Capitalism is not synonymous with a market based economy.
People are linear and goal oriented, while nature and markets are cyclical and circular.
So while markets need money to circulate, people see it as the signal to extract and store.
Which means ever more has to be added and ever more metastatic methods of storing what has been extracted have to be devised.
While we like to think of money as a commodity, like physical gold, or bitcoin, where the value is inherent to the token, the reality is that it is a contract, in which the asset is backed by a debt. Consequently storing the asset requires generating the debt.
One reliable method is to squeeze money flowing into the general economy as much as possible, causing it to run on debt and drawing that saved money back into circulation. Which creates a centripetal effect, as positive feedback draws the asset to the center, while negative feedback pushes the debt to the edges.
Since money and banking function as the value circulation system of society, the effect is analogous to the heart telling the hands and feet they don't need so much blood and should work harder for what they do get. Which is detrimental for the whole of society. The Ancients would use debt jubilees to reset this, but the modern world lacks the required perspective.
Another method of generating debt is to have the government as debtor of last resort. The capital markets could not function, without the government siphoning up trillions in surplus investment money. The endless wars and the military industrial complex as a autoimmune disorder are just ways to make it disappear, so more can be borrowed.
As the Federal debt goes back to the New Deal, not only was Roosevelt putting unemployed labor back to work, but unemployed capital as well.
The secret sauce of capitalism is that public debt backs private wealth.
Econ 101 says money is both medium of exchange and store of value, yet a medium is dynamic, while a store is static. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. The hallway is a medium, the hall closet is a store. The average five year old can figure that out and eventually, when all else does fail, even the economists will get it.
The functionality of money is in its fungibility. We own it like we own the section of road we are using, or the air and water flowing through our bodies. Like roads, it is the quintessential public utility and needs to be treated as such. It's not your picture on it, you don't hold the copyrights and are not individually responsible for sustaining its value. It is the contract that enables mass society to function, not a commodity to mine out of society.
The fact is that there isn't nearly sufficient investment potential to save what we feel necessary, but we do save for many of the same reasons, so some organic and cultural expression of the commons will have to be resurrected. Likely involving local currencies.
Which is not socialism, as society needs both public and private areas, like a house has family and personal spaces. The question is figuring out which is which.
As the executive and regulatory function of society, government was private once, but as monarchs lost sight of their larger social function, they were usurped. Banking is now having its own, "Let them eat cake." moment.
Which is not to say banking and government should be one, any more than the nervous system and the circulation system are one. Printing excess money is a sugar high, not to be left to politicians to control.
The irony of our individualistic ethos is the resulting atomized culture is more easily controlled by institutional authority and mediated by a parasitic financial system.
Networks matter as much as the nodes inhabiting them.
