You guys lost me about 30 pages ago, has anyone convinced anyone? I admire the stamina but I can't hang.
Most of the last 20 pages has been devoted solely to parsing language and sparring over what words mean. You can't convince people who won't even argue from what they introduce as their own source material, as reflected in the fanciful imaginings about possible meanings of court cases and statutes that have absolutely no basis in the very brief text that's available in its entirety to both of us. Such an outcome is the natural consequence of amateurs thinking they can understand the law. Congress doesn't even understand the law; every congressman gets a big staff, every committee gets a huge staff, and on top of it all congress has additional myriad departments of professional staff helping with the real work. Not only does congress have its legions of staff--friendly lobbyists are also happy to make frequent contributions in furtherance of our well-being, doing the American people the great favor of "educating" our representatives on important issues and writing possible "drafts" of legislation. These people do all of the work, and it takes all of them to collectively make sense of the law.
These imaginings, of course, are not original (I'm not saying the original poster copied it straight off a tax protestor web site, just that the influence was obviously present in whatever his source was). Most of the past 20 pages consists of regurgitated tax protestor arguments constructed by crackpots who selectively quote statutes, court cases, and other random sources of law to assert that there is some parallel system of lawful money in existence right now. The critical belief of these faithful is that existing Federal Reserve Notes can be redeemed for this magical lawful money, which has the cleansing power to eliminate some measure of fractional reserve credit. According to the great legal scholars who engineered these silly theories, the magic wash that eliminates fractional reserve credit also transforms the currency such that it is no longer taxable income. The last part hasn't come up in this thread, but everything else has. All of it bullshit, none of it supported by any of the source material.
On the broader issue of whether Federal Reserve Notes all constitute ever-swelling debt: that's obviously false as well. The problem with printing money is that it
never has to be repaid, not that it has to someday be repaid with interest (which no one can substantiate--I've been begging and begging to no avail). The issue is confused by the fact that banknotes used to actually be payable obligations, which means that all of the language surrounding the notes is phrased in such terms. The fact that the language was never "updated" supposedly proves that banknotes still represent some underlying obligation that must be paid.
The real problem is just that central banking is an exceedingly complicated topic that most people on both sides don't understand. The real and insightful discussion we could and should be having is instead consumed with these basic debates over silly notions that are totally unnecessary to advancing the case that our Austrian friends want to advance. The kind of fights we're having are equivalent to those that would be had if I said things like "$1 now buys just as much as $1 in 1900." Such asinine, dunce-cap-worthy bullshit would be rightfully dismissed with incomparable haste. But since we have a crowd advocating the minority views that no one in the real world takes seriously, congratulating and patting each other on the back even when the inconsistencies should be readily apparent, and just one who stands up for mainstream economics and reality--wholeheartedly embraced by every single wealthy and successful country in the world today--I'm the one who's batshit crazy and has not a clue what he's talking about. The fact that no one in the world embraces their lunacy is all the evidence you should need to pronounce it modern quackery. Oh yes, that's right. The ignorant functionaries who have enabled the world to operate on the fractional reserve standard just don't realize that their strings are being pulled by the evil banking cabal.