36 ms·

Counterfeiting seems to me to be on par with fraud and theft. Could you explain why you consider it to be on par with treason?

fixxer 12y ago
You debase a medium of exchange upon which our society is built.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  So, extracting value that doesn't belong to you, causing financial harm, but not physical harm. Sounds a lot like theft. If you walk into a bank with phony checks and walk out with money that isn't yours, how is that worse than walking in with a gun or sneaking in at night?
  - fixxer 12y ago
    Sure, but theft is a subset of the crime in this case. Counterfeiting is a form of theft that literally destabilizes a regime. As jessaustin pointed out far more eloquently, my view is not novel. The fact that we have an organization within our government (the Secret Service) with a primary mandate of "defending the currency" should be enough for you to connect the dots and realize the counterfeiting is more than theft in the context of a nation. * Steal a radio, you're stealing from a person. * Run a Ponzi scheme, you're stealing from a group of people. * Counterfeit a nation's currency, you are stealing from the people of that country. So, to answer your question: Sure, counterfeiting is just theft. And Hitler was just a killer. Scale matters.
    - seanflyon 12y ago
      We all agree that counterfeiting is a serious problem, so of course there is a governmental agency that covers "Financial Crimes, covering missions such as prevention and investigation of counterfeiting of U.S. currency and U.S. treasury securities, and investigation of major fraud" (according to Wikipedia). I think you got to the heart of the matter when you wrote "Scale matters". Murdering millions of people is a bigger deal than murdering one person. Theft of millions of dollars is worse than theft of one dollar. The problem I have is the distinction is made not based on scale but by the means of theft. I suppose the idea is that is is worse to steal one dollar each from a million people than a million dollars from one person, but I disagree with that conclusion.
      - fixxer 12y ago
        Stealing a tenth of a penny from everyone is OK?
        seanflyon 12y ago
        What? Of course not. If you think I implied that then you need to reread my post.
jessaustin 12y ago
Foucault would not have been surprised by this. Since the USPS is nominally the property of the federal government, defrauding it is an attack on the body of the sovereign. Drawing-and-quartering really isn't out of the question to avenge that injury, even though in the American case the sovereign is not an actual person. The response wouldn't have been close to this had the criminal defrauded e.g. FedEx.
ctdonath 12y ago
The federal government's scale of "badness" differs from yours. Look at the sentences handed out. Just a little behind murder is counterfeiting, illegal weapons possession, and mail fraud. A fake $20? Unlicensed gun with barrel 1cm short of legal? a stamp-less letter using the return address as the intended destination? they all sound so trivial, yes. Yet...they cut at the foundation of the country: falsifying the representation of value, edge into revolutionary armaments, and undermine the smooth flow of information. Sure they're petty in and of themselves, but they constitute "the line" which anyone stepping over begin to damage & undermine the fragile structure holding up our society & government. Copy a $20? [shrug] meh, no big deal. Everyone copies a $20 (just once)? $6,000,000,000 of fake money can screw up the economy fast.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Remind me, is this the government that created the NSA which undermined the entire internet, destroying trust and disrupting the smooth flow of information to a degree never dreamed of by any criminal in history? That government?
  - fixxer 12y ago
    Yup. Same one. Doesn't matter. Straw man argument.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      No, the argument is one of hypocrisy. It would be reasonable to punish the government for 88 years or more.
      - fixxer 12y ago
        As a citizen, I have a vested interest in seeing the currency protected, so this isn't "us versus the G". Your argument is irrelevant to this matter (regardless of how much I agree with your feelings about the NSA).

fixxer 12y ago

You debase a medium of exchange upon which our society is built.

seanflyon 12y ago
So, extracting value that doesn't belong to you, causing financial harm, but not physical harm. Sounds a lot like theft. If you walk into a bank with phony checks and walk out with money that isn't yours, how is that worse than walking in with a gun or sneaking in at night?
- fixxer 12y ago
  Sure, but theft is a subset of the crime in this case. Counterfeiting is a form of theft that literally destabilizes a regime. As jessaustin pointed out far more eloquently, my view is not novel. The fact that we have an organization within our government (the Secret Service) with a primary mandate of "defending the currency" should be enough for you to connect the dots and realize the counterfeiting is more than theft in the context of a nation. * Steal a radio, you're stealing from a person. * Run a Ponzi scheme, you're stealing from a group of people. * Counterfeit a nation's currency, you are stealing from the people of that country. So, to answer your question: Sure, counterfeiting is just theft. And Hitler was just a killer. Scale matters.
  - seanflyon 12y ago
    We all agree that counterfeiting is a serious problem, so of course there is a governmental agency that covers "Financial Crimes, covering missions such as prevention and investigation of counterfeiting of U.S. currency and U.S. treasury securities, and investigation of major fraud" (according to Wikipedia). I think you got to the heart of the matter when you wrote "Scale matters". Murdering millions of people is a bigger deal than murdering one person. Theft of millions of dollars is worse than theft of one dollar. The problem I have is the distinction is made not based on scale but by the means of theft. I suppose the idea is that is is worse to steal one dollar each from a million people than a million dollars from one person, but I disagree with that conclusion.
    - fixxer 12y ago
      Stealing a tenth of a penny from everyone is OK?
      - seanflyon 12y ago
        What? Of course not. If you think I implied that then you need to reread my post.

jessaustin 12y ago

Foucault would not have been surprised by this. Since the USPS is nominally the property of the federal government, defrauding it is an attack on the body of the sovereign. Drawing-and-quartering really isn't out of the question to avenge that injury, even though in the American case the sovereign is not an actual person. The response wouldn't have been close to this had the criminal defrauded e.g. FedEx.

ctdonath 12y ago

The federal government's scale of "badness" differs from yours. Look at the sentences handed out. Just a little behind murder is counterfeiting, illegal weapons possession, and mail fraud. A fake $20? Unlicensed gun with barrel 1cm short of legal? a stamp-less letter using the return address as the intended destination? they all sound so trivial, yes. Yet...they cut at the foundation of the country: falsifying the representation of value, edge into revolutionary armaments, and undermine the smooth flow of information. Sure they're petty in and of themselves, but they constitute "the line" which anyone stepping over begin to damage & undermine the fragile structure holding up our society & government. Copy a $20? [shrug] meh, no big deal. Everyone copies a $20 (just once)? $6,000,000,000 of fake money can screw up the economy fast.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Remind me, is this the government that created the NSA which undermined the entire internet, destroying trust and disrupting the smooth flow of information to a degree never dreamed of by any criminal in history? That government?
- fixxer 12y ago
  Yup. Same one. Doesn't matter. Straw man argument.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    No, the argument is one of hypocrisy. It would be reasonable to punish the government for 88 years or more.
    - fixxer 12y ago
      As a citizen, I have a vested interest in seeing the currency protected, so this isn't "us versus the G". Your argument is irrelevant to this matter (regardless of how much I agree with your feelings about the NSA).