The problem is that capitalism is not synonymous with a market economy.
Markets need money to circulate, while people see it as signal to extract and store. Consequently ever more has to be added and ever more metastatic methods of storing what have been extracted have to be devised.
The reality is that money functions as a social contract and accounting device, enabling mass societies, but it is treated as a commodity to mine from society.
We are linear, goal oriented organisms, in a cyclical circular, feedback generated reality.
Econ 101 says money is both medium of exchange and store of value, but one is dynamic, while the other is static. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. Mixing them up destroys the system.
As a contract, the asset is backed by a debt, so to store the nearly infinite amounts of notational value we try to accumulate, equal amounts of debt are necessary.
Besides all the economic and social destruction, as positive feedback pulls the asset to the center, while negative feedback pushes the debt to the edges, it should be evident to anyone with half a brain, that the capital markets could not function, without the government borrowing up trillions in surplus investment money. Given most of it gets spent on welfare and warfare, neither of which produce productive returns, collapse looms.
The fact is that there isn't the investment potential for everyone to save individually, but we do tend to save for many of the same reasons, so the premise of the commons is the logical solution, but that would require a society that understood responsibilities come before rights and that is far fetched. People always want more than they are willing to give.
Which is why life so often seems meaningless, as it isn't what you take, that gives life meaning, but what you give.
The irony of our individualistic ethos is the resulting atomized society is more easily controlled by institutional authorities and mediated by parasitic financial mechanisms. We are a tree farm, not a forest.
Cheers.
