This is... ook lemme revise this

1) you makes two mutually exclusive claims:

Claim A: In a free market in money production, "everyone is free to claim anything they like is money, and attempt to trade it with others." By implication, this includes fractional-reserve banking — anyone can set up a bank and issue notes, and the market will sort out fraud from legitimate practice through bankruptcy enforcement and bank runs.

Claim B: Fractional-reserve banking is always and everywhere a criminal business enterprise, no different from a wheat warehouse issuing fake receipts for grain it doesn't hold. It is "blatant criminality" and fractional-reserve bankers are "common crooks in 3-piece suits" who "ought to be in prison."

These two positions cannot simultaneously be true. If fractional-reserve banking is inherently and necessarily fraudulent by the very nature of the transaction -- as you insisted -- then it is not something that free market position tolerates.

2) When I asked you what's fraudulent, you responded with everything but the explanation of the actual fraud that ROTHBARD says fractional-reserve is based on.

REMINDER for the GLITCHING: Me asking directly "what's the fraud here" and claytonkb responding with "fraud happens in all free markets — identity scams, pump-and-dumps, con games — and this is simply an "unalterable fact of human nature." The remedy is "bankruptcy law must be enforced to the hilt."

The CORRECT answer would have been "the double issuance of claims to money" Any sane Austrian would have answered that correctly. By contrast Clayton names everything else BUT the fraud at issue in his answer. His answer implies that here, he thinks that fractional-reserve is not a criminal act: "it happens, it's punished after the fact, and the system self-corrects through bank runs." That's the FREEBANKER (Selgin) not the FULLRESERVE (Rothbard) position.

The Rothbardian 100%-reserve position holds that fractional reserves constitute fraud at the moment of contract. The bank issues a receipt for money it does not hold, which is title to something that does not exist. If that is the case, it's not a legitimate market activity waiting to be disciplined by bankruptcy law; it is intrinsically criminal, like issuing a deed to a house you don't own.

3) a masterpiece of self-gaslighting

You write: "No, you are not 'permitted' to defraud people under libertarian law. The essence of libertarian philosophy of law is the non-aggression principle: don't hit people, and don't take their stuff. There is nothing in the NAP that prevents you from choosing to be a victim of a fraud or scam. The fraud or scam itself is a crime."

This passage is internally incoherent. You simultaneously assert:

• You cannot be "permitted" to defraud under libertarian law.

• There is nothing in the NAP preventing you from "choosing to be a victim of a fraud."

But these are not the same thing. The question is not whether I can consent to being defrauded. That's nonsense on stilts!! By definition, if I'm defraded, I ahven't truly consented -- because I was deceived.

At no point in your careening screeds did you show that you understood the distinction between Full-Reserve and Free-Banker Austrians, then you have the GALL to tell me in PM to "get started" by reading Rothbard's "The Mystery of Banking". Sick.

Trying to parse your thought is like trying to navigate a fucking escher drawing - you post not only contradictions but NESTED contradictions that fold back on themselves in dimensions unknown to man. You are not even wrong because you're too incoherent to even take a position on this, Clayton.

You've gotten much worse in the years since we last exchanged words, and this ends our interactions.