Limitations of the market system

Our current market system in underpinned by a system of trade.

The use of trade - and its logical extension money - appears on the face of it to be a useful concept: Two parties engage in a trade, both get something they want, and both are better off than before. This has been the dominant mode of social organisation certainly for at least the last 10,000 years.

Though useful, it has many drawbacks, and, in today's society where we value compassion and equality, it no longer serves our best interest (assuming you accept the existence of a viable alternative). and it has also created extensive collateral damage on our natural world. The main drawbacks are:

Poverty

Just under half the human population (3bn) in the world today live on less that $2.50 a day - many much less than that. Clearly they have insufficient skills or resources to trade with to break from poverty, and/r their geographical location doesn't offer them a fair market value. If almost 50% of the planet's human population have insufficient means to trade for a good quality of life, then it follows that a trading system just doesn't work for those people.

Debt

Even in the parts of the world where trade appears to create prosperity, it is backed up almost entirely by debt.