There's a pretty well-known game called musical chairs, played with music, a bunch of people, and slightly fewer chairs than people. When the music stops, everyone tries to sit in a chair as fast as they can. Those who go without a chair lose the game, and the next round proceeds with fewer people, and even fewer chairs. Let's add one extra rule to make things more interesting. If you end up without a chair, you aren't merely out of the game. You also lose your home, as well as any reliable access to food and medicine for you and your children. The very survival of you and your loved ones is at stake. The game begins. Everyone's in a state of anxiety, maneuvering for the most advantageous position. When the music stops, a mad Russian sews for the chairs, a free for all with pushing and elbowing in which the chairs all go to the strong, the quick, and the lucky. Sitting outside, observing the scene is an economist, a biologist, and a politician. Well, you'll look at that, says the economist. That's human nature for you. Everyone out to maximize their own interest at the expense of everyone else. Yes, agrees the biologist. We're watching the survival of the fittest in action. Only the strong, the quick, and the ruthless will survive. It's just human nature. It's a good thing we've got us around, says the politician, to impose law and order to curb human nature in a forced decent behavior. Is this free for all really human nature, though, or is it an artifact of the rules of the game? Imagine if there were the same number of chairs as people, and the game were a matter of matching the right person to the right chair. What would human nature look like then? Who likes a soft seat? Who needs a backrest? Who has long legs? The play of the game would look very different. It would involve a lot of communication and cooperation. Different structures would emerge to match the right person with each chair. There might still be some competition, but it wouldn't be baked into the rules of the game. Structures might emerge in the original game too. Sometimes a strong person might secure a chair for himself and a friend or two. Small groups might form to secure chairs at the expense of other groups. Certain altruistic people might sacrifice their own chance at a chair so that the young mother with a baby can get one. The rules of the game, though, entail that generosity equals self-sacrifice. More for you is less for me. It's a zero-sum game. No, it's a negative sum game. Musical chairs is closely congruent to a current economic system, because money in our system is lent into existence, and because those loans carry interest, at any given moment there is always more debt than there is money. Just as in musical chairs, everyone is therefore set into competition with each other for never enough money. The strong, quick, and lucky get a chair, and the weak, the unfortunate, and the disadvantage do not.