Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)
It's interesting to speculate on what would happen if some of these foundational assumptions of economics didn't hold.  What if <i>money</i> actually became more valued than <i>what you can buy with money</i>?  What if supply didn't create its own demand?  What if people didn't try to make money to satisfy their own wants, but to one-up their neighbors in the pissing match of life?<p>You'd see a lot of strange behavior.  Instead of consumption or even investment, excess money would be put towards <i>speculation</i>, trying to raise the dollar value of your holdings regardless of what you can buy (which you don't want anyway).  Instead of circulating through the economy, money would pool at the people who already have their earthly wants satisfied and have no need to spend it.  Instead of focusing their money on optimizing production, businesses would spend money on services or people that would <i>help them convince others to buy their product</i>.  And instead of buying businesses for additional revenue, they would be more motivated to buy businesses that <i>threaten to destroy the revenues they already have</i>.<p>You might even get really crazy behavior, like people creating their own currencies that they then put lots of real money into, so that they can feel rich in their own little domain.<p>In short, it wouldn't look all that different from the world of today.