“However, modern financial/monetary systems allow for massive fraud by government, i.e. where they essentially steal and intentionally create inflation when they spend far more than they really have.”
****************
One of the worst aspects of this is that they steal from future generations, leaving the burden of debt payment largely to them.
Not sure if that’s really so long term with inflation.
They’re just f#c$ing people over in the present. When the government inflates its way out of debt, they pretty much just screw all those people they made promises to today: bonds, social security/federal/military retirements, Veterans compensations... Sure, they are still giving them face value of what was promised, but that simply isn’t worth as much anymore, and the raise in cost of living is delayed and not keeping pace with the actual inflation.
Where the long term damage is IMHO is in what we call a public education today, infrastructure (in particular energy and transportation), and many of these dysfunctional/unproductive behaviors we are advocating, even subsidizing that we will not easily shed ourselves of. We have massive government waste in redundancy (FBI, DEA, Federal Marshals, ATF...), with government agencies which accomplish nothing (Department of Education, TSA, etc.) or are even economically destructive (EPA, EEOC...). But that’s just my stinking opinion.