

Why inflation is not theft - cmontanaro
http://cmontanaro.com/2012/10/05/inflation-and-theft/

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nodrama
people complain about artificial inflation, when states print money for no
reason, while this article talks about inflation generated by real economic
facts (like a bad year in agriculture).

So yes, if you ignore half of reality, you are right!

and what is this? "If the state endows the money with value". Money have a
certain value because everybody using them agrees on that value. Dictatorships
tried and failed to "endow the money with value". What happened in my country
was that some alternative, valuable papers were created. Like a card for bread
ratio. That piece of paper had value even if nobody was calling it "money". Or
other papers that gave you some rights like buying a car, getting an
apartment, vacation tickets etc.

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Tycho
So if the President decided he wanted to build a mansion on Mars, and printed
enough trillions of US dollars to achieve this, it wouldn't be theft?

~~~
cmontanaro
I expect you would have elected a new president before we had time to find
out.

~~~
Tycho
It's not a question of waiting to 'find out.' It's a question of using logic
applied to the premises you've already stipulated. In other words, you dodged
the question.

~~~
cmontanaro
If you can't differentiate between living in a democratic economy and a
capricious dictatorship, then it really isn't me who has a question to dodge.

~~~
Tycho
That doesn't even make sense. If we could agree that some things a government
could do with currency are improper and tantamount to theft, then it's just a
matter of degree over whether things they _actually_ do with currency
manipulation are also theft (at least potentially).

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api
I don't necessarily buy into "Austrian" economics, but this guy is really
engaging in a bit of a straw man here.

"When someone pays me, I receive the purchasing power of that money at that
time, why shouldn’t I be entitled to that purchasing power in perpetuity?
Well, because purchasing power is temporal; if a bubble bursts, or the economy
dives, there is no reason at all why I should be able to buy the same basket
of goods as I could at the top of the bubble."

Of course. That's not the point. The point is that there is a central
authority that can manipulate the value of money and in so doing can favor of
disfavor different players in the economy. It's also quite un-democratic.
There are criticism of this from the left as well as the right. (For the life
of me I've never been able to figure out why some on the left consider the
existing Federal Reserve system progressive.)

The author also conflates libertarianism and conservatism, which isn't
something you can just do with a hand-wave. The former is far more complex
than that. He also tosses out red herrings about the 9/11 "truth" movement and
similar things to achieve guilt by association.

Crummy article.

~~~
cmontanaro
I'm saying that a central authority with that kind of power is necessary and
advantageous in a recession. And that they (central banks) are more
accountable to the people than e.g gold mining companies.

And the propensity for libertarians to indulge in conspiracy theories is more
than guilt by association.

~~~
maxharris
Gold mining companies are accountable to reality: they can't extract gold that
isn't there. Nor can they extract gold that isn't profitable to get at given
the technological context. Money is supposed to be a representation of wealth,
and private banking does that perfectly.

In contrast, government banks are "accountable" only to the whims of
politicians and a public that wants its cake ("reasonable" taxes) and to eat
it too (immoral entitlement programs). That's one purpose that statist banking
serves: to make up for the inherent, recurring government budget shortfall by
printing boatloads of money, forcibly lowering the standard of living of
anyone that saves, in order to "benefit" those that won't or can't.

~~~
cmontanaro
The entire article deals with this. I'm not going to reiterate.

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jsnk
<<Inflation is really no worse than taxation ... An objection to inflation is
an objection to tax a priori; which is fine, I simply ask for an awareness
that the two items come as a package.>>

Which is the point Libertarians are trying to make! Taxation is theft
according to libertarians. Inflation, like taxation, is theft. You actually
ended up agreeing with them by saying that inflation is no worse than
taxation. To libertarians, tax and inflation are both theft.

~~~
cmontanaro
And both positions are absurd. That was the point.

~~~
jsnk
The point that you made was mere opinion you hold. You did nothing to
substantiate why either positions are absurd.

Instead of telling libertarians "Why inflation is not theft ", you ended up
echoing the libertarian sentiment that inflation is no worse than taxation.

~~~
cmontanaro
If the article persuaded libertarians that their claim 'inflation is
government stealing your money' is as fanatical as 'taxation is government
stealing your money', then it has done its job.

It simply argues that both statements should be treated with contempt,
especially since the former has recently been in vogue.

