One major difference: commodity goods provide real value to people in society, fiat dollars provide no value. Fiat dollars can only serve as a money value but have no use value (besdies that of money).
If I create more of a good or service, then I have benefited society as a whole by adding to its wealth, although my competitor may be personally hurt.
If I create more money from my printing press and circulate it in society, I have provided absolutely no value to society yet have enriched myself in the process.
Stealing is taking private property by force. When I create another widget I am not taking private property by force - I simply provide another widget.
When I create an extra dollar from a printing press I create nothing of my own of use value to society. All I am doing, is taking by force a portion of the economy’s pie that has real value and allocating it to me.
Since fiat money is special in that sense - that is has no use value - creating more of it for oneself is taking more of society’s purchasing power for real goods and giving it to oneself.
But you’re missing the point that printing pieces of paper and calling them “money” is not self-enriching unless you can also impose a monopoly in the production of money/money substitutes. The monopoly is the source of the evil. It is true that private banks will attempt to issue unbacked fiduciary media (money substitute inflation), especially in the absence of strong law against this type of fraud. Rothbard goes over this in depth in Mystery of Banking. But the fate of banks that choose to engage in this kind of fraud is no different than any other fraudsters: market ostracism and bankruptcy.
The moral argument is sound but the technical underpinnings of the moral argument also need to be valid and sound.
The fiat dollar system we have is like having a fixed number of tickets at any given moment to a pile of goods/services. The tickets themselves do nothing except to provide the ability to purchase this pile of goods/services.
Each person has a certain amount of tickets at any given time. If someone, howwever, creates couterfeit tickets and takes the goods/services that belonged to the person who had real tickets, then it is theft.
I absolutely agree with you. My argument was not complete - it wasn’t trying to be - I was just offering another valid point. If this system was totally voluntary, then it would be fine because then people could choose whether to hold the dollars or “tickets” in my analogy.
The definition of theft is the aggressive seizure of property*. Wealth is the sum of economic goods in one’s possession; however, in the context of inflation, in which this discussion is framed, wealth is implicitly defined as the value of the sum of one’s money. Since the value of a good is not objective, it cannot be theft to inflate the money supply as no property is seized; theft doesn’t apply to the situation.
Ultimately, if you wish for theft to apply to the situation at hand, inflation, you must contend that one has property rights to the value of his goods, in this case the property rights to the value of his money, which I have already demonstrated is argumentatively unjustifiable. In the context of inflation, ‘increasing one’s wealth at another’s expense’ translates to “increasing the quantity of goods that one has, through the use of his own means (ink, paper, printing press, et cetera in this case) with the consequence, intended or not, of diminishing the value of the units of these goods held by others, ceteris paribus.” This elaborated translation is different from one in which I gain at your expense by, say, involuntarily seizing your computer which would be an example of theft.
*I explain my omission of the word ‘physical’ from this definition below.
I use the word ‘physical’ in an attempt to emphasize that property has intersubjectively ascertainable, or objective, boundaries (I should have been clearer here and said as much; my mistake, thanks for catching it). Bitcoins are recognizable units of a means of exchange; if someone is capable of claiming that whatever quantity of bitcoins are his, and he has acquired them legitimately (i.e. through homesteading, production or voluntary exchange), then they are his property since they are intersubjectively ascertainable (i.e. Bill has 1 bitcoin) because a unit can be distinguished from another (this is so by the fact that you are capable of taking another’s bitcoins, which means that you can recognize that they are part of his property). Of course, if you involuntarily take these from someone, it is theft.
Oh, so you assume that all producers will produce money substitutes, pyramiding on top of some base ‘hard’ money. I see no reason to take that for granted. A producer could just produce money pyramiding on top of nothing, just like the dollar. Would inflation in that case be theft? Would it be impossible?
I feared as much, we are discussing different issues. Now, we all agreed right at the begging that legal tender was aggression. That is settled.
What I am discussing now is whether on top of that, inflation itself is theft. So, does the state currently commit two crimes, or just one? If there were no legal tender laws, would inflation be theft? This is what I’m asking.
What you argue is that the state benefits form the current monetary system. No need to debate there. But this argues that legal tender is theft, not that inflation itself is.
OK, let’s summarize it even more. Would inflation in a free (legal tender-less) monetary system be theft? If you say ‘no’, than this is all I’m arguing. If you say ‘yes’, do say more because I’d find that position very peculiar indeed.
If it somehow pleases you (I suspect it does), be my guest. But the thing is that I tend to grow impatient with posts that escalate into page-long things, especially when these are beside the point being discussed. So, if you like, we can go into the discussion of what I mean by the ‘behavior’ of money, but I really think it would not do too much good.
I myself consider ‘inflation’ to be any increase in the supply of money. I have seen stranger definitions, but the point I’m trying to make revolves around this one.
When I argue that inflation is not necessarily theft (legal tender always is, of course, but we all agreed on that point), I argue that we cannot know whether the money freely selected on a free monetary market would, by the definition I use, inflate. In other words, inflation could happen in a free market, and I really do not see how on earth that could be defined as theft. Hence, we cannot say that ‘inflation is theft’.
So, I think we have been misunderstanding each other. A pity, if my point was originally put as clearly as I think it was.
No I understood you just fine…and that’s why I’m having such a good time watching you avoid my question from two pages ago. And that’s why I’ll ask it again: So…if “If we assume [a single currency], it would make sense to speak of inflation as ‘stealing’”, please explain how in our current system of a single currency, inflation is not stealing.
