The Dollar’s Deadly Laws That Cause Poverty and Destroy the Environment

Laws associated with issuing U.S. dollars cause dire poverty and destroy the environment. American law has codified the dollar as sufficient for satisfying debts even over a creditor’s objection (legal tender) and as the only form of payment that typically meets federal tax obligations (functional currency). The Supreme Court has upheld government bans on private possession of, or contractual repayment in, monetary alternatives to the dollar like gold or silver. Furthermore, since 1857 when the United States Congress began abandoning the silver standard in practice, the dollar has gradually been trending ever greater as a “fiat money”—a debt instrument issued at the pleasure of the sovereign—and, indeed, has been a 100% debt instrument since 1971 when the United States finally, formally, and completely abandoned gold and silver standards. States and municipalities also support these four legal aspects of the dollar despite a potentially contrary constitutional mandate. This Article examines implications of these four legally entrenched aspects of the modern dollar—fiat money, legal tender, functional currency, and non-fiat money bans. As the first analysis in the academic legal literature to do so, this Article demonstrates that the combination of these four legal attributes leads to severe environmental damage and catastrophic impoverishment of a portion of the global population (in particular, those who are already abjectly poor). The Article shows that calls for digital currencies based on international fiat monetary alternatives to the dollar, such as Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), will not improve the environment and global economy and indeed may worsen them. The Article concludes by laying out possibilities for reform of laws supporting the dollar in its present form that would diminish both poverty and environmental destruction. I. Introduction II. A Relevant History of the Dollar’s Laws ... A. Fiat Money ... B. Legal Tender ... C. Gold and Silver Bans ... D. Functional Currency ... E. States and Municipalities III. Economic Insights into the Dollar’s Legal Attributes ... A. The Fiat Money Thought Experiment, Part 1: From Raw Silver to Fiat Silver ... B. The Fiat Money Thought Experiment, Part 2: From Fiat Silver to Fiat Notes ... C. The Fiat Money Thought Experiment, Part 3: From Fiat Paper Notes to Fiat Electricity (Digital Currency) ... D. The Globalization of Fiat: Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) IV. Conclusion: Solutions for Refor

True and False Speech

First Amendment law is structurally unstable because it does not adequately distinguish true and false speech. Free speech law, therefore, is “unpredictable,” meaning that speakers cannot accurately predict whether their contemplated speech will suffer sanction. Unpredictable law causes the Rule of Law’s collapse. This Article demonstrates that an effective first step in improving First Amendment law would be to create well-defined liability for false speech. We conclude that, in particular, scientific speech—a form of speech readily determined to be true or false— must face additional scrutiny. Anticipating serious objections to formalized false-speech liability, we then show that these objections, interestingly, apply with equal force to any form of legal liability. The implication of this fact is that rejection of this Article’s modifications to First Amendment law requires deep reconsideration about how we should administer most legal liability, not only First Amendment law

The Kindynamic Theory of Tort

Commentators complain of two major deficiencies in modern tort law: (1) that liability concepts such as negligence or duty are so vacuously defined as to permit inadvertent subjectivity and error to hinder proper case adjudication, and (2) that tort is too slow in recognizing newly discovered risks and properly compensating nascent classes of injury. We accordingly report on the Kindynamic Theory, an emerging philosophy that overcomes these twin deficiencies and sharpens understanding of poorly articulated tort intuitions Kindynamics contends that causation is the cornerstone of tort, and that all risks are, at core, causal propositions. Contrary to its many everyday definitions, the word risk has a single exact meaning in Kindynamic Theory. A risk, unlike uncertainties, must be objectively known to be causally possible ( epistemically possible\u27). Put differently, Kindynamics prescribes that a change in a specific alleged stimulus must be objectively known to determine an asymmetric, directional change in a particular alleged harm. Second, and in the only notable break with traditional tort intuition, some Kindynamic proponents advocate permitting compensation only for injuries arising from significant risks: those that are (1) widespread and (2) also likely to be injurious. Similar to common regulatory practice, the prescriptive significant risk constraint seeks to sensibly prioritize risk deterrence, given limited judicial resources. Third, Kindynamic Theory invokes decision analysis-the method for formal, quantitativer isk analysis universallyfamiliarto risk analysts-to elucidate risk tradeoffs and make decisions about a risk\u27s costs and benefits. With its empirical grounding, decision analysis improves upon other cost-benefit models, which are typically too theoreticalo r assumption-ladenf or practicalu se. Finally, courts have long desired and intuitively but unsuccessfully sought an objective method for apportioning liability for a single injury among multiple alleged tortfeasors. Kindynamic Theory formally presents such a method. Searl

