In the organism that is society, government, the executive and regulatory function, is analogous to the central nervous system. While money and banking are analogous to blood and the circulation system.
Government was private once, but when monarchy lost sight of the fact it had to serve a function to society, in order to be served by it, it had to be usurped. Banking is now having its, "Let them eat cake." moment.
Nature and markets are circular, while people and the narratives they live by are linear and goal oriented. Markets need money to circulate, while people see it as the signal to extract and store.
While Econ 101 says money is both medium of exchange and store of value, 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, while the hall closet is a store. The average five year old understands the difference, but economists have other agendas.
Money is a contract. The asset is backed by a debt. In order to create the endless piles of money this system assumes to be the goal of life, equal amounts of debt have to be generated.
When the general economy needs ever more debt to function, this draws the saved money back into circulation, creating a centripetal effect, as positive feedback draws the asset to the center and negative feedback pushes the debt to the edges. As society's circulation system, this 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.
The Ancients used debt jubilees to reset this process, but the modern world has had industrialization, colonialism and wars to keep the bubble of surplus capital growing.
Another source of debt is having the public, through government, as the debtor of last resort. It is very safe to say the capital markets couldn't function, without the government siphoning up trillions in surplus money, but equally safe to say this is very effectively ignored.
We can have endless, strategically inept wars and no one is held to account, because their real function is to spend the money, so that more can be borrowed.
The secret sauce of capitalism is that public debt backs private wealth.
When no one will buy US government debt anymore, those sitting on the largest piles will use their considerable influence to trade it far any remaining public assets and we get real oligarchy, not this behind the curtain variety.
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 passing through our bodies. It is a public utility and needs to be treated as such.
There simply isn't the investment potential to save the amounts we feel necessary, but we do save for many of the same reasons. Stable societies and healthy environments are more necessary than everyone having a fat bank account. We need to redevelop the idea of the public commons.
This is not socialism, which is just the loyal opposition to capitalism. Society needs both public and private sectors, like a house has family and personal spaces. It's just that we need to sort out which is which.
