"By definition, a society based on debt has a negative net worth on the books." No. One man's assets are another man's liabilities. And debt creation is always

"By definition, a society based on debt has a negative net worth on the books." No. One man's assets are another man's liabilities. And debt creation is always based on a better tomorrow. Why most big companies (there may be very few exceptions) have a shitload of debt? Even Oil giants have a tremendous amount of debt. Debt is always paid back with more debt (in hope of a better tomorrow). This systems works extremely well as long as tomorrow IS better than today. It will collapse, it must collapse when the growth stops. In this regard, Ludwig von Mises was actually wrong since he always describes perfectly a middle ages based trading and marked based society but not capitalism (so after 1750). He also dreamed of "treasure boxes" that entrepreneurs must have in their cellars to do investments. There are no treasure boxes and it is the pressure from debt that give us this tremendous dynamic. Let him speak for himself: http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-credit-expansion-can-bring-about-a-temporary-boom-but-such-a-fictitious-prosperity-must-ludwig-von-mises-120-36-52.jpg http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-credit-expansio... He is right with that. But what he does not say is that ALL booms bring a credit expansion. This is the very inherent thing of a boom. Small joke on the side: "Net worth": http://christianfinanceblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/networthcomic.jpg http://christianfinanceblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/n...