[Skybird]

The value is decisively defined by the availability and rareness of an item. Thats what devalues the dollar so much - just switching on the printing machines without backing the notes by any real value (like a gold standard), means nothing regarding the economic potency of those owning the machines. Doing so in a way is nothing but cheating, a infinite-money cheat or God-mode if you want. If the official currency is disconnected from real value-measuring and its ammount by which it is available does not in any way reflect the real possessions of the owning economic system, it just is this: toy money for playing a round of monopoly.

A currency that must not be affordable by those maintaining it, means nothing. We see that in the market reaction (or lack of positive reaction) on the US debt deal, or the Euro crisis.

Everybody who ever used to play a system-simulation like for example Sim City, and used a moneyx cheat to build more than by natural income he could afford, knows how it end: yoiu need to run by that cheat on and on. If you switch it off and want to run your game status from that point on by just the reuglar income it produces, it is the more unlikely that the system will not collpase them more excessively you have stepped beyaond the natural budget your game produced. You lived on tic, and when the God-mode is switched off, you then see it all crumble, becasue you built more than by income you could maintain.

In a more general context, a soceity, that does not use gains to form reserves for bad times, but uses them to grow in size (namely population), so that it will need even more income in the future (resources namelyx) to just survive), will never reach a status where it is suited for times of loss, and will never have rteserves. Instead it will increase the rate by which it consumes limited resources, may it be money, or natural resources. The cause for this self-destroying disease is the belief of constant growth, and the need for constant growth, or the (ideologic) wish for constant growth. It makies societies live beyond their means.

Unlimited growth simply is not possible, but necessarily speeds up later collapse. A dynamic, self-maintaining stability that flucutuates within limits where that fluctuation does no real damage is what is needed. Capitalism of course has not the means to understand that, since it's greed for always more absoluetly literally knows no limits. Planned economies also do not understand that, since they often represent totalitarian systems which again make claims for unlimited power and control - and for acchieving that they again demand: growth, growth, growth.

We live beyond our means. We consume more than we can afford. We are too many. That simple the truth about the basic causes of mankind's problems is.