The problem with capitalism is the same thing that is touted as its virtue. Namely, one of capitalism’s animating doctrines is that a worker can work hard and make more money as time goes on, and this is how the worker will “get ahead.”

But the flip side of that doctrine is that everyone—including the worker himself—is trying to take as much of everyone else’s money as possible. That’s the “profit motive” in action. We are taught to think that the profit motive is good, because from each individual’s perspective, it is a positive thing to think that an individual can do some kind of work and profit from said work. But what is almost never alluded to by champions of the profit motive is that everyone is expected to seek profit from everyone else, which has a cancelling-out effect on any one individual’s attempt to generate profits.

For example, an enterprising young person is told that he can make $10 for cutting a lawn. Then he can use that money to eventually buy a car or whatever. Meanwhile, though, that enterprising young person is in turn being profited FROM by the gas station, the mower salesperson, the taxman, etc. And that multiplies out exponentially across the entire economy—people constantly trying to, and being expected to, profit on their endeavors while others are simultaneously doing the same TO them while each side of the equation sees itself as a standalone integer and not subject to the equation.

This inevitably leads people to having to resort to borrowing, whether they are individuals or large corporations. EVERYONE in capitalism HAS to borrow eventually BECAUSE of this profit-cancelling effect of everyone having to profit from everyone else. And this is how the banks took over—because banks are allowed to create money from nothing. The banks ARE the standalone integers not subject to the equation. So capitalism could and should be more aptly called “bank-ism.”

Indeed, it’s a perfect situation for the banks–everyone fighting for the most imaginary pieces of paper that the banks can create independent of any other variable.