Crime Against Humanity: “Legal” Tender, or The Moneypoly of Moneypulation, 3
A token has no intrinsic value, its sole value is symbolic; and that is what paper money is: no intrinsic value, only nominal. But whether you are free to accept it or refuse it, or forced to accept it, well, that is quite another thing, which has nothing to do with its intrinsic or nominal value: even though you may be more willing to accept as payment something having intrinsic value than something having only nominal value, you may nonetheless be free to accept it or not regardless of its intrinsic or nominal value.
Well, to be precise, we may also mention that both these qualities are separate from a third quality labelled “receipt money”: both fiat money and receipt money have no intrinsic value, both are based on trust and agreement, but the latter is agreed to be directly redeemable in some actual value.
Now, freedom means that you and I and our fellows, as parties in our agreements, pacts and contracts, are free to agree all the terms – all of them, payment and non−fulfilment included –: what is accepted in exchange for what, how an obligation is fulfilled are freely agreed upon by the interested parties; and if that payment or obligation is not fulfilled in those agreed upon terms, the payment or fulfilment did not occur and that’s it. Then legal tender enters the scene, and that freedom is undermined.
Legal tender means that you cannot refuse to accept legal tender in payment or in fulfilment of an obligation. Legal tender means that legal tender cancels out the obligation: an obligation fulfilled in legal tender is fulfilled to all intents and purposes. Legal tender means that not only an obligation in your favour fulfilled in legal tender is fulfilled to all intents and purposes, but also that you cannot refuse its fulfilment in legal tender. And this canceling out to all intents and purposes that you cannot even refuse means that you are deprived of any other claims for the obligation whereby not fulfilled in the originally agreed upon terms.
