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Comment by greedo | Hacker News Reader

"newly issued fiat currency" is theft. Forced inflation is theft from people with savings etc etc etc.

I accept that some people have this broad of a concept of "theft", and I have no problem (so long as it is clear what is meant) with using the word this way, however, once it is broadened this far, I fail to see any necessary connections with the moral implications of more typical definitions of "theft".

Normally I would say that printing more fiat currency isn't theft since it's usually done in a lawful manner. And since theft is by definition unlawful taking, then that wouldn't qualify. But inflating the money supply by 2-3 trillion dollars would be a generational transfer of money like we've never witnessed in the US.

1970s

I handled the inflation issue in my comment. In scenario #1 there is no theft from anyone even in your sense.

And frankly, when you open a store in a mall, it's not theft for the mall to use your rent money as it sees fit. It might build a toy train ride for kids that you disagree with, or spend on a promotion of itself. Same with a state you register your business in. We are talking about abstract entities here, but you are applying a word to equivocate with the visceral feeling one gets in a personal setting.

Simply stating that you've "silenced the" theft argument doesn't make it so. Anymore than the Church branding Galileo a heretic didn't refute heliocentrism.

One can say the same about simply stating something is theft, and not making an effort to address the response point by point.

Is anyone disputing that the purchasing power of one group/person is being increased at the expense of another against their will. This generally meets the accepted definition of stealing.

Newly issued fiat currency is an incentive to keep more money in circulation for goods and services.

You could just as easily make the argument that in a near-zero inflation economy, people who are ardent savers are also thieves of economic mobility, because they keep the vast majority of money out of circulation, which stifles economic activity (making it not just a zero-sum game, but actually a negative-sum game)

I mean, you have complete freedom of speech, so you can call an apple an orange for all I care, but labeling things like inflation as theft (and generally people like you also call taxes theft) just doesn't serve your argument and betrays a complete misunderstanding of basic economics beyond supply/demand.

Issuing fiat currency is a monetary policy tool, no more no less. It can be harmful or useful depending on the context it is used.

Assigning terms with a moral imperative like "theft" to a tool is alike to assigning the word "murder" to anything that can be used as a weapon.

There's keeping the monetary supply liquid, and there's pumping $2-3 trillion dollars into it with BI. Taxes won't pay for this scale of program, short of highly confiscatory rates, so the only way to fund this is to devalue currency by printing more money.

I didn't say "inflation was theft," I said forced inflation, with the goal of paying for something unsupported by government revenues is theft.

To be fair, you consistently call $2-3 Trillion theft, but I wonder why you use a phrase that anarcho-capitalists use for any amount of taxation? For them it is a matter of principle, not amount.

For the same reason that stealing a loaf of bread is usually a misdemeanor, and stealing a car, a felony. The amount definitively affects the conversation. If the Fed decides that 250 million $1 bills need to be replaced due to damage etc, and they print 251 million, that's not going to have a dramatic affect. If they decided to print 2-3 Trillion (annually, mind you), the effect would be horrendous.

As to phrases anarcho-capitalists use, I have no clue.

By this logic, anything that increases inflation is theft because anything that reduces savings is theft.

This is too broad a notion of theft.

Intentionally devaluing currency is taking money from people's savings. It might not be considered theft by statute, because government, but it's still taking people's money. It's a great way to sidestep opposition to increasing tax rates.

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