Let's get back to our individual energy. We work. We struggle. And what do we have to show for it? Maybe property, but more likely money. Money is the socially agreed upon, acceptable, transformable unit of energy. That's what it is. If I grow an ear of corn, my energy, along with that of the sun, etc., is transferred into that corn. I sell that corn and get a unit of currency. That currency represents energy.

But here's where it gets tricky. First, governments can simply print the currency. Are they creating energy? Of course not. By printing currency, they are stealing your energy. Energy is limited, that's why it has value. Currency only has value to the extent that it reflects the limited energy it symbolizes. When governments print currency without the backup of energy, they're stealing by devaluing the representational value of that currency.

That all makes intuitive (& normal) sense. I enjoy getting to the fundamental nature of things & energy is very much in that category.

Before there was money, there was usefulness. You produce your corn (useful for sustenance) by expending energy, then barter it for something else that is useful, let's say a chair, that another person has expended energy to produce.

At some stage, money came to represent the usefulness-value of expended energy. But as you point out, that system has been corrupted. I often wonder, for example, what use to me are all these Secret Security Orgs? They suck up my energy-money, but how do they actually benefit me? They didn't pick up the bleeding obvious that was the origin of Covid - well they almost certainly did but chose to spread disinfo instead - so as an end user of their product, that i am forced to accept via lockdowns, mandates, disinfo - I am the poorer for it. I am not receiving a fair exchange for my energy.

Security Orgs (& many other mega-orgs) have developed into a false-economy - that none-the-less have a big impact on my life.

Same with money printing - there's no useful-energy behind it as you point out - it's a corruption of the fundamental principle. The other thing about the money-printing is that it all, quite quickly, found its way into the pockets of mega-Orgs. I assume it's the same for most countries, but in Australia, all big-corporation recorded world-record profits during Covid. A large part of the inflation we're seeing now appears to be these same orgs putting up their prices to maintain this level of record profit-taking.