Is it ethical to borrow in fiat, to buy bitcoin? Obviously it's legal, but ethically...it feels off.
I didn't think much about it, until this post came up recently:
Starve the State, starve the banks, protect yourself, your privacy & liberty. v1
Here's some quotes from the comments:
0 sats \ 13 replies \ @siggy47 27 Sep I'm pro fiat debt to buy bitcoin. Let the government inflate it away. This "debt is slavery notion" is to make sure there aren't too many people joining the cantillon party. reply43 sats \ 12 replies \ @mf 28 Sep You do you, but that only legitimizes what they do, and fucks the ones that cannot afford to do the same. Starve the enemies, not your brothers. reply21 sats \ 2 replies \ @pillar 28 Sep Fiat will be printed. The printing will debase fiat holders. Any printed fiat can be used to buy Bitcoin, or for anything else. When it goes to buy and hold Bitcoin, it pushes the BTC/fiat price up. Thus, besides hurting fiat holders, you reward all Bitcoin holders with more purchasing power. I will never disagree with printing money being an evil thing that worsens the world. But, if it will be printed, I can't think of a better use for it than to make Bitcoin rise. I also see it as a peculiar implementation of Alinsky's fourth rule of his rules for radicals. reply34 sats \ 1 reply \ @mf 28 Sep It seems you are making the assumption that you are simply using the existing printing, which is not true. If you keep borrowing more fiat, you are increasing the print, not using the print, as you put it. reply 23 sats \ 0 replies \ @pillar 28 Sep I believe that, for any given range of time, the printing has a top limit (on the infinite long run, there is no limit). Western banks and other seigniorage institutions will only print so much in a year. They can't print unlimited amounts in that span, because they are still not Venezuela-grade dumb and greedy. But within those limits, they will print. It's in their interest to print. Because of what you pointed out: they are looking for the interest on the principal they are creating out of nothing. So, that fiat will be printed to someone, for some reason. When it comes to retail loans, I'm pretty confident they don't give a flying fuck what its usage will be. The way I see it, if don't take the loan offered to me, they will give it to someone else. So yes, I would agree with you that I'm making the assumption that I'm just using a part of the inevitable to-be-printed pool.
I also remembered reading in the book The Hard Boiled Egg Index - Surviving Zimbabwe's Hyperinflation by Kudzai Joseph Gumunyu, his chapter on how he (as a senior bank employee) was able to buy a house with rapidly inflating currency, loaned to him at a favorable rate of interest.
When we bought this house in August 2004, the price was 72 percent of my gross annual salary, which was a bargain. By July 2007 (three years later), I could take one ZWD$500,000 debased note (by “000”), now worth US$1.67 at parallel market rates, from my pocket and repay the mortgage, which was supposed to be repaid in twenty years. Moreover, this note was only 0.49 percent of my monthly salary of the same month, and if available, I could have two hundred of these in my pocket monthly, ceteris paribus. Although the mortgage was done aboveboard, I felt I was cheating somebody somewhere. It did not sound right that such a substantial mortgage would be so easy to expunge.
What do you think? Is this true?
The way I see it, if don't take the loan offered to me, they will give it to someone else. So yes, I would agree with you that I'm making the assumption that I'm just using a part of the inevitable to-be-printed pool.