He owes her
And she owes him
And he owes somebody else
You just can't win
And So it goes until the day we die
This thing we call debt is gonna make you cry
Most of it is owed ultimately to a handful of families- but in a broader sense- it’s owed to banks and creditors. In the most real sense- it’s owed to the future. On a larger scale- that’s what debt is. You most remember that in the end- money ultimately represents either a physical resource or a unit of labor- or both. Debt represents an asset which has been manifested- but which the labor or resources for it were not available to support it. The assumption is that at some point in the future- someone will make up that which was taken now.
Since resources are effectively finite- barring the occasional meteorite etc- earth is effectively a sealed ecosystem for now and the foreseeable future- the resources required to collect resources from beyond earth would presently and in most realistic predictions- for some time- take more resources to collect than they would put back. So what is on the earth is by and large all we have.
Because resources are fixed- labor units have a cap. We can only create so many people and so many tools for them before there aren’t the resources required to support what is there or make more. Therefore there is an ultimate cap we can base on our current understanding of science to be the upper limits of what resources will be available for all of human existence on earth u less we make drastic technological leaps.
Therefore- debt of the planet is carried by the future. Sound crazy? Is it? You don’t see and feel it- especially the millennials and gen Z etc? Did your parents not have more? Are we not needing to ban plastic straws? Has fuel or food not increased exponentially in price? Is water not a scarce commodity for many? As the debt increases- each future generation will have to do more for less- because so much of what would be there has already been used- and they are paying back the debt.
Money is a mathematical tool and economics is a system to quantify and track- it uses balances to represent the fact that nothing is truly destroyed or created- only transmuted to something else. When you burn a house down- the world doesn’t lose all that was in the house- it gains hinges like carbon in proportion. But impure carbon isn’t worth what oak is by the linear foot- and it is easier to turn wood to impure carbon than raw impure carbon for wood- and the carbon can’t presently serve the uses the wood does right? So the same wood has a lower value once burnt up. But we have to balance that equation to represent what is present no? However economics isn’t directly related to physical reality. There is freedom there for manipulation and plasticity based on human perception. Economics is a system created by human behavior but not intrinsic to natural order- in other words it is the study of patterns and not something which exists on its own without those patterns.
And she owes him
And he owes somebody else
You just can't win
And So it goes until the day we die
This thing we call debt is gonna make you cry
I owe you..
You owe me..
But the interests of both loans are different..
Hence the imbalance :(