4 ms·

The overwhelming majority of us did not agree to borrow this money with compounded interest payments, therefore I see no reason to pay the money back.

nostrademons 17y ago
Easy for you to say, until you realize that every debt is someone else's asset, and if you hold any Treasury bills/bonds, bond funds, or money market accounts/funds, it's probably your asset. Phrased as "should the American public have to pay back the $12T that the government owes?", the answer is "Of course not!" Phrased as "should the American public lose all the money they put in Treasury bonds and money market accounts because they didn't trust the stock market?", the answer is "Of course not!" But those are two sides of the same default...
m0th87 17y ago
You did implicitly via the social contract.
- anamax 17y ago
  > You did implicitly via the social contract. In every other contract, I'm not bound if the other side doesn't satisfy its obligations. Also, there's a concept of a "meeting of the minds". The social contract isn't a contract. It's a promise to use force.
  - m0th87 17y ago
    I didn't say I idealistically agreed, but that's the theory anyway. I sort of like Lysander Spooner's argument in No Treason* that social contracts are false justifications because there's no opt-out program. The practicality of such an idea, however, is another question (to which none of us know the answer because it has never existed). * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Treason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Treason
_delirium 17y ago
Also, I never agreed to the current allocation of land titles, so I see no reason to respect property rights.
patrickgzill 17y ago
You raise an interesting concept - can one generation of Americans vote or permit, via debt financing, to obligate a future generation to pay back the debt incurred? Lysander Spooner, amongst others, wrote about this.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
jsz0 17y ago
If it was simply an issue of paying back what we owe this could work but we need more credit going forward -- lots more, so we have to keep paying out indefinitely. It's a classic debt cycle.

nostrademons 17y ago

Easy for you to say, until you realize that every debt is someone else's asset, and if you hold any Treasury bills/bonds, bond funds, or money market accounts/funds, it's probably your asset. Phrased as "should the American public have to pay back the $12T that the government owes?", the answer is "Of course not!" Phrased as "should the American public lose all the money they put in Treasury bonds and money market accounts because they didn't trust the stock market?", the answer is "Of course not!" But those are two sides of the same default...

m0th87 17y ago

You did implicitly via the social contract.

anamax 17y ago
> You did implicitly via the social contract. In every other contract, I'm not bound if the other side doesn't satisfy its obligations. Also, there's a concept of a "meeting of the minds". The social contract isn't a contract. It's a promise to use force.
- m0th87 17y ago
  I didn't say I idealistically agreed, but that's the theory anyway. I sort of like Lysander Spooner's argument in No Treason* that social contracts are false justifications because there's no opt-out program. The practicality of such an idea, however, is another question (to which none of us know the answer because it has never existed). * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Treason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Treason

_delirium 17y ago

Also, I never agreed to the current allocation of land titles, so I see no reason to respect property rights.

patrickgzill 17y ago

You raise an interesting concept - can one generation of Americans vote or permit, via debt financing, to obligate a future generation to pay back the debt incurred? Lysander Spooner, amongst others, wrote about this.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

jsz0 17y ago

If it was simply an issue of paying back what we owe this could work but we need more credit going forward -- lots more, so we have to keep paying out indefinitely. It's a classic debt cycle.