If Everyone Tries to Get Something for Nothing

It should be obvious by now, that if the dominant theme in society is to get as much as possible for giving as little as possible in exchange, that eventually, everyone will get nothing of value for all their money (transactions). That's how markets and societies work -- or don't work.

So the premise of any society, is to maximize the values one gets in these exchanges, so that one usually gets much more than they bargained for -- rather than nothing for all their money. So while money plays a part in these exchanges, the underlying values of that community (society), is people individually and collectively contributing to the abundance -- rather than just draining it, until nothing is left. That is their working capital -- the raw material upon which more can be made, so that society doesn't have to reinvent the wheel anew each time there is a need to do something, accomplish something -- so that that society can move forward from there, and not always start from zero.

Those are sustainable societies, with momentum into the future -- and not simply repeating and reliving the past, as the best of times -- that will never be equaled again. Obviously such latter societies, are on their way to extinction -- but they'll never know what hit them, what happened to them. All they know is that everybody got nothing.