Is money private property?

[Cainad (dec.)]

Okay there's some thoughts I've had stewing for a bit, so I'm presenting them now without having read the last several posts too closely.


"Wealth" is an individual's private collection of value, in whatever form. It comes in various degrees of liquidity (ease of transference for purposes of trade), with things like real estate being at the far end of non-liquid and currency being the most liquid.

Fiat currency contains the implicit agreement that value can be abstracted into something with no utility, or in some cases, no real physical presence. A lot of wealth is currently being stored not even as paper slips, but as digital ones and zeroes.

Paper currency is a service issued by the government to provide a physical representation of an abstract unit of value. It regulates the creation and destruction of this currency as part of the process of regulating the economy.

As such, I would argue that the value represented by that dollar bill is yours, but the actual piece of high-tech paper is a government service and is not yours. BUT, since part of what makes the fiat currency "work" is the assumption that the abstract unit of value is inseparable from that piece of paper, the paper is treated like private property for most purposes. You hold on to it, trade it in exchange for goods and services, and can sue for damages if it is unlawfully taken from you. The paper currency is a government service which allows you to do all of this within a commonly understood system of currency.

Of course, we can see that the value represented by the government-issued piece of paper is not truly inseparable from that piece of paper. If you deposit a $100 bill into your bank account, you can't ask for that exact $100 bill back. You used the government-issued piece of paper as a service which enabled you to turn your $100 of abstract value into information; information known as your bank account.

*It is no doubt infinitely debatable as to when, precisely, the paper currency printed by the government has the abstract value it is intended to represent "attached" to it, but I think it is fair to say that the first moment when we can definitively say that the paper currency is assigned its value is the moment when someone withdraws it from their bank account. At that point, the abstract units of value that were previously stored as information are transferred to the paper currency and given to you as a physical representation of the wealth that you own.

Obviously, the abstract value is unquestionably detached from the paper bill when the paper is destroyed. However, since the paper bill is a government service, it's not legal for an individual to destroy it themselves, even though it's that individual's own wealth that they are destroying. The government wants to maintain control on the distribution of currency, and private, unregulated destruction of currency screws with that. The right to destroy a piece of currency which has become too worn-out or damaged to reliably perform the service it was made for is given to certain agencies (I'm assuming banks are those agencies) as part of this regulatory process. When someone deposits a worn-out, piece-of-shit $100 bill into their bank account, and that $100 bill is taken out of circulation and destroyed, the abstract value of $100 that was put into the bank account is not also destroyed.



*Being almost completely ignorant about the production, distribution, and destruction of paper currency, I'll be speaking even more out of my ass from now on than I was before.


So yeah there's some disjointed and half-baked thoughts on the matter. Apologies if I stepped on anyone's (or everyone's) toes by restating something already discussed.

[Triple Zero]

piece of high-tech paper

000,
has seen your bills, you don't fool anyone, it's monopoly money.

[Cainad (dec.)]

piece of high-tech paper

000,
has seen your bills, you don't fool anyone, it's monopoly money.

That's because we don't have pinko commie terrorist-loving librul fascists printing our money.

[East Coast Hustle]

Pshh.

You try counterfeiting that shit without a plate from the mint.

I'm a criminally-minded motherfucker and I couldn't do it even with one of those. I mean, if I had ever come across such a thing.

[Iron Sulfide]

Michael Ende, author of "The Never Ending Story" (in German, not English) had some interesting discussions about money in his book "Fantasy/Culture/Politics". He came from the standpoint of communal ownership (using the same fiat framing), observing that healthy economies rely on currency being circulated, like blood through veins. Some of his ideas were odd, though, but perhaps applicable- like printing money with an expiration date to discourage hoarding.

As far as it being personal or private property, I don't think it is. It's definitely not a personal property, since the bills are owned by the FED, and the debt is owned by the GOV'T (which, in turn, is now "OUR" debt).

It certainly isn't used very much as a public property, or a resource, as much as I can tell, either. So I'm not sure what exactly I would call it.

On a tangent:

1984:
Michael Ende sees the film Die unendliche Geschichte (The Neverending Story) and is shocked. Furiously he has his name removed from the project.

1985:
On 3 February, the commissioned opera Der Goggolori (The Goggolori) has its successful premier at the Münchner Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz. Wilfried Hiller wrote the music. On 27 March Michael Ende's wife Ingeborg Hoffmann dies of pulmonary embolism, after having seen the film version of unendlichen Geschichte (The Neverending Story). Michael Ende returns to Munich.

[Placid Dingo]

The expiration date thing isn't that weird, and I believe has been trialled before. I'd have to have a hunt for the source.

[Elder Iptuous]

it's demurraged currency.
see, for instance, the Worgl

[Jasper]

Wow, I just found out it's possible for me to hate banks even more than I already did, based on the story of Worgl.  I wonder if this sort of thing would be so easily quashed in these times, with the advent of bitcoins, e-gold, and other forms of alternative digital currency.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

I'm shocked they haven't already burned down everyone involved in bitcoins. Maybe they're just waiting for the point where generating a bitcoin costs less than it's worth.

In the US, we have a long and shitty history of taking down any alternative currency, as far as I know Norton I was the only one who got away with it.

[Elder Iptuous]

I believe Ithaca Hours are still in use...
Others have not fared as well.  for instance, the Liberty Dollar.  of course, it probably didn't help that it was not a locally bound currency, and the makers were named NORFED. (National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the Internal Revenue Code)
also, he did some dumb things, like putting a dollar denomination on this coins, and having a multilelevel marketing type setup.
that guys in prison, i believe.  but i've got a half dozen of his one ounce silver coins that i bought for spot price, and they really are nice coins.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

I hadn't heard about Ithaca hours, that's pretty awesome. Too bad it sounds like people are cutting back on them when they should be relying on it more.

[Elder Iptuous]

perhaps some of the others are increasing?

[Iron Sulfide]

Thanks Iptuous. Gesell was the name I was trying to think of.

I hadn't heard about Ithica Hours or the lot, either.

[Triple Zero]

I'm shocked they haven't already burned down everyone involved in bitcoins. Maybe they're just waiting for the point where generating a bitcoin costs less than it's worth.

In the US, we have a long and shitty history of taking down any alternative currency, as far as I know Norton I was the only one who got away with it.

This is a very good point actually. I've wondered about that myself for some time. Bitcoin, apart from its own problems and failures, seems to be relatively successful. Why haven't they squashed it yet?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm shocked they haven't already burned down everyone involved in bitcoins. Maybe they're just waiting for the point where generating a bitcoin costs less than it's worth.

In the US, we have a long and shitty history of taking down any alternative currency, as far as I know Norton I was the only one who got away with it.

And that only worked because it was in that time, at that place.

Anywhere else, anywhen else, and Norton would have been beaten to death by treasury agents.