Ben,
The assumption seems to be that money is a commodity. Something like gold, that we save and store, as value in and of itself. Now that since money is no longer “backed” by gold, but by government debt, it’s called “fiat” and presumed to not really be worth anything.
The reality is that money is a contract. The asset is backed by an obligation. Even a gold based currency is presumably a receipt for some quantity of gold. Basically a promise for some quantized value. That’s why the Federal Reserve creates it by buying government debt. Then what’s backing it are government bonds. A promise of value. That much of this borrowed value gets spent with minimal return invested value is ignored by most peple. Now even MMT argues the government can just print money and spend it, since they are “soveriegn.” Which assumes it is simply created value, not a promise that requires something to back it. Simply put, there are only so many promises any entity can make, before they can’t make good on them and then all the previous promises start looking shaky. Quite a few governments throughout history have debased their currency, trying to keep everyone happy, or otherwise do more than they have the resources to do.
Which was how modern capitalism came into being, by separating currency creation from government. When Charles 1 owed too much gold to the Rothschild’s, who were the leading gold traders in Europe, which was the medieval equivalent of international banking, they made a deal to forgive his debts, if he let them run his treasury and the Bank of England was born.(Lots more complicated, but..)
What this did was to separate the supply of money from political issues, making commerce much more stable.
So notational value is a promise, not a commodity and there is a limit on viable promises. What we need to do, is to learn to invest directly into the social and environmental assets that would provide us with long term stability, not just assume everyone can save individually. Here is an essay I wrote, trying to make some further sense of the situation;
As for the predators and parasites, even they need a healthy environment and host. When the ecosystem collapses, the top predators are the most vulnerable. The reality is feedback, not goals.
As for parasites, something is always feeding on something else. A healthy system is when it’s in some sort of equilibrium, not collapsing due to any variety of reasons.
Circularity, not linear. We still live in an instinctively flat earth paradigm, where we can grow forever and not have to cycle back. We are reaching the edge of the petri dish.
