The problem is that we equate capitalism with a market based economy.

The reality is that markets and nature are cyclical and circular, while people and capitalism are linear and goal oriented. So while markets need money to circulate, capitalism sees it as the signal to extract and store.

Since much wealth amounts to a contract, where the asset is backed by a debt, this means our obsession with money accumulation rests on an economy designed to produce debt.

For instance, how could the capital markets function, if the government wasn't siphoning up trillions in surplus investment money every year? More derivatives? Drive stocks that much higher? More companies and people piling on low interest debt? The secret sauce of capitalism is that public debt backs private wealth.

Econ 101 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, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. The hallway is a medium, the hall closet is a store. The average five year old gets it and eventually even the economists will wake up.

Money is not a commodity to mine out of society. It is the contract between the individual and the community, holding society together. Its functionality is in its fungibility. We own it like we own the section of road we are using, or the air and water flowing through our bodies.

It's a public utility. Whose picture is on it? Who holds the copyrights? Who is responsible for maintining its integrity and value?

We need to respect it more and desire it less. Like water, we need it, but we don't want to drown in it.

People who love money and hate government are as clueless as the fish that loves the worm, but hates the hook.

There simply isn't the investment potential to save what we want, but we do save for many of the same reasons and so, when this whole system implodes, due to the exponential debt, the premise of the commons will have to be resurrected.

The irony of our individualistic ethos is the resulting atomized society is more easily controlled by institutional authority and mediated by a parasitic financial system.

Networks, organic, social, economic, matter as much as the nodes inhabiting them.