Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by desumeku 473 days ago
>unlimited crime against others with no consequences

At present I will acknowledge one great obligation to it, that is the Chapter sixth—of money page 21st “When these denominations are admitted & employed in transactions to diminish the quantity of metal to which they answer by an alteration of the real coins, is to steal, a theft of greater magnitude & still more ruinous is the making of paper. It is greater because in this money there is absolutely no real value. It is more ruinous because by its gradual depreciation during all the time of its existence it produces the effect which would be produced by an infinity of successive deteriorations of the coin.” That is to say an infinity of successive felonious larcenies. If this is true as I believe it is we Americans are the most thievish people that ever existed, we have been stealing from each other for an hundred & fifty years. If anything like health remains to me, you shall hear more upon this subject from your friend & humble servant.

-- John Adams