Douglas,

I think we have to address the linear, goal oriented idealist monism of Western culture, given that nature is fundamentally cyclical and reciprocal.

For example, our individualist ethos is the basis of this atomized society, that is then more easily controlled by institutional authorities and mediated by a parasitic financial system.We need to appreciate the network is as important as the node. The yin needs its yang.

Technology might be taking over the world, but it is doing so in service to capitalism. While capitalism is benignly sold as free markets, its real focus is the creation of ever more money, as an end in itself. The tool that enables markets has become a demon intent on destroying them, because it is a singular point of focus, a goal, where its context has been dismissed as mere noise from which to extract the signal.

Econ 101 explains money as medium of exchange, store of value and price setting mechanism, though the last is a function of being a medium.

Yet a medium is 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.

“Fiat” money is actually a contract, in which one side is an asset and the other is a debt, as it originated as an accounting device, when society grew too large for organic exchange. Though some forms, such as gold and bitcoin are commodities, as the value is presumed to be inherent, not an iou, or receipt from public accounts.

Though we experience it as quantified hope and so do try saving and storing it, like a commodity. Given the asset has to be backed by a debt, similar amounts of debt have to be generated, in order to create the assets.

For one thing, this creates a centripetal effect, as positive feedback draws the asset to the center of the community, while negative feedback pushes the debt to the edges. Since finance functions as the value distribution system of the community, the effect is like the heart telling the hands and feet they don’t need so much blood and should work harder for what they do get. The Ancients used debt jubilees to reset this process, but we lack that long term perspective.

Another consequence is that government has been manipulated into being the debtor of last resort. Where would those trillions go otherwise?Derivatives? Public debt backs private wealth.

Remember the stagflation of the 70's? Volker didn’t cure it with higher interest rates, as that simply dried up money to those willing to borrow it and grow the economy. It was Reaganomincs that sucked all that surplus money out of the system and spend it on the military industrial and jobs program. Consider the main way the Fed pulls money out of the system and raises rates is to sell debt it bought to create the money in the first place. So the Treasury selling fresh debt would not only have the same effect, but than could use that money to create work where the private sector would never dream, like endless, strategically inept wars and weapons boondoggles.

But Wall St and its multitudes of billionaires are happy and that’s what matters.

I just put up an essay yesterday, that goes further into my various rants, if you would be interested;

https://medium.com/predict/peeling-the-paradigm-1ceab7e774b0