The elephant in the the room is that government debt backs private wealth.

Money is a contract, with one side an asset and the other a debt, but we experience it as quantified hope, so try saving and storing it, like a commodity.

In order to save 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 society, while negative feedback pushes the debt to he edges. Since finance functions as the value 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.

For another, the government has become debtor of last resort. Where would those trillions go otherwise? Bid the markets up a little more?

Basically we are blowing up other countries as a consequence of trying to save excess notational value.

When the debt becomes unsustainable, those collecting the largest piles of treasuries will be trading them for the remaining public assets and then we will understand true oligarchy.

In a better world, we would understand that money is only a medium, not a store. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. Economists would fail at medicine or highway engineering.

We own money like we own the section of road we are using, or the fluids passing through our bodies. It should be carefully regulated and excess should be taxed out, not borrowed.

Then we could save and invest directly in the healthy societies and environments, that would provide us with the safety and security we presumably save money for.

The irony of our individualistic ethos is it creates an atomized culture, that is more easily controlled by institutional authority and mediated by a parasitic medium of exchange.

The networks are every bit as important as the nodes.