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US government agency argues that money isn't property–so it can take yours
- mrbluecoat 2y ago> the DOJ argued that Saine has no right to a real judge and jury because the government was only trying to take his money, not his property Ummm... let's hope my passport is still considered property, as I seriously consider leaving this madness.
- pockmarked19 2y agoPassports are usually considered to be the property of the issuing government. Some of them even say as much inside.
- sidewndr46 2y agolast time I checked don't US passports even mention how it doesn't guarantee you anything?
- StefanBatory 2y agoBack under the communist rule in Eastern Europe you'd get your passports only after being vetted, and they'd be held up at a police station. Given out only when your trip starts.
- ty6853 2y agoGetting out is easy. 9 times of 10 the Mexican Federalis don't even check for one.
- autoexec 2y agoThe wealthy have been getting citizenship in other countries and building "passport portfolios" in record numbers for a reason. Always good to have an exit strategy when your own government is increasingly corrupt and society is breaking down. You can buy your way into a lot of countries at very affordable rates (https://www.businessinsider.com/cheapest-countries-where-you-can-buy-citizenship-or-residency-2022-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/cheapest-countries-where-you...) and there are citizenship brokers that can help you.
- 9283409232 2y agoThis is completely insane and if this holds then it gives the feds complete control over anyone and anything. You bow down or we take everything from you. This case needs to be watched with intense scrutiny. > Before you run out and trade your USD for meme coins, let me reassure you: DOJ's argument is wrong. The Due Process Clause applies to "life, liberty, or property," and the Supreme Court has repeatedly applied that Clause to money. It follows that, since money is neither life nor liberty, it must be property. The government being obviously wrong has not stopped the Supreme Court from making utterly insane judgements.
- bende511 2y agothis is not an actual argument in the case. this argument is just an aside in a footnote. the government is actually arguing that the Department of Labor is allowed to issue fines and require companies to pay back wages when they steal from their employees and lie on visa applications
- walterbell 2y agoDid the footnote help their primary argument? Was the footnote necessary?
- bende511 2y agoNo, I don't think it helps the govt. I don't think it was necessary. Motions, especially early ones like this, often have a lot of things in them that aren't necessary because they throw all their arguments at the wall and hope some of them stick. That's how it goes. This is likely a case of one of the DoL lawyers with a bone to pick who found a place to basically go "and another thing!"
- autoexec 2y agoThe argument isn't over who can issue fines, it's about who has the right to contest them in a real courtroom with a real judge or even a jury.
- olalonde 2y agoBitcoin fixes this.
- Pooge 2y agoAny instrument on the market does.
- taylodl 2y agoGovernment: Pay us $50,000 Citizen: I don't have $50,000 Government: You have $50,000 worth of bonds and securities Citizen: That's property. I demand a jury trial by my peers. Government: <crickets>
- plsbenice34 2y agoI can't think of anything that comes close to being as hard to seize as cryptocurrency
- vasco 2y agoEverything has the same difficulty of seizure when a few guys with hammers and pliers surround you.
- ty6853 2y agoSomething like Monero, they have no idea how much you have unless you flaunt it. Just pretend like you're in LATAM and have a decoy wallet you're ready to lose.
- plsbenice34 2y agoI have an unknown number of monero wallets that have not been declared anywhere. If I give you just a few of them, it has the same outcome for the torture as giving you all of them, so it is rational in all ways for me to not give it all up
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
- taylodl 2y agoHey! I think we just found an issue everybody can agree on regardless of political ideology!
- sky_rw 2y ago* Communism has entered the chat *
- krunck 2y agoBut: "For U.S. tax purposes, digital assets are considered property, not currency." https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/digital-assets https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe... I wonder about digital assets "for constitutional purposes" though?
- ty6853 2y agoThey are considered property because making it a taxable event every time you spend it sabotages its use as a currency, and the state knows that. Customers do not want to have to keep a log of every time they buy a pack of gum.
- mkoubaa 2y agoIf your money is in dollars they can take your money any given Tuesday by devaluing the currency.
- esafak 2y agoNah, that harms them too.
- skulk 2y agoNot really, since the value in currency of their assets goes up while the compensation for labor goes down.
- codr7 2y agoAlso, they can print as much as they need to stay ahead.
- mkoubaa 2y agoIt harms them politically, if they were accountable to voters.
- ty6853 2y agoThe inflationary effect is least pronounced at the source. For moderate expansion rates they generally win.
- cynicalsecurity 2y ago[flagged]
- ffhhj 2y agoThis is descending pretty quickly into another China. Nearby territory is our territory, your property is our property.
- mrkeen 2y agoThis was a fine. The plaintiff is accusing the government of being unconstitutional after being fined $38,083.20 (of unpaid wages) plus a penalty of $16,000. For: a substantial failure to comply with the recruitment and hiring of U.S. workers, offering less favorable terms and working conditions to U.S. workers, impermissible pay deductions, and a willful misrepresentation regarding the accuracy of its need for temporary workers [1] [1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.255899/gov.uscourts.dcd.255899.18.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.255...
- kristopolous 2y agoreason.com doesn't really do journalism or reporting. They're an advocacy group run by a "think tank" which is a nice way of saying "propaganda company". This is like seeing a story "Big Macs are delicious sandwiches (mcdonalds.com)". Their only obligation is to their ideology I know a lot of people reading this are sympathetic to that ideology. Having sympathies doesn't somehow make my description of the purpose of the organization less accurate. https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/files/b5fb809a409cd25c948e7bf4ca96ed03.pdf https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/files/b5fb809a409cd25c... There's nothing in there about say, valuing accurate journalism that informs the public with relevant information.
