Bad ideas are sometimes the hardest to dethrone. It’s probably accurate to say most people think of money as the paper currency printed by governments. And it is money in the sense that it functions as a medium of exchange, but is it sound? Is it vulnerable to inflation? Its very existence is evidence that it is, so why are so many people reluctant to switch to a money that isn’t?

Frédéric Bastiat in his book The Law distinguishes between profit and plunder. Profit is financial gain earned through industrious behavior. Business owners make a profit by selling products at a greater amount than what it costs to produce that product. Plunder, by contrast, is the theft of property through nonvoluntary means, such as theft, coercion, or fraud. Bastiat noted that while most plunder is illegal, there remains one major exception: the state.