4 years ago, some thieves invaded a building in which the brazilian central bank kept lots of paper notes and stole almost 170 million reais. They managed to get into the central bank’s vault by digging a tunnel under the city streets, in a work which took a couple of months. Now there’s an action/drama movie about that coming out, it’s called “Assalto ao Banco Central”.
The question is: are those thieves bad guys, good guys, normal guys or national heros?
The other question is: what’s the difference between the money coming out in open market donations operations and coming out in the hands of some enormously clever guys? (I know there some differences on economic consequences of each alternative, but what about the moral differences? Why a brazilian honest citizen should care about this?)
The fact that governments murder is no excuse for murder. The fact that the government steals through money printing and taxation is no excuse for stealing. There is nothing heroic about stealing from a bank. People trust their governments out of ignorance and gullibility and it is through abusing this trust that governments are able to steal from the people… but people deposit their money into a bank for the express purpose of preventing its theft.
Whether they are badder than your politicians might be debateable. Didn’t the Brazilian Gunvernment chop ythree 0s three times within three years back in the late 80s early 90s? Talk about theft…lol
As far as the difference in its spending, alot of that would depend on the bank robbers.
Didn’t your mother tell you that 2 wrongs do not make a right? Just because someone stole money from you does not justify you stealing hundreds of times more from the orginal theif.
You’re giving too much attention on the first question. It was a joke. I don’t wanna steal anyone neither I like those thieves (maybe I dislike them less than I dislike the central bank directors, but that doesn’t matter).
The real point is the difference between the money leaving the bank as a result of robbery or as an bond purchase.
Every new money central bank creates is already a theft, so of course it makes difference for the conscious of the thieves, their value before God and their reputation in society: they’re wrong. But if the money was already a product of robbery [sorry, I don’t know the difference between theft, robbery and stealing], no honest citizen was directly injured by their act.
@fiatjaf "Every new money central bank creates is already a theft, so of course it makes difference for the conscious of the thieves, their value before God and their reputation in society: they’re wrong. But if the money was already a product of robbery [sorry, I don’t know the difference between theft, robbery and stealing], no honest citizen was directly injured by their act.
Or am I wrong?" - The central bank will “retaliate” by creating more money to ‘make up’ for what was ‘stolen’. so as a result there might be twice as much inflation.
Dillinger and the bank robbers in the U.S. always said they were stealing it because they kept printing it.
There is a line in the game GTA IV where you are toldt o assassinate a Korean immigrant because he is bringing in counterfeit money. The mafia don tells you to kill him because it’s, “bad for business and bad for the economy.”
Destroying bank assets, in some cases, are the best way of fighting back.
Look at the tea party. They are children out there protesting. The Boston Tea Party was a group of merchants that dressed up as Indian’s and destroyed their competitor’s, British East India, inventory. Then the next day people like John Hancock could stand on the streets and say, "Oh, I heard I heard, those damned Indians…but I’ve still got tea to sell you." You can take it from there.
In my opinion, physical harm if not justified, but destruction of property of the oppressors? I think is.
Only a portion of the money supply - at any given time - represents inflationary money (newly ‘printed’ money) and only at the point of purchase is it the property of the criminals (government/central bank). After expenditure, it becomes the genuine property of private citizens and its origin in government money printing is irrelevant.
A person could be tempted to argue that stealing it directly from the government might be a noble act of resistance because it would increase the difficulty the State has maintaining its wars and domestic spending. But this is a mistake because, as Hans Hoppe points out, people treat State custody of property in the same category as they treat genuine ownership. That is, entrepreneurs make plans (for example, logging of government-owned lands) which depend on the de facto government ownership of various properties. To destroy or steal such property is clearly wrong even though the property is not rightly owned by the government. The correct path for rectifying the situation is to liquidate the government and its assets in the same way you would liquidate the assets of a scam company. First, all those who can prove a claim to their stolen property should be restored (for example, if there are some Native Americans who can offer a legal proof of their original land holdings). Second, all other claimants (bondholders, etc.) should be restored pro-rata from the liquidated assets of the government. All government-controlled lands and other properties should be auctioned to satisfy these claims.