We produce what we get paid for

At the Naropa Conference on Intentional Economics, as an example, Bernard Lietaer noted that the medical industry provides what it gets paid for: to keep sick people alive. Edgar Cahn provides more examples in his book No More Throw-Away People: The Co-Production Imperative. According to current economic theory, "it is growth when we build more prisons and more nursing homes, when we have to clean up toxic waste, and when a couple gets a divorce and has to hire two lawyers." (p. 48) Growth also includes paid child-care, absurd security infrastructure. Money replicates the values that it measures. The dollar does not measure family, community and democracy. Instead, even though the "the non-market economy supplies the fundamental substratum upon which the entire market economy is built" (p. 47), these examples show that economic growth exploits the hardship of that unrecognized non-market economy.