It seems to miss half the equation though. It's a contract. The debt backs the asset.

As a contract, it enables mass societies, but as most people focus the asset, it is treated as a commodity to mine from society.

Which means that ever more has to be introduced and ever more metastatic methods of storing what is extracted have to be devised. Which means that much more debt has to be created.

Back in the day, a lot of social networks and relationships were organic. You raised and educated your kids and they looked after you in old age. Now we have retirement accounts and in order to join the system, the young have to take on debt, to the bank, not just their parents.

Econ 101 says money is both medium of exchange and store of value, but one is dynamic, while the other 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. If the average five year old can figure it out, why are economists so utterly clueless, other than the usual orthodoxy?

The functionality of money is its fungibility. We own it like we own the section of road we are using, or the air and water flowing through our bodies. It is the quintessential public utility. It's not our picture on it, we don't hold the copyrights and are not personally responsible for its value.

The fact is that we can't individually save the amounts necessary for a healthy society, but we save for many of the same reasons, so the premise of the commons will eventually have to be resurrected. With sufficient circuit breakers to sustain it. Which means rights and responsibilities have to remain within shouting distance of one another.

The irony of our individual ethos is the resulting atomized society is more easily controlled by institutional forces and mediated by a parasitic financial system.

There was a time when government was private and now banks are having their own; "Let them eat cake." moment.