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Long time motteizen, new pseudonym for extra privacy.
Some friends and I are launching a new anonymous group blog: https://www.theprotocols.net/ Many of us have interesting culture-war related takes that we post on forums like these, or on our group chats, but we felt like we needed a place to more permanently publish things that deserved a wider audience. Subscribe via ye olde email or RSS to see posts as they come out.
Our first post is "Regulated Banks Are Just Stealing Your Money Slowly". Here is the TLDR:
Myself (and the author of the post through this account) will be happy to answer any questions or respond to comments about this post.
Also, we are open to publishing guest blog posts if you have something you need to get off your chest and want to publish anonymously to the web. You can DM me here or email the contact address on the web site. Cheers!
EDIT: Looks like I did a really poor job of making a TLDR for the original post. I've added a bit more context, but I advise clicking through and reading the whole thing before leaving a comment.
I feel like a key issue in the "theft" metaphor is a distinction between the literal property (some number of dollars) and what that property can be exchanged for (its purchasing power). The "theft" that happens due to inflation does not actually entail taking any of my literal property, just a decrease in what that property can be exchanged for. The "theft" accomplished by FTX and other crypto exchanges involves the taking of actual property. The same logic that says inflation is "theft" to people who save currency would suggest it is "theft" from homeowners when the Federal Reserve raises interest rates and causes home prices to fall or that Elon Musk "steals" from $TSLA owners when his own sales decrease the price of the stock.
That aside, I also don't see how the conclusion follows from the premises or arguments. "We shouldn't put more regulations on cryptocurrency or banks because consumers don't have a risk-free way to preserve their purchasing power over some time horizon" is how I would summarize that final paragraph in the quote (and penultimate paragraph in the article). I just don't see how the argument connects to the conclusion.
Dilution is a form of theft. If, Musk, without his shareholders knowledge or consent, printed entirely new shares of Tesla and gave them to himself or his cronies, this would be theft, even if the price of shares actually rose during that period due to other factors. Tesla shares rising or falling is not theft.
Some amount of well-thought out regulation is fine. My point is that demand for scams and get-rich-quick schemes will exceed state capacity to police them as long as people must find an alternative to simple savings deposits in order to simply preserve purchasing power for retirement.
Not if that was legal for him to do it is not. If so, then anyone buying shares should have priced in the chance of further shares being issued in to how much they valued the shares at when they purchased them. In that case they have implicitly consented to Musk creating more shares in buying the shares in the first place.
The dilution itself then is not theft, only if done illegally or in breach of a contract. At which point that is the issue not the dilution in and of itself. Better to rephrase it to say that Dilution can in some cases be similar to theft, if carried out illegally.
Taking something from someone isn't in and of itself theft either. It entirely depends on the circumstances.
That's... a bit like saying "primae noctis" wouldn't be rape. Technically correct, I suppose.
The best kind of correct. If we want to argue that it is morally wrong, that is absolutely fine, and arguably correct in both cases, but then we should take care to use terms appropriately.
We could say:" If, Musk, without his shareholders knowledge or consent, printed entirely new shares of Tesla and gave them to himself or his cronies, this would be morally wrong and comparable in outcome to theft."
or "If, Musk, without his shareholders knowledge or consent, in breach of the law, printed entirely new shares of Tesla and gave them to himself or his cronies, this would be theft"
then those are both plausibly correct.
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