The Kindynamic Theory of Tort

Commentators complain of two major deficiencies in modern tort law: (1) that liability concepts such as negligence or duty are so vacuously defined as to permit inadvertent subjectivity and error to hinder proper case adjudication, and (2) that tort is too slow in recognizing newly discovered risks and properly compensating nascent classes of injury. We accordingly report on the Kindynamic Theory, an emerging philosophy that overcomes these twin deficiencies and sharpens understanding of poorly articulated tort intuitions Kindynamics contends that causation is the cornerstone of tort, and that all risks are, at core, causal propositions. Contrary to its many everyday definitions, the word risk has a single exact meaning in Kindynamic Theory. A risk, unlike uncertainties, must be objectively known to be causally possible ( epistemically possible\u27). Put differently, Kindynamics prescribes that a change in a specific alleged stimulus must be objectively known to determine an asymmetric, directional change in a particular alleged harm. Second, and in the only notable break with traditional tort intuition, some Kindynamic proponents advocate permitting compensation only for injuries arising from significant risks: those that are (1) widespread and (2) also likely to be injurious. Similar to common regulatory practice, the prescriptive significant risk constraint seeks to sensibly prioritize risk deterrence, given limited judicial resources. Third, Kindynamic Theory invokes decision analysis-the method for formal, quantitativer isk analysis universallyfamiliarto risk analysts-to elucidate risk tradeoffs and make decisions about a risk\u27s costs and benefits. With its empirical grounding, decision analysis improves upon other cost-benefit models, which are typically too theoreticalo r assumption-ladenf or practicalu se. Finally, courts have long desired and intuitively but unsuccessfully sought an objective method for apportioning liability for a single injury among multiple alleged tortfeasors. Kindynamic Theory formally presents such a method. Searl

False Speech: Quagmire?

Recently decided cases in several Federal Courts of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court show that First Amendment false speech case law is contradictory and unpredictable. This Article gives examples and concludes that legal liability for false speech will continue to be arbitrary and even susceptible to intentionally unjust decisionmaking if judges and juries individually and collectively disregard or downplay the necessity of an honest search for truth under the guise of tolerance and evenhandedness. If Americans wish to avoid an anything-goes “quagmire” about truth, they must—despite inevitable resistance in a civilization increasingly rife with skeptics—undergo transformations of their thinking habits to genuinely seek and successfully identify truth with charitable application in law. In addition, a certain kind of optimism is necessary to render consistent, predictable, and correct conclusions in false speech cases. This Article’s implications may also extend beyond false speech to other areas of constitutional and common law

A Quantitative Methodology for Determining the Need for Exposure-Prompted Medical Monitoring

Some toxic exposures to drugs or other environmental chemicals may create an increased risk of future disease for which periodic preventive medical screening might be desirable. However, many of these risks, even if unacceptable as a matter of public health policy, might still not be significant enough for medical monitoring (periodic diagnostic screening for latent illnesses or medical conditions) to be an appropriate medical intervention. This somewhat unintuitive, but statistically certain, conclusion can be demonstrated in relatively simple mathematical terms. Accordingly, we introduce Bayes\u27s Rule and decision analysis, a quantitative methodology commonly employed by medical practitioners. A review of current medical practices indicates that physicians decide whether to recommend monitoring for a particular exposed population by knowing the natural history of the disease and by first calculating the predictive value of a positive test ( PPV ), which will be one to five percent or greater for an endorsable monitoring exercise, absent exceptional circumstances. Rather than simply relying on the opinions of retained medical experts, this accessible quantitative method permits judges, jurists, and policymakers to more confidently and objectively decide whether medical monitoring is appropriate and necessary as a result of a specific chemical exposure

A Quantitative Methodology for Determining the Need for Exposure-Prompted Medical Monitoring

Some toxic exposures to drugs or other environmental chemicals may create an increased risk of future disease for which periodic preventive medical screening might be desirable. However, many of these risks, even if unacceptable as a matter of public health policy, might still not be significant enough for medical monitoring (periodic diagnostic screening for latent illnesses or medical conditions) to be an appropriate medical intervention. This somewhat unintuitive, but statistically certain, conclusion can be demonstrated in relatively simple mathematical terms. Accordingly, we introduce Bayes\u27s Rule and decision analysis, a quantitative methodology commonly employed by medical practitioners. A review of current medical practices indicates that physicians decide whether to recommend monitoring for a particular exposed population by knowing the natural history of the disease and by first calculating the predictive value of a positive test ( PPV ), which will be one to five percent or greater for an endorsable monitoring exercise, absent exceptional circumstances. Rather than simply relying on the opinions of retained medical experts, this accessible quantitative method permits judges, jurists, and policymakers to more confidently and objectively decide whether medical monitoring is appropriate and necessary as a result of a specific chemical exposure