Obviously they can. Bone and muscle are the primary stores in most bodies.

Real estate, productive businesses, sound infrastructure, including education, healthcare, etc. are all assets.

Yet when one's value is a function of what one can point to as individual wealth, there is never enough. So not only does debt become one more asset, but even that isn't enough, so we have derivatives.

Having grown up in the horse racing world, derivatives would be what we call pari-mutual wagering. You don't own the horse, you just bet on it. Lots and lots of money can be kept in circulation, when it is simply being wagered against other money.

It's not that this is bad, so much as it can be taken to extremes. Which is a much larger conceptual issue.

How a monolithic paradigm in a fundamentally dualistic reality leads to extreme polarization, as each side becomes their own echo chamber, with the other side as an ever more cartoonish boogyman.

That Donald Trump, the Kim Kardashian of the 80's, has become the Great White Whale of the establishment, just goes to show how shallow and simple minded the culture has become.