To begin our train of thought, we must look at capitalism and what it really is. We must also look at the relationship between capitalism and freedom.
Capitalism is simply the use of a small and convenient item, such as a seashell, a metal coin, a piece of paper, or an encoded bit on a computer to represent the value of an object, product, or service for the sake of convenience.
One of the first, and largest, benefits of capitalism was the newly found ability to convert a bulky and cumbersome product to an easy to transport quantity of money, which could be carried to or from markets or on travels, and which could be stored for future use much more easily than the bulky product which it represented.
Prior to capitalism, travel was restricted by the difficulty of carrying enough wealth on which to subsist. After capitalism, travel became much easier because one could now simply convert goods into currency for the trip, then convert some of it back when needed.
This aspect also opened up a whole new world of trading opportunities, as now a huge and expensive caravan was not needed to transport the wealth, all that was required was to move the more convenient currency.
Another benefit to capitalism was the birth of the service sector, the possibility of paid industrialization, and the beginning of the end of slavery. Now, by the use of capital, the wealthy could pay people to provide services and work in their industrial endeavors, and no longer had need to directly support large groups of servants and slaves. Employment, in a real sense, had been born, and with it the ability of anyone to exchange their labor for capital, and then exchange that capital for their needs and wants, without having to produce everything for themselves or give themselves over as a servant to another.
This ability to convert back and forth between goods and services and currency allowed further specialization, which in turn introduced better and more innovative products and further fueled trade.
As the years went by, and the benefits of capitalism increased, a terrible thing happened. Governments learned that they could get away with requiring everyone inside their control to use their currency. The governments began to monopolize currency creation. Why was this so terrible? Now the governments could influence prices by controlling the amount of currency, and hence limiting the ability of the individual to negotiate their own prices. The governments could also control trade and wage economic war by setting exchange rates with foreign currency, or by refusing to accept it at all.
Government involvement in currencies eventually gave the governments of the world more influence over the economies than individuals could ever hope to gain, with the exception of a few brilliant entrepreneurs who arrived on the scene from time to time, but the governments dealt with them generally by creating anti-trust, or anti-monopoly , laws, all the while trying to conceal the fact that the governments had attained the greatest monopoly of all, money.
With the significant level of control over economies came a similar control over personal freedom by way of the ability to either easily seize the wealth of individuals or to actually change the practical value of that wealth by manipulating the currency.
Capitalism was so abused and distorted in this manner that people began to fail to understand what it actually was, and the public attacks on capitalism stemmed from the simple fact that people, no longer recognizing capitalism for what it was, began to attack this distorted capitalism which governments had spawned and the unscrupulous gladly used for their own purposes.
And so we come to my point. Anyone who truly values freedom must oppose and seek to eliminate the government's monopoly on currency creation and control. Up until recently, the only realistic way to attempt that was by counterfeiting the government's own currency. Of course, those in power sold this activity as a major crime against the people, but creating fake currency, in and of itself, does not affect at all the amount of goods and services on which the economy is really based, nor does it change the demand. It simply takes power away from those who seek to have complete control over the currency. By this reasoning, a significant amount of counterfeiting could actually be beneficial to freedom by diminishing government control over free trade.
The penalties for counterfeiting could be quite severe, but now there is an even better way to advance freedom. Crypto-currencies have entered the fray. Now virtually anyone can transfer their wealth into a digital currency over which the governments have little or no control, and by so doing, increase their own personal freedom by escaping government price controls, diminishing the chance that their wealth will be confiscated, and by living and working outside of the established order.
So give up the risks of counterfeiting, and strike a blow for Liberty by converting your wealth into whatever non-governmental currency you prefer. When enough people do this, the governments will lose most of their power over us, and we will all regain a large measure of our lost freedom.
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