- bende511 2y agoand their ideology is dismantling the administrative state
- woooooo 2y agoThey're OK on civil liberties and foreign wars, typically, so at least they're consistent with an ideology over pure partisanship.
- WeylandYutani 2y agoThey want to go back to the days when rich people could basically do anything they wanted.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoAll three of the DOJ's arguments apply to real estate. The government creates the deed. It can and does tax it. And it's allowed to Constitutionally eminent domain it for the "general welfare." Herego, property isn't property.
- bende511 2y agoIf any of you read the governments actual motion instead of the bad faith article, you'd see first of all that this "argument" of the government is an aside in a footnote, and not that relevant to their case. Which is that this lawn care company stole wages from its workers and lied on visa applications. The footnote is basically an aside about how philosophically sometimes you can't think of money as property, because it makes some other procedures like taxes difficult. It's not a load-bearing argument at all. Reason magazine are libertarian cranks who want to get rid of the administrative state, which is what this case is actually about anyways. Basically this is an appeal to a determination by a Department of Labor Administrative Law Judge where the lawn care company is saying its unconstitutional to have administrative courts. The government is saying no its not (its not) and also you should have brought this up sometime in the last 4 years this case was being heard by the DoL, and also you would have lost in an article 3 court anyways, because you cheated your employees and lied on visa applications. Edit: ALSO, this is not a case from the Department of Justice, as the article (written by an attorney!) states, but it's the Department of Labor. I know its a nitpick but come on!
- arghandugh 2y agoSure but that’s not going to stop Reason (a magazine for reactionary dopes that’s spent six decades arguing for the end of self-governance) from grifting for clicks as their masters storm the endzone.
- bende511 2y agogrifting is easy if you have no shame and no conscience
- Johnny555 2y ago>(1) the government creates money, so you can't own it; (2) the government can tax your money, so you don't own it; and (3) the Constitution allows the government to spend money for the "general welfare." Using that argument, actual property isn't property either. The government creates property by enforcing property rights that are really just lines on a government owned map, the government can tax your property, and the government can condemn and take your property for the general welfare.
- giantg2 2y ago"Using that argument, actual property isn't property either. The government creates property by enforcing property rights that are really just lines on a government owned map, the government can tax your property, and the government can condemn and take your property for the general welfare." I'm not sure if you know this or if you're pointing it out, but that's how it works. You have title of of deed similar to a king granting land to nobles. The nobles only own it at the king's pleasure and usually ow a tax. So too it is with the government and property tax and eminent domain, etc.
- exabrial 2y ago[flagged]
- 1970-01-01 2y agoA massive loophole in this argument: Holding money from another country (government). CAD $5000 is my property, but USD $3,439.40 (yes, that's the correct amount as of this writing) is not.
- spencerflem 2y agoYeah, I'm one of the first people to accuse the courts of blantant misconduct, But this specific case seems way overblown
- seydor 2y agoMoney As A Service
- kristjansson 2y agoThis headline and article seem like an over-reading of a technical footnote in the cited case. The relevant part of the footnote (citations omitted, emphasis added) > It’s not clear how equating “money” with “private property” fits into the relevant analysis of whether an action is “legal” or “equitable” under the Seventh Amendment. ... And certainly CS Lawn cites no precedent for the *remarkable proposition that violations of public rights transform into private rights simply because those violations are enforced by monetary penalties*. ... But, in any event, money is not necessarily “property” for *constitutional purposes*. and then goes on to discuss how money has been distinguished from property in other constitutional analysis e.g. why all taxes aren't deprivations or takings under the Due Process or Takings clauses. It's not an argument that money does not belong to its owner, but that money is constitutionally differentiated from property, and that differentiation was contemplated by the founders. NB this is in the context of a business that availed itself the H2-B program contesting a finding by administrative law courts that it failed to adhere to some of the requirements of that program, and is therefore assessed a fine (which was reduced by each successive appeal within the administrative court system). They're effectively arguing, via a grab-bag of constitutional arguments, that they deserve a different sort of trial than they agreed to by (1) using the H2-B program and (2) litigating with the agreed-upon system for four years.
- pdonis 2y agoIt seems to me that the Reason article is using a definition of "property" that's different (and more general) from the legal definition that's being relied on in this case. A better term for what property appears to mean as far as the arguments in this case are concerned might be "tangible property" or something like that.
- kristjansson 2y agoYes, that's their slight-of-hand.
- pie_flavor 2y agoTaxation isn't covered by the takings clause because taxation is in the constitution the same as the takings clause is. That's an easy one. This, on the other hand, isn't a tax, it's a fine, i.e. a punishment. And punishments are the domain of judges.
- metalman 2y agoMoney is not property.Never was.Never will be. Money is a construct, which we agree or disagree on its value, and use as a proxy to trade for real goods or services. The inherant value of paper money is elmost nothing, electronic forms of money, could be viewed as w liability, as it takes energy to maintain its presence.Coins are metal, and embody the effort of extraction and potential re use, so are property. Why anyone needs to argue this is odd.
- autoexec 2y agoIf money isn't property than someone who robs a bank isn't committing theft.
- grimblee 2y agoWell, why don't they take Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg's money ? It's not their property and they have a lot.