Capitalism is actually parasitic to a market based economy.
Markets need money to circulate, but as goal oriented creatures, we see money as the signal to extract from the noise of the economy, requiring ever more to be added and ever more ways to store what has been extracted.
Econ 101 says money is both medium of exchange and store of value, but a medium is inherently dynamic, while a store is static. Blood is a medium, while fat is a store. Roads are a medium, while parking lots are a store. They are not necessarily interchangable.
Money is essentially an accounting device, a voucher system. It functions as a contract, with one side an asset and the other a debt. Basically between the individual and the community. Yet we mostly treat it as a commodity, to mine or manufacture, like gold, or bitcoin.
So in order to store the asset, similar amounts of debt have to be generated. For one thing, the government has been manipulated into being debtor of last resort. Try imagining the financial markets functioning, without the government siphoning up trillions in surplus capital. So the secret sauce of capitalism is that public debt backs private wealth.
The functionality of money is its fungibility. It is a lubricant, not a fuel. As such, we own it like we own the section of road we are using, or the air and water flowing though our bodies. It is a tool that enables mass societies to function and now is the opportunity to learn to treat it as such, not some primordial god.
