Other Peoples Money

Other People’s Money


The spending of other people’s money is one of the great problems of modern life. Money, property the fruit of one’s labor, and the ownership rights attendant therein are the root of freedom and prosperity. As such the ownership rights of money are a battleground between man and the state.

Money is a form of capital, a concentrated form of labor. Who owns it and who dispenses of it are an issue of contention between man and the state. If the owner of money dispenses of it, in whatever fashion, spending, burying, saving, or trusting it to a proxy is consonant with natural property rights. A proxy example would be a savings account in a savings and loan, buying a stock or a bond. The capital ownership has been retained, but the usage right has been transferred on a temporary basis. In this sense it is not the spending of other’s people money since this right has been transferred knowledgeably and with permission.

Taxation is a forcible taking of private property, usually money, by the state. It is covered under the legalistic façade of societal law, but is not a natural property right since the state has no natural rights.

Inflation is unlegislated taxation by the state central bank (all countries have a fiat currency and central bank that inflates). The money supply increases arbitrarily while the goods and services produced by the economy (private individuals) has not, thus prices must increase. The benefit accrues to the state and the central bank since they have taken ownership of the private capital with this dilution. This is the reason all central banks inflate, albeit some worse than others (compare Switzerland and the United States).

Taxation and Inflation represent the dysfunctional spending of Other People’s Money since it is a violation of property rights by those charged with securing them, the state. Private disposition is functional spending since no property rights have been violated.

The evils perpetrated on mankind in the twentieth century can all be traced to forcible property taking, the dysfunctional spending of Other People’s Money. World War I and II, the Korean War and Vietnam Wars, the War in Iraq, Stalin and Mao’s purges, the famines, and all the local civil wars have been funded by forcible property taking by taxation, inflation, war bonds, and outright confiscation at gunpoint. This has all been a violation of the natural property rights of man. The greatest good attendant upon mankind would be to put this to an end once and for all time. The world would return to its natural state of peace and harmony between people and nations.