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Legal Tender and ISIS
Planet Money has a recap episode up recently that picks up a story that examined the budget for ISIS -which pointed out how US dollars were being used by ISIS fighters to purchase Western consumer goods.
The new contribution (from around 10:55 to 13:25) makes a point about legal tender that I want to expand on. It starts with an observation that ISIS tax collections have become more agressive; while ISIS members continue to use Syrian Pounds or US dollars for purchasing goods and services, ISIS has started to demand (under threat of death) that taxes be paid in a special currency that it mints. According to the story, the ISIS currency is coinage made from Gold, Silver and Copper; the trick of the matter is that ISIS now compels jewelers to purchase these coins, which must then be purchased by other people for them to pay the ISIS taxes.
One can find numerous critiques of fiat money as applied to paper currency (e.g. Thorsten Polleit at mises.org, and in my assessment of Moslers Modern Monetary Theory), but I'm not aware of one that critiques a fiat of specie money such as ISIS may be imposing. Whether ISIS is trying to dethrone the dollar, or just find another way to subjegate the local population, is in part a question of the rate of exchange for these currency units that it mints; the fact that people are forced into the exchange means that the market value of those metals is less than what the people would determine on their own, which means subjegation.