Socialism is just the loyal opposition to capitalism. It obscures rather than clarifies.

Capitalism is equated with a market economy, yet markets need money to circulate, in order to function, while capitalism treats money as the signal to extract and store, from the noise of society and the economy. Requiring ever more to be added and ever more precarious ways to store what has been extracted.

Ask yourself if the capital markets could function, without the government siphoning up trillions in surplus capital? The secret sauce of capitalism is that public debt backs private wealth.

The reason we can have endless, strategically inept wars and no one is held to account, is because their real function is to spend the money, in order to borrow more.

Money is a contract, in which the asset is backed by a debt. As such, it makes a very effective medium of exchange. Yet we assume it to be a commodity, that can be stored.

Econ 101 even says money is both medium of exchange and store of value, but a medium is dynamic, while a store is static.

Blood is a medium, while fat is a store. Roads are a medium, while 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 are not that enlightened.

As a medium, we own money like we own the section of road we are using, or the air and water passing through our bodies.

The fact is that there simply is not sufficient investment potential to store all the notational value we feel we need. Yet we mostly save for many of the same reasons, from housing and raising children, to healthcare and retirement, so if we were to invest in these directly, as community assets and networks, rather than trying to save for them individually, we would have stronger communities and healthier environments, as stores of value, not just resources to be plundered.

Then maybe we wouldn’t have an atomized society, largely mediated by money. Money is a tool, not a god.