Monopoly Through Legal Tender and Taxes
Monopoly through legal tender and taxes plays a role that it’s fit to introduce now, at this point of the logical thread; so it’s better to bear it in mind as of now, even though I’ll repeatedly discuss both ahead.
Now that the infertility of the media of payment generates the quest for the power to issue them, established powers come into play: at this stage, when a government comes into being, whether freely agreed upon or enforced, it’s usually expected to establish as part of its rule its own monopoly on media of payment by issuing and enforcing the use of its own infertile one – its own money. So how does an established power enforce the use of its money? One obvious way is what is called legal tender: subjects are ordered by law to use that money for their exchanges, or else. But there’s another way, too, coming in handy in both sovereign and colonial countries: taxes. The established power not only demands its taxes, but it demands them being paid in its own money. That way, a need for that money is enforced.
This enforcement, wherever the established power and its issuing monopoly are enforced and not freely agreed upon, is just plain robbery, however sovereign or slave the country. In the final analysis, monopoly through legal tender and taxes is a robbery just like any monopoly, as the end result is enforcing a robbery by brute force more or less in lawful disguise, and it may only be acceptable – maybe – if done in favour of everyone and with the consensus of everyone – for real.