Under the current state of affairs, with government monopolization over money, do you think it is moral for an individual to counterfit money and use it as if it where legal? Why or why not? Is it fraud in the moral (not the legal) sense of the word?
Basically you're asking, "Since the government allows the bankers to do it...does that mean it would be morally okay for me to do it too?" ?
Well, for me, Al Capone, or anyone. I personally don't have any intention to do so, I couldn't even fake my little sister's signing.
Walter Block 'Defending the Undefendable' Chapter 14.
If you go to his website for his publications then under Counterfeiting, you'll see notes from his critics and his responses.
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
Is it fraud in the moral (not the legal) sense of the word?
It would be pretending to be something that it isn't. And it would be a deception of those that receive it. So one important element of fraud would be given. The other elements would be financial gain and/or financial loss of the other side. I presume that would be a given / and at least a risk for the person sitting on that notes, if they get caugth out. Someone I know was caught paying with a R200 note. He didn't fake it, the fake was just noticed when he was trying to pay at a filling station. He was in detention over the weekend for that - although she actually handed it in and didn't run away.
Of course it is not moral for me or you to counterfeit money, didn't your mother tell you that two wrongs don't make a right? Just because the Federal Government couterfeits through Fed and the corrupt banking system, and this institution has paid off enough people to believe it is moral, does not make it so.
Now this is the case when there is only one type of money enforced through extreme violence. When individuals are free to produce any type of money they wish then counterfeiting would not be immoral as people would have alternatives.
I've always held (among many other things) the Coinage Act of 1792 against George Washington because it mandated death for anyone who defaced the silver coins.
To answer the OP's question... it's not moral since we're pretty much forced to use it, but counterfeiters should definitely not be punished by the state and they shouldn't have to compensate the state either.
To counterfeit would be to inflate the supply of money.
That has the effect of stealing the value you counterfeited from everyone else that holds that currency.
Theft is an indirect aggression, taking value from others against their will.
Therefore, by the NAP, counterfeiting is indeed immoral.
An ideal currency would be as close to impossible to counterfeit as possible. Bitcoin comes to mind.
That is not theft any more than competition is ('stealing' the 'value' of your goods through lower prices; of course we can only judge any 'value' of goods by their particular prices, so the whole concept is nonsense anyway). Counterfeiting is only theft in that it is fraud - those to whom you trade the counterfeit notes expect that they are receiving notes of a different kind, and so they are not receiving the good for which they have contracted.
I think Dylan of Rivia's question comes down to this: counterfeiting via printing fiduciary media would be immoral from a propertarian perspective under a commodity standard because the bills you're producing claim to represent and circulate in proxy of something which in reality they do not (gold, silver, etc.). Under a fiat standard the counterfeiting comes in when you print a bill claiming that it has the full backing of the United States government (or any government) when this is simply not the case; since anarcho-capitalists reject the state is this specific act of counterfeiting moral or immoral in the context of the libertarian paradigm?
It should be noted, I think, that the problem with any managed currency is not that the monopolist "steals value" (not only can a subjective phenomena like "value" not be stolen, but the production of fiduciary media requires land, labor, and capital for its production; under a free banking regime would a gold producer be considered a "value thief"? Is the producer of a car "stealing value" from other car producers by lowering the unit price of an automobile?) but that the act of monopolizing the currency is itself detrimental because it prevents individuals from more fully satisfying their utility scales (it is Pareto inefficient/unoptimal).
To counterfeit would be to inflate the supply of money. That has the effect of stealing the value you counterfeited from everyone else that holds that currency. Theft is an indirect aggression, taking value from others against their will. Therefore, by the NAP, counterfeiting is indeed immoral.
The Non-Aggresion Principle does not apply to concepts like price because price cannot be owned, i.e. it is simply a ratio of exchange (if two berries are exchanged for ten apples then the "berry-price of apples" is 1/5 and the "apple-price of berries" is 5. One cannot own either ratio.) Thus, the production of currency isn't a violation of property rights, but counterfeiting (a subcategory of fraud) is.
+1 Rcder to both your posts.
one definition-To falsify, deceive, or defraud. A copy or imitation of something that is intended to be taken as authentic and genuine in order to deceive another.
with this, tradeing with counterfit seems like a no, but perhaps paying taxes could be ok, but good luck with that? lieing in self defense against a agresser is a bit different from lying in what is supposed to be voluntary win win trade.
