Jim,

The reason it doesn’t scale is that we treat money as a commodity, rather than a contract.

When society was small, economics was reciprocal, as it was more efficient to share, than hoard, but as they grew, methods of accounting became necessary and so money started as variations on voucher systems, being traded around. As the asset side was backed by an obligation.

Since we individually experience it as quantified hope, we try saving and storing it, which clogs the system, requiring more to be added.

Yet medium and store are different. Blood is a medium, while fat is a store. Roads are a medium, while parking lots are a store.

So since we try saving nearly infinite amounts of money, nearly equal amounts of debt have to be created as well.

This creates a centripetal effect, as positive feedback pulls the asset side to the center of the community, while negative feedback pushes the debt to the edges. Since finance functions as the economic circulation mechanism, this 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.

Meanwhile the government has become debtor of last resort. Public debt is used to back private wealth. Where would those trillion go otherwise?

Consequently we blow up other countries as a side effect of saving surplus notational value.

Basically money has to be treated as the contract it is. We own it like the section of road we are using, or the fluids passing through our bodies.

The government should tax out what it borrows, then people would save more organically, in healthier communities and not just siphon value out of everything, in order to store in banks.