There is no sense in which counterfeiting bank notes was a creative force in the economy and not just theft. The article doesn't really attempt to justify the title.
Even creating real money becomes theft at a certain scale.
Fake Money Built America
11–20 of 22 posts
Re: Fake Money Built America
#12[flagged]
Re: Fake Money Built America
#13Remember, it's always been fake & made up
Re: Fake Money Built America
#14"In the first half of the 19th century, for example, the Midwest was so short of authentic banknotes that people knowingly accepted counterfeit ones."
Sounds like a more traditional form of IOU to me. Which was a fairly widespread thing if I'm not mistaken?
Re: Fake Money Built America
#15Fake Money Built [the World].
No need to pretend that one particular group of people are that special.
Re: Fake Money Built America
#16Re: Fake Money Built America
#17fake stops being an applicable term as soon as people start agreeing to accept it, which the article says happened. Then it's as legitimate as anything like Bitcoin.
What would happen if all the people who agreed to accept it would also want to withdraw it from their accounts at the same time?
If everyone continues to agree it's worth what it says then not very much. Of course the whole thing can collapse for a number of reasons, not much different from other mediums of exchange that don't have an intrinsic utility, the utility is a sufficient number of people willing to cooperate. Which is pretty much everything except bartering goods.
Re: Fake Money Built America
#18"In the first half of the 19th century, for example, the Midwest was so short of authentic banknotes that people knowingly accepted counterfeit ones." Sounds like a more traditional form of IOU to me. Which was a fairly widespread thing if I'm not mistaken?
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Re: Fake Money Built America
#19What money is, what it represents, is value. But value is a complete opaque quality. At best we have an approximation: an 'expectation' of value. Expectation results in people paying for more for misprinted coins. Expectation is the same reason that drives people to stocks, to silver/gold, to oil. Expectation can be manipulated. If you can make others expect greater value of an item (and then they exchange such a value to you for that item) than what you are giving them: that difference is profit.
To be clear, I don't like this outlook. But I've found it to be accurate to how people behave around money. It's not a sign of a healthy society.
Re: Fake Money Built America
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would happen if all the people who agreed to accept it would also want to withdraw it from their accounts at the same time?
withdraw for what? for fiat(=fake) paper bills, or for similarly fake digits on a mobile app?
Doesn't matter that much really. Basically just "take it out of the bank" somehow.