I thought what Reagan, Thatcher, Friedmann gave us was neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism was a gift of Clinton, Blair and the "Third Way."

Yes, it's all Trickle Down Economics, but even Papa Bush referred to it as "voodoo economics," in the 1980 primaries.

The problem of capitalism is that while nature and markets are cyclical and circular, people are linear and goal oriented. So while markets need money to circulate, people see it as the signal to extract and store.

The reality is that money is a contract, not a commodity. The asset is backed by a debt. Originally it was as a reciept for a tangible, ie, gold, but when that proved hard to sustain, the tangible was replaced by government debt. Which means that in order to both create money and store the enormous amounts our system seems to think is the goal in life, similar amounts of debt have to be generated.

Ask yourself, if Wall St. could function, without the government siphoning up trillions in surplus money? Where would it go otherwise? The casino of the derivatives market? Drive the price of Apple stock up a little further? Ferraris?

The secret sauce of capitalism is that public debt backs private wealth.

Then again, squeezing the real economy requires it to run on debt, pulling that saved money back into circulation. Mortgages, credit card debt, student loans, etc. are all bundled up and sold as investments. Where would that money go otherwise?

The fact is there isn't sufficient investment potential to save the amounts we feel necessary, but we do save for many of the same reasons.

Consequently, if society is to survive, it will have to redevelop the idea of the commons, as a store of value and not just resources to be mined.

Yet to get to that stage, the current system will need to effectively self destruct.

https://medium.com/dialogue-and-discourse/the-worm-in-the-apple-of-modern-capitalism-a46081000d5a