My view probably sounds even more conspiracy-like. I think that since national currencies abandoned the gold standard, people lost the incentive to save money a

My view probably sounds even more conspiracy-like. I think that since national currencies abandoned the gold standard, people lost the incentive to save money and they forgot the importance of lowering their consumption of goods and services. New money enters the economy through arbitrary financial channels and is backed by nothing so this distorts our collective sense of what is valuable and worthwhile. These days nobody tries to cut back on consumption. The current fiat-based economy rewards production but doesn't punish consumption. The reason is that everybody feels that cash is worthless because it's not backed by anything. The focus therefore is on amassing assets; any assets, even if you're dirt poor and can't afford anything of value, you're better off buying junk that you don't need than to hold on to your paper fiat which is always losing value.