Our financial system is based on debt.
Regardless of how you feel about capital and debt being the organizing forces of our political-economic world (rather then say democracy), to understand what is going on with politics or the macro-economic background we live in, this stuff is basic
consider:
this video is the cartoon about how gold commodity coins became bank debt money. .
Now consider the Micro perspective:
A monetary transaction involves a buying "with cash or credit". with cash, or it's check, asset or barter equivalent, the buyer in a sense paid for the transaction in the past. with credit, the buy pays for the transaction in the future.
The behavior of the transacting actors is certainly effected by nuanced difference. If the buyer has nothing, wants something now, debt is the buyers only option to transact. an influence of going from doing nothing, to doing something.
also, there's a philosophic perspective engrained in Net Present Value economic theory that it's rational to discount the future.
it's the differing perspectives of NPV where the banking games begin. And asymmetry of primarily rationality, but also in information, sets up situations where debtors often will fall into the infamous debt trap. and this is where socially minded people get up in arms about the slavery abuses that can be intrinsic in monetary systems.
For things far out into the future (like the health of the planet) actor psychology environmentalists will enter the discussion also because the future value of the planet as a whole can be destroyed for present pleasure of the political economy. but a post for another day.
Now that we've established that debt is a form of money, I will begin to post interesting debt related innovations.
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