Morality of Counterfeiting

[GodOfOrder]

Suppose you have a perfect method for making fake bills of your preferred denomination and type. (And I only mean money, not Prada Handbags!) It doesn't really matter what they are, for the sake of this thread. The only thing that does is that you are perfectly able to, and could do it at a moments notice.

It is of course obvious why counterfeiting is illegal. It undermines the economy, and it is also I giant fuck you to the government.

I assume that if you are the type who values the current system and structure of society, then counterfeiting would seem like a most reprehensible action. However, if you view the current establishment with enough distain, it may seem to be your moral duty to undermine the system in any way you can. Counterfeiting seems like the ultimate means of undermining, especially as you do more and more of it. Or you could be entirely amoral, and just to it to buy things without actually buying them.

Remember, your bills are utterly indistinguishable from the real thing and can't be traced back to you. You could generate trillions, hypothetically, and still never get caught. And yes, for those of you who feel more a part of the modern age, manipulating digital numbers counts too (and yes I know most money in circulation is currently in this form). The specifics of the process are inconsequential for the discussion at hand.

Would you do it and why?

Spoiler

Personally, I think I would work to supplant the federal reserve. I would counteractively introduce money into the supply, penny for penny, as they bought bonds to take it out. When they introduced money, I would buy bonds to nullify it. They would get nowhere. I would also keep adding money and inflate us to the point of collapse. During this time I will live on a boat tooling around the pacific.

Or I may destroy them, and take their place, being a personal lender to banks, thus ruling the world. Muh ah ha ha! If I did go this route however, my money would become legit, and the fed's counterfeit. This would happen as soon as the balance flipped.

I suppose it depends on if I am feeling Lawful evil or Chaotic evil on any given morning.

 

[Chad]

Suppose you have a perfect method for making fake bills of your preferred denomination and type. (And I only mean money, not Prada Handbags!) It doesn't really matter what they are, for the sake of this thread. The only thing that does is that you are perfectly able to, and could do it at a moments notice.

It is of course obvious why counterfeiting is illegal. It undermines the economy, and it is also I giant fuck you to the government.

I assume that if you are the type who values the current system and structure of society, then counterfeiting would seem like a most reprehensible action. However, if you view the current establishment with enough distain, it may seem to be your moral duty to undermine the system in any way you can. Counterfeiting seems like the ultimate means of undermining, especially as you do more and more of it. Or you could be entirely amoral, and just to it to buy things without actually buying them.

Remember, your bills are utterly indistinguishable from the real thing and can't be traced back to you. You could generate trillions, hypothetically, and still never get caught. And yes, for those of you who feel more a part of the modern age, manipulating digital numbers counts too (and yes I know most money in circulation is currently in this form). The specifics of the process are inconsequential for the discussion at hand.

Would you do it and why?

Spoiler

Personally, I think I would work to supplant the federal reserve. I would counteractively introduce money into the supply, penny for penny, as they bought bonds to take it out. When they introduced money, I would buy bonds to nullify it. They would get nowhere. I would also keep adding money and inflate us to the point of collapse. During this time I will live on a boat tooling around the pacific.

Or I may destroy them, and take their place, being a personal lender to banks, thus ruling the world. Muh ah ha ha! If I did go this route however, my money would become legit, and the fed's counterfeit. This would happen as soon as the balance flipped.

I suppose it depends on if I am feeling Lawful evil or Chaotic evil on any given morning.

I highlighted what I consider inconsistencies in your argument. You wish to make money the is perfectly counterfeited and untraceable back to you. So that you could make your money more legit and the federal reserve counterfeit.

Here the issue. One you are making money that as you put it is "your bills are utterly indistinguishable from the real thing and can't be traced back to you. You could generate trillions, hypothetically, and still never get caught" Therefore Your bills would actually become real money are at least appear as real money. There is no way to distiguish your money form the feds without outing yourself as the maker of the money. This would basically mean you would get caught.

Also if you had trillions of dollars the IRS would at some point want there share and start asking you questions that you don't want to answer.

I understand that this is a theoretical situation however the situation itself are paradoxical therefore would never happen in reality.

It like saying what if you could be God and make it so there were no Gods.

You can't both be a God and have no God/Gods.

You can't both make perfect counterfeit and use it to make the fed look like counterfeit.

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

I'd do it because I don't think it would affect the financial system in a negative way at all, indeed a miniature version of quantitative easing. Just one that benefits me directly before it eases.

 

[Hawkeye]

I've counterfeited money before. I say money, what I really did was save myself a lot of financial trouble by forging my own public transport tickets. I did it during my university years as I wasn't entitled to student finance.

It was surprisingly easy to do.

I think it should only be done in emergency circumstances rather than purchasing a solid gold Hummer...

