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Comment by opinion-is-bad | Hacker News Reader

That’s not free money; it’s money taken from people under threat of violence.

I would argue it is taken from people (yes with violence if needed) in exchange for goods and services provided, part of an implicit contract you are forced to make when you are a citizen.

Not agreeing with the parent comment, but I fail to see how printing money and distributing it involves violence.

The USA actually does have laws against creating anything that might be interpreted as competing with the official currency. This is the most likely avenue for violence to come in, as people try to resist devalued money by using substitutes.

Holding crypto is legal in the US, so again, I fail to see how this involves violence.

There are generally no laws in the USA against creating and using alternative currencies. I can buy and sell using Euros or Monopoly money or whatever if I can find a willing counterparty. However, if those transactions are taxable then I have to report them at the US Dollar fair market value equivalent and pay any taxes due in US Dollars. And if someone owes me a debt I am required to accept US Dollars for settlement.

> There are generally no laws in the USA against creating and using alternative currencies.

This is not correct. If you try minting coins, you can be shut down. You can buy and sell using whatever you want, yes. There aren't laws against using alternative currencies. But there very much are laws against creating them.

No one uses coins for anything important. There are no laws against creating your own alternative paper or electronic currencies.

If you don't intend to be hyperinflationary, the printing of money has to be associated with the acquisition of value or the assumption of debt. The debt is repaid through taxation.

Grandparent comment is referring to the position that taxes are extracted via threat of force. This is an extremely emotionally fraught position, and it's difficult to discuss rationally.

So, the reasoning goes, if you have to tax to print money, it is done by resort to force or threat thereof.

So to paraphrase, "Printing money is inflationary, which I believe is bad, and I believe the only way to rectify that is through taxation (violence)." That means you are the one who is proposing violence, not the commenter suggesting that we print money. They never said anything about taxation.

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