Thanks gotlucky! I'm glad to be able to contribute something of value, however minor, to the forum after spending so much time lurking on it.
Rcder: Anenome: To counterfeit would be to inflate the supply of money. That has the effect of stealing the value you counterfeited from everyone else that holds that currency. Theft is an indirect aggression, taking value from others against their will. Therefore, by the NAP, counterfeiting is indeed immoral. The Non-Aggresion Principle does not apply to concepts like price because price cannot be owned
Anenome: To counterfeit would be to inflate the supply of money. That has the effect of stealing the value you counterfeited from everyone else that holds that currency. Theft is an indirect aggression, taking value from others against their will. Therefore, by the NAP, counterfeiting is indeed immoral.
The Non-Aggresion Principle does not apply to concepts like price because price cannot be owned
You're completely misreading my post, and you're going to feel really silly I think. I never intimated at all that the NAP has anything to do with price. I said that inflation is a form of theft, and theft is indeed a concern of the NAP, as it is an aggression, more specifically it is an indirect aggression, a sneaky way to steal value from others.
Rcder:Thus, the production of currency isn't a violation of property rights, but counterfeiting (a subcategory of fraud) is.
Of course it is.
Aristippus: That has the effect of stealing the value you counterfeited from everyone else that holds that currency. That is not theft any more than competition is ('stealing' the 'value' of your goods through lower prices; of course we can only judge any 'value' of goods by their particular prices, so the whole concept is nonsense anyway). Counterfeiting is only theft in that it is fraud - those to whom you trade the counterfeit notes expect that they are receiving notes of a different kind, and so they are not receiving the good for which they have contracted.
Counterfeiting, ie: private inflation, is indeed a fraud, but it is a fraud that results in theft as long as the counterfeit money goes undetected. It results in this indirect theft because it increases the supply of money, resulting in a very slight devaluation of everyone else's money. It's not possible for you to argue that this does not occur, so I'll leave it there.
The point is that it isn't theft anymore than me chopping down a tree, selling wood and thereby lowering the price of everyone else's lumber is theft. Inflation is aggressive because of the controls on money creation and use.
Precisely. You put it way better than me.
would not the analogy have to be counterfiting a tree, ie selling fake wood to people? if someone buys the fake wood, there has been fraud. they personaly have been sold something that not the substance they wanted thought they were getting.
alright, someone can counterfit money, with that money they can buy counterfit medicine, each person can feel smug about it, although good luck to the person with the lethal substance sold as medicine.
Aristippus: Inflation is aggressive because of the controls on money creation and use.
Inflation is aggressive because of the controls on money creation and use.
I’ve never thought about inflation being aggresive, and not just fraud, but you make a good point there.
You can't simply conflate money and products and apply the logic of one to another.
Yes, that's exactly right. But he was saying that it's theft beyond fraud and I was saying that, concerning the theft part, it is no more theft than is any kind of market competition.
Why not? You do realise that this is MISES.org, right??
For example: the government is not capable of counterfeiting, they are after all the government.
However, the government can steal value from everyone who holds currency by inflating the currency and buying things with the newly printed bills. They will buy at the previous cash-basis, and the economy will later catch up and adjust to the new monetary supply, which we call inflation, prices rising to account for the amount of money now 'out there.'
When you counterfeit, as long as those bills are being passed as legitimate, they are stealing value from everyone else and inflating in the same manner.
If the counterfeit bills were caught the first time the counterfeiter tried to pass it as money, it would then be only fraud and not also inflation-theft.
Aristippus: You can't simply conflate money and products and apply the logic of one to another. Why not? You do realise that this is MISES.org, right??
What's your point.
This is only figurative theft. What is actually being stolen? Value? How can this be measured? What is the correct value? State created price inflation is a result of supply and demand in a market that is closed off from competition by government controls. The latter is the problem, not the money creation per se.
One of the major achievements of Mises' first important work, The Theory of Money and Credit, was in showing how economic laws apply to money and other goods in the same way.
You have to specify the conditions and what you mean by counterfeiting. In a government monopoly fiat money standard it is of course immoral to counterfeit money. In a free economy money is just another commodity and the producers of money can create as much or as little as they wish. It is up to consumers/users of money to determine which forms and which rates of production are most prefereable. And consumers will pay for the most preferable forms of money while rejecting those forms that least preferable.