No, we need to understand that Capitalism is not synonymous with markets.
Markets need money to circulate, while Capitalism treats money as the signal to extract from the noise of the economy and society, necessitating ever more to be added and ever more inventive ways to store what has been extracted.
The functionality of money is in its fungibility. We own it like we own the water passing through our bodies, or the section of road we are using.
Economics 101 tells us it is both medium of exchange and store of value. Though 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 your child confused the two, would you be able to point out the difference?
As a medium, money is largely a contract, with one side an asset and the other a debt. So to store the asset, similar amounts of debt have to be generated.
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. As the financial system serves as the wealth and energy distribution mechanism 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 cycle, but we lack that degree of vision.
The other effect is that government has become debtor of last resort. Where would those trillions it pulls out of the markets and provides public guarantees to, go otherwise? Derivatives? The magic of Capitalism is that public debt backs private wealth.
Given much of this flows to the military, it might explain why we can have endless, strategically inept wars and no one is held accountable, if their real function is to spend money, in order that more can be borrowed.
The logical conclusion to this will be disaster capitalism/predatory lending coming home to roost, as those collecting up the biggest piles of public debt insist it be traded for the keys to the kingdom and any remaining public assets. Likely facilitated by those government functionaries who know who will be their future employers. Then we get to understand real oligarchy, not just the ‘behind the curtain’ of presumed civility sort.
The alternative might be to find ways to store value in society and its environment, not just use them as resources to mine of value, but that would take a broader discussion than seems allowed, in the current circus.