Quite perplexing responses for something that can be logically deducted; let’s answer this question through standard form:
Question A): Can people be victims of theft by a central bank’s intentional action?
Money is the means of exchange that by definiton has a store of value
Notes payable are issued to increase efficiency of transaction costs
Assume the government decides to Monopolize Notes issued and replaces all your notes with government issued equivalents
Assume all notes are promises to pay
Assume the government has delegated the regulation of notes to one man
Assume this one man decides to pay only 50% to every person who redeem their notes.
The promise to pay has been undermined by an intentional default,
The other 50% was promised to you; but the One Man claims you do not own money.
Presuming the definiens of theft is “the taking of another person’s property without that person’s permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it”.
Inference 1) Thus, Your property has been deprived without your consent with the One Man’s decision; and is theft.
…And then with the situation with Inflation debate:
Question B) Question above, specifically has Intentional inflation been an example of theft?
Replace premise 7) with “Chairman decides to create 50% more liability notes for claims on the same reserves”
The existing holders of debt were not compensated with additional notes to hold a proportionate claim on the money
Your inability to redeem your promise has not changed
Conclusion: Theft is clearly committed by intentional issuing of additional debt notes without first compensating existing holders. Calling it “money” does not change actuality.
It surely is not what is generally understood by inflation.
I imagine you know that you do not own the right to print dollars, and if you did you would be rightfully prosecuted for fraud.
But if you do not own the right to manage the dollar, than you must surely have signed a contract that entitles you to ‘zero inflation’ or something like that. Who promised you, contractually speaking, that the dollar (or any other fiat currency) would not inflate? Can you show me such a clause in whatever contract you sighed?
But if you neither own the right to manage the dollar, nor have any contractual right to have its owners manage it as you think it should, that how can you claim that by inflating the dollar you are being stolen from? Do tell me, please.
Again, the issue is that the state forces people to accept dollars, and that is stealing. But besides that inflation is not stealing. It’s just a policy the benefit or cost of which we cannot rationally calculate as we’re forced to submit to it.
Can we say that the legal monopoly subway of some city steals form us because it runs its trains until midnight and no later? No, we can say that it steals form us by forbidding any competition. That aside, it makes no sense to say anything about the policy which the monopoly follows. That we know nothing of the effects of such a policy is precisely the point.
There was a quoted phrase of yours in response to which I wrote this. You may want to consult it for the answer you’re looking for.
You’re going to have to define stealing then. Because I fail to see how forcing you to accept something is “aggressive seizure of property” (the definition previously given in this thread).
Besides that, I fail to see how any of this addresses the question.
You literally said “If we assume [a single currency], it would make sense to speak of inflation as ‘stealing’”. We don’t have to “assume” a single currency. We have a single currency. So once again, please explain how in our current system of a single currency, inflation is not stealing.
You mean be your guest to take your total dodge of my questions to mean that you can’t answer them? Is that what you meant?
True, I use inappropriate terms at times. I should have considered that aggression, not stealing. My apologies.
Are you referring to this?
The argument there would seem to hinge on the assumption that, on a legal tender-less market, money of a strictly unchanged supply would obviously displace all the others.
If we assume as much, it would make sense to speak of inflation as ‘stealing’. But the issue with legal tender is precisely that we cannot know what kind of money would be preferred in a free market, so we cannot say for sure that inflation is stealing.
You do realize that you completely misunderstood that phrase, (and it was not that easy to misunderstand), do you?
What I write very clearly is that if we assume that in a free market inflation would never occur…, not that we have a single currency! You may want to be more careful with those parentheses next time.
But if you are quoting at some other point, please tell me.
Well hell. You’ve been arguing for two pages that forcing people to accept something equates to “stealing”…and now we come to find out you just use random words when you mean something completely different?
Are you sure you even have a disagreement here?
Nope. That was it. Perhaps you could have made that clarification when it was brought up a page or so ago. Now perhaps you can answer the original one:
How is “increasing one’s wealth at another’s expense” is not stealing?
Is that supposed to be a “yes, I was referring to my dodging of your questions”?
Ah, but this is unwarranted. Note that my argument never relied on considering legal tender ‘theft’. That was an unfortunate and probably annoying slip of tongue, but of no consequence whatever to the argument. Unlike, say, misquoting some guy and then ignoring every argument he brings forth until the misquote is rescued. That could have been a more noteworthy slip, wouldn’t you say?
You cannot be serious. Have the last posts been absolutely ignored? If you find some other unexplainable quote or an otherwise disagreeable point in those earlier posts (which clarify this precise point), then I’ll be happy to discuss those with you. But to rewrite everything form scratch? You just cannot be serious.
To repeat myself, indulge yourself if it suits you tastes.
It may indeed be wise to think about this point carefully. I really think we don’t.
No one said it did. My point is that if you have an admitted habit of just using random words when you mean something completely different, we can’t really be sure of anything you’ve been saying the whole time, because evidently it will continue until someone stumbles upon it by asking enough questions and then forcing you to realize you didn’t really mean what you said.
I’m quite serious. I have no idea where you think you answered that question. Perhaps you could just copy and paste the answer if you’ve already typed some explication out. You typed one completely confused case anthropomorphising money, then when I asked you to explain it, you ignored the request and instead asked a question and claimed you simplified your previous post.
So you can either allege one of those posts is actually an answer to the question “How is ‘increasing one’s wealth at another’s expense’ is not stealing?” and explain it, or you can actually give an actual answer.
That’s not an answer. Are you sure you understand the nature of “question” and “answer”?