 

[GodOfOrder]

I highlighted what I consider inconsistencies in your argument. You wish to make money the is perfectly counterfeited and untraceable back to you. So that you could make your money more legit and the federal reserve counterfeit.

Here the issue. One you are making money that as you put it is "your bills are utterly indistinguishable from the real thing and can't be traced back to you. You could generate trillions, hypothetically, and still never get caught" Therefore Your bills would actually become real money or at least appear as real money.
That would be the goal of counterfeiting. It wouldn't be much good if people could tell that your money wasn't real...

There is no way to distinguish your money from the feds without outing yourself as the maker of the money. This would basically mean you would get caught.

Is it even necessary for me to distinguish my money from the real stuff? All I need to know is that my goal is to undermine the fed, by increasing the money supply, and counteracting all of their measures to reduce and control it by adding more money. If I flood the system with x amount of dollars, then I know that there is at least an artificial boost of x amount of dollars (not even beginning to calculate the amount of magnification a bank would introduce to this figure). This is all that matters.

After this point, taking over as the fed, instead of just collapsing it, wouldn't be that hard. It would be as simple as introducing the money in a more controlled manner. Remember, I was already countering their actions. So functionally, I was already doing their job. All I need to do is not drop the act once I kill them. (and once they are gone, it may even be possible to expose myself without fear of reprisal. I would have the power.)

(My goal wouldn't be to become personally rich. And If that happened, it wouldn't be by directly adding fake money to my own banking account. Nobody is that stupid... hopefully.) My goal would be to destroy or supplant the fed by making use of their tactics to nullify them.

Also if you had trillions of dollars the IRS would at some point want there share and start asking you questions that you don't want to answer.

I wouldn't personally have a hold of all the money. I would just feed it into the system. Give it to people. It would be discreet and insidious.

I understand that this is a theoretical situation however the situation itself are paradoxical therefore would never happen in reality.

It like saying what if you could be God and make it so there were no Gods.

Think of it more like Kratos. He kills gods. That doesn't mean that no gods exist.

You can't both be a God and have no God/Gods.

Never was my goal. The only possible goals were creating instability, or achieving power. Therefore either god is dead or I am god. There is no paradox.

You can't both make perfect counterfeit and use it to make the fed look like counterfeit.

This is a wrong interpretation. It is just that as a logical consequence of my actions, after the fed collapses a result of my counterfeiting, my money still exists. But as I still meddle with the affairs of the economy, it ironically becomes legitimate. It is perhaps a stretch to say that the feds money becomes counterfeit, that was poor wording on my part. I just mean to say that as I become more influential than they are, our relationship dynamic flips.

It doesn't matter what the money looks like. It only matters who makes it. Money is just a symbol that equates to a certain amount of value, that we use for exchange of goods and services. So, with that in mind, as long as people think it is real, it doesn't matter if the the fed actually made it or I did. All that matters is where they think it came from, because that is where they placed their confidence. But for my part, what matters is that I know, and can thus effect, the value of said money by increasing or decreasing the supply via my printing operation.

Also keep in mind, I don't actually have to destroy the institution, just its effect (assuming i am taking over and not just watching the world burn). It can stay around as long as the people feel like keeping it. What matters is that I nullify its effect, and control the money supply for my own ends. It is all about other people's conception of what is real and what is fake.

Sorry if the in quote commentary is hard to read

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

All one really needs is a tiny stamp that says ".925" or "18k"

 

[Duxwing]

Counterfeiting is theft by proxy of inflation in classical economies, but in real economies, no agent other than the counterfeiter will not be able to distinguish small amounts of perfect counterfeiting from the random loss or gain that they experience via bank errors, misplaced bills, and other such physical difficulties and will therefore not adjust their behavior: those who subscribe to the rule of "no harm, no foul," should not consider small amounts of perfect counterfeiting wrong.

Yet sufficiently large amounts of perfect counterfeiting will inflate prices wherever the counterfeiter buys, causing harm to others who must therefore pay an artificially raised price and the business owner who, forced to raise prices by increasing demand, finds that some customers are unwilling to pay.

-Duxwing

 

[GodOfOrder]

Counterfeiting is theft by proxy of inflation in classical economies, but in real economies, no agent other than the counterfeiter will not be able to distinguish small amounts of perfect counterfeiting from the random loss or gain that they experience via bank errors, misplaced bills, and other such physical difficulties and will therefore not adjust their behavior: those who subscribe to the rule of "no harm, no foul," should not consider small amounts of perfect counterfeiting wrong.

Very true.

Yet sufficiently large amounts of perfect counterfeiting will inflate prices wherever the counterfeiter buys, causing harm to others who must therefore pay an artificially raised price and the business owner who, forced to raise prices by increasing demand, finds that some customers are unwilling to pay.

-Duxwing

Hence my watch the world burn suggestion. On a large scale, nothing could be more harmful to the establishment. It would be a weapon of mass destruction, greater than any nuclear bomb.

