protection. GDPR. Cookie banners. Data protection frameworks. It positioned itself as the global guardian of your digital freedoms — the opposite of authoritarian China. And the great punisher of evil corporations from the USA.

But let's talk about where Europe actually is right now. Economy struggling. Migration crisis. Security problems. Demographic collapse. Bureaucracy slowly killing businesses. Europe is facing existential problems and instead of solving them, the government's answer is — more control.

Because look at what they're actually building. Banning cash. The digital euro, which means a complete record of everything you buy. Cars with cameras that record you as a driver and report where you go. And now Chat Control — your private messages, accessible to authorities by default.

And here's the beautiful irony. You have to click through cookie banners on every single website — massive GDPR theater about your privacy — but the same people pushing that can now read whatever they want from your private conversations. Oh, and of course there's a list of politicians and elites who are conveniently exempt from Chat Control. Rules for thee, not for me.

Same cameras. Same financial tracking. Same digital control. Just a different flag and a much better PR team.

And if you dare to say any of this out loud? You're automatically a Nazi. Or a Russian agent. Or a public enemy. In 2024, Germany alone prosecuted over 5,000 people for speech crimes — police raiding homes over social media posts. Think about that number. That's not fighting extremism. That's controlling the narrative. Freedom of speech in Europe is becoming a very theoretical concept. Every couple of years it gets harder to spot the real difference between the European Union, China, and Russia.

Here's what this actually does to society. When people don't trust their government, they stop cooperating. When everything is monitored, people become afraid. When laws become so complicated that it's almost impossible not to accidentally break one — and trust me, we're getting there — the government has infinite power to go after anyone they want. That's not a side effect. That's the point. And all of this hinders economic progress.

Because of economic difficulties, lack of progress, and demographic decline, the future of the European Union looks like more taxation and more control. But the more you push people, the more resistance you get. And the more resistance, the more fragile the system becomes.

Which brings me to money. Because at the end of the day, surveillance is also about financial control. If the government knows every transaction you make and can freeze your account, cut off your digital euro wallet, or flag you for paying cash too often — you're not really free. You're just tolerated. So as a European investor, I've started thinking about resilience, not just returns.

Personally, I'm looking at cash while it still exists, crypto, gold, and GrapheneOS on my phone. Not because I have something to hide. But because the moment you need privacy and don't have it — it's already too late.

Cash still offers the most anonymity, so use it while you can. Crypto is more complicated — every transaction is traceable on the blockchain, but it's a universal payment system no government can fully control, which gives it a real edge over traditional systems. Gold is a proven protection against government overreach. The problem with all three is the same: no stable yield. Cash gets eaten by inflation, crypto is volatile, and gold is more of a savings vehicle than an investment.

So for those reasons I still invest in global stocks through the usual government-regulated channels — brokers, banks, verified institutions. I'm not going off-grid. I just want a portion of my assets to be resilient against a system that is becoming increasingly comfortable watching everything I do.

We laughed at Oceania. Turns out we were just a few policy decisions away from it.