[Avodah] Fiat Money & Halachah

[Zev Sero]

Richard Wolpoe wrote:
> Everyone ASSUMES because something IS therefore it is valid.
> Fiat money is essentially a 20th Century phenomenon. It is not claer to 
> me that fiat money has the halachic status of Money.

It's not clear at all - that is my point.  It's a shayla that the
19th- and 20th-century poskim discuss.  It seems generally agreed that
it is definitely money in private transactions, bein adam lachavero,
but perhaps not in transactions that are really bein adam lamakom,
with a person acting merely as Hashem's agent (kohanim mishulchan
gavoah ka-zachu).  The question is how to categorise each transaction.


> think of it tis way, do stock options have the same function as stock?

Irrelevant, since modern money does not have the relation to, well,
anything, that stock options have to stock.


> Fiat money is lgeal tender in the USA NOW, but that dos nto mean th 
> Talmud would cosntrue it so, unless someone can muster some soures to 
> state otherwise.

Well, it's certainly legal tender as regards bein adam lachavero; both
dina demalchuta and minhag hatagarim make it so.  If you owe me $100,
and you give me a $100 note in payment but I refuse to accept it, I
don't think any beit din in the world would make you pay me again.
The question arises because Hashem is neither a subject of the kingdom
nor a tagar.

 
> Fiat money, like life insruance is an astraction.

No more than silver-as-money was an abstraction in Chazal's time and
through most of history.

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas