What's yours is THEIRS.

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When is your property NOT your property? According to many nations in Europe, whenever the government wants. And the EU could be ramping up to seize honest citizen’s assets in a big way…

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📖 ESTIMATED READ TIME: 5 minutes 25 seconds

A desperate empire.

In the late 17th century, the Ottoman Empire stood as one of the world’s most formidable powers. With territories stretching across three continents, its leaders and inhabitants had amassed incredible wealth. Yet, beneath this grand façade, the empire’s internal structure was rotten.

After decades of relentless warfare, its resources and ability to raise capital had become severely strained. Once brimming with the wealth of conquered lands and prosperous trade routes, its coffers were now as barren as a salted field.

The Ottoman monarch—Sultan Ahmed II—required a remedy to avoid the total financial collapse of the empire. The Ottoman people would provide the solution; a burden they would bear, whether they chose to or not.

Implemented more than a century before, the tahrir defterleri (tax register) and tapu defterleri (land register) were designed to give the empire an all-encompassing view of the assets held by its citizens. Combined with the meticulousness with which the Ottomans practiced record-keeping, they granted a bird’s-eye view of how and where wealth was distributed throughout its domain.

But most importantly, who held it and where.

The streets of Istanbul and beyond, once bustling with the vibrancy of commerce and daily life, now echoed with the heavy footsteps of the Sultan’s agents. Armed with detailed asset records, as well as heavy weaponry to deter anyone who attempted refusal, they seized gold, silver, livestock, crops, and even land—anything of value the crown might use to keep the wheels of bureaucracy moving.

Merchants, who had once thrived on the bustling trade routes of the empire, saw their inventories confiscated. Families that had cultivated lands for generations, were stripped of all but the most meager remnants barely adequate to sustain themselves.

Lifetimes of effort, vanished.

Taken from those who had invested heart, soul, and lifeblood into their hard-earned possessions, only to be claimed by an oppressive empire that had done nothing to earn them.

It’s not yours.

When do your things become your government’s things?

If you live in the EU, that could happen very soon.

Recently, the European Union announced its intention to create a database that would track the assets of every citizen. A central registry recording everything of value a citizen of the EU holds—and where it is being held—and could include bank accounts, real estate, gold and silver, cryptocurrency, art, cars, investments, shares, and other financial holdings.

While the tax offices of many individual European nations already have access to some of this data, it’s far from being a panopticon of financial surveillance. However, the EU is aiming to change this in a big way.

The EU says this database will benefit “financial transparency” and be used to combat crime, prevent money laundering, and curb tax evasion. In other words, so that Daddy Government can better protect us all from the bad guys in the world.

In other words, it’s all for our “safety and security”.

Or, to simplify, the same reasons authoritarian governments always use to convince us of laws that infringe on our personal freedoms.

But here’s what I believe is the real reason:

The EU—like most governments around the world—is going broke.

Currently owing more than €13.12 trillion of total debt, the European Union is indebted to the tune of nearly 82% of GDP. In some parts it’s much worse, like in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, France, or Spain, where the debt-to-GDP ratio is at 100% or above (in Greece’s case 159.8%), meaning these nations owe more money than the entire value they produce in a year.

This is an incredibly precarious position to be in.

So what happens when the EU begins to run out of money, and foreign creditors are less willing to provide loans to cover running costs?

They need to find other ways to pay down their debt to avoid the Euro collapsing. And the easiest way to do this is to seize assets from citizens.

It’s happened many times before.

Over the past two decades, five European nations—Poland, Hungary, Portugal, Ireland, and Bulgaria—have seized private pension funds from their citizens. In all cases, this was to help pay for heavy debts the government had accrued.

Millions of honest, hardworking Europeans simply woke up one day to find they no longer had control of their private pension funds, and that a lifetime of work had been absorbed into the bureaucratic machine of their government. Punished for the mistakes their financially illiterate leaders had made on their behalf.

If they’ll do that to pensioners—arguably some of society's most vulnerable people—imagine what they’d do to everyone else if the EU’s debt continues on its downward spiral.

Which it almost certainly will.

There are, of course, other major concerns about the EU’s proposed asset database.

→ Privacy Concerns: This level of financial surveillance is clearly an infringement on personal privacy.

→ Security Risks: A centralised database provides serious cybersecurity concerns, which if hacked, could expose sensitive financial data of millions of people.

→ Bureaucratic Overreach: Does any government need this kind of excessive oversight of personal financial matters? No.

→ Cost to Citizens: If implemented across all EU member states, this would also come at a cost of billions of Euros to citizens, both in initial setup and ongoing yearly maintenance.

Furthermore, Europe is now closer to a major war than it has been since the end of World War II. A war that would cost an insane amount of money to prosecute. One that would certainly be partially paid for by seizing its people’s wealth.

So, in the eyes of the EU, what better time to set up a database that logs the assets of its half-billion citizens?

We’re only one crisis, conflict, or simple law change from your government being able to take everything you’ve ever worked for. And just like in bygone ages, they'll take it by force if you refuse to hand over your wealth willingly.

You should be paying attention if you’re European or an inhabitant of anywhere else in the West.

But more importantly, you should be taking action. Like ensuring you have assets scattered in multiple locales worldwide, so they’re not at the mercy of a single government body.

The simple truth is this: What’s yours is only yours while your government allows it.

And your government is broke.

How long until they come knocking to take what they haven’t earned?

Written by Leon Hill.
Founder, Anticitizen.

This newsletter is for educational purposes, and is not financial advice. Please do your own research, and consider risks involved with investing or purchasing any asset.