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Fake Money Built America

38 points by speckx

by AgentOrange1234

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This reminds me of a very fun episode of the Uncivil podcast, which talks about a northern guy who started counterfeiting Confederate money during the Civil War: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-paper/id1275078406...

by altruios

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What 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.

by ineedasername

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fake 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.

by delichon

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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.

by tim-projects

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"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?

by steveBK123

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by mag7269

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Fake Money Built [the World].
No need to pretend that one particular group of people are that special.

by josefritzishere

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The premise is interesting, though a bit of an exaggeration. A very enjoyable read though.

by gbacon

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> “It would not be an exaggeration to call these criminals capitalists,” he concludes, “even if their idea of making money was more literal-minded than the bankers whose notes they imitated.”
Counterfeiting is fraud, not capitalism. Even a so-called “lender of last resort” cannot exist under capitalism, but only under a system of dirigisme or worse.

by wagwang

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by 866-RON-0-FEZ

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by bijowo1676

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