 

[Cognisant]

It's far easier to hack into the product ordering and pricing systems of any major retailer and make counterfeit purchases from yourself on their behalf and increase the sale price of the stuff they sell by a cent or two to cover the money you take so the accountants never notice a shortfall.

Customers don't care if they're being overcharged by a few cents, even if they do it's unlikely anyone else will care enough to follow up on it, and the accountants aren't going to look into ghostly stock purchases when the books work out, they'll just assume it was a cancelled order or something and somebody else has already fixed it.

 

[Inappropriate Behavior]

I can see myself doing it in small amounts to help ease certain financial pressures.

As for sticking it to the man, no. Some (most) people only learn from experience and when the current systems blow up in peoples faces, well there's a chance they will learn something from it. A chance. When upon studying what went wrong they discover some untraceable influx of monies artificially placed into the system (and you won't be able to hide that) then they will conclude that the system they built wasn't the problem. So they will rebuild it and try regulating against what you've done even further. Making it worse than before.

I can understand and sympathize your intentions and reasons but you know, the road to hell is paved with such.

 

[Hadoblado]

Pretty much what IB said. I might consider making a grab for power, but quite frankly I'm unqualified for that sort of thing. I'd make myself enough money to not care about it, but not so much as to have anyone actually care.

 

[Solitaire U.]

It is of course obvious why counterfeiting is illegal. It undermines the economy, and it is also I giant fuck you to the government.

Well, screw the government, screw the economy and screw the 'structure of society'. It's a huge 'fuck you' to the person you pass the fake bill to. Imagine someone passing you something worthless in exchange for goods and non-counterfeit change. On that basis alone, I wouldn't do it.

 

[GodOfOrder]

Well, screw the government, screw the economy and screw the 'structure of society'. It's a huge 'fuck you' to the person you pass the fake bill to. Imagine someone passing you something worthless in exchange for goods and non-counterfeit change. On that basis alone, I wouldn't do it.

I don't think that the person you hand the bill to is specifically harmed. The bills are in every way indistinguishable. This is a hypothetically perfect method we speak of. So by receiving their "legitimate" change, I am in effect not getting anything qualitatively different. The moral trouble happens on a broader scale, because by introducing more money than there previously was, I devalue money in general. So, it is not direct theft, but as Duxwing said, theft by proxy.

The bill itself isn't worthless because people wont know the difference between it and any other bill, legit or counterfeit. Inflation is the mechanism that screws people over.

In the above I have simply attempted to clarify something, but have not actually addressed your point. Your point is that in the action of counterfeiting one would engage in theft. Whether by proxy or by direct action, one is still guilty of theft. Theft always screws over somebody. This is true.

While I can't get around that, one could say that counterfeiting takes a little bit from everybody. It is likely not ever enough for anyone to notice, and would certainly not be felt on a personal scale, save perhaps in extreme aggregation. From a consequentialist perspective, the payoff still seems greater. From a deontological perspective, it is still stealing, and is still categorically wrong.

Rather than theft however, my personal example seems closer to a deliberate act of war, or something similar. A plot to take over the world perhaps? So, on the small scale I'd say counterfeiting seems akin to theft, on a large scale it seems closer to an act of war. Neither seems morally justified from this position and I respect that.

 

[Solitaire U.]

I misunderstood your op. To me, the term 'counterfeit' is a synonym of 'fake', which is always somehow 'detectable'.

My bad.

 

[GodOfOrder]

As for sticking it to the man, no. Some (most) people only learn from experience and when the current systems blow up in peoples faces, well there's a chance they will learn something from it. A chance. When upon studying what went wrong they discover some untraceable influx of monies artificially placed into the system (and you won't be able to hide that) then they will conclude that the system they built wasn't the problem. So they will rebuild it and try regulating against what you've done even further. Making it worse than before.

This, while possible, due to the reactionary nature of men, I think highly unlikely. Most will only look for surface explanations, and end up blaming the system itself. How many people said capitalism failed in 2008? It wasn't the systems fault but rather bubbles caused by central interference.

Also, once they discover the artificial numbers, it will be too late, and the goal would have been accomplished. The goal wouldn't be to kill the system, it would be to take it over. Supplant the fed. Take down the establishment, in order to become it. So let them find the problem and guard against it in the future, it would only work in my favor. Indeed, it would protect me from those who would do the same!

I can understand and sympathize your intentions and reasons but you know, the road to hell is paved with such.

Fair, its only a hypothetical. This is why i do them. But you have to ask, were my intentions good to begin with, or was hell my goal?

 

[Brontosaurie]

undermining the economy is like undermining cancer

 

[some.body]

Ima just leave this here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PlhJOzH0gY

"counterfeit money machine, counterfeit money machine"