This is what's simultaneously so fascinating and frustrating about macroeconomics!
At the local scale, one can take for granted that definitions are stable and many laws are immutable: if I go into debt, I must pay it back; I can't create money out of thin air; money is defined as dollars; I must pay my taxes, etc.
But the macroeconomy is the entire system, and in complex systems, everything affects everything. Causal feedback loops run in both directions (A causes B causes A again). Money, debt, taxation, etc. are all creations of human society, and can be modified.
But even though humans made these definitions, they're not quite fully in our control.
Like on the one hand, we just made it all up, just like how US dollars went from gold-backed to fiat overnight.
But then, if you really attempt too much magic, it doesn't work. If you print money and spend more than you have, then you can turn into Venezuela, where there is truly hyperinflation and the dollar again becomes de facto currency (despite the government's halting attempts to outlaw this).
So economic laws have this dual aspect where on the one hand, it's simply a human invention, but on the other hand it appears to reflect some deep laws of nature regarding how energy and information flows through our societies, and you can't push the definitions too far from reality on the ground.
At the local scale, one can take for granted that definitions are stable and many laws are immutable: if I go into debt, I must pay it back; I can't create money out of thin air; money is defined as dollars; I must pay my taxes, etc.
But the macroeconomy is the entire system, and in complex systems, everything affects everything. Causal feedback loops run in both directions (A causes B causes A again). Money, debt, taxation, etc. are all creations of human society, and can be modified.
But even though humans made these definitions, they're not quite fully in our control.
Like on the one hand, we just made it all up, just like how US dollars went from gold-backed to fiat overnight.
But then, if you really attempt too much magic, it doesn't work. If you print money and spend more than you have, then you can turn into Venezuela, where there is truly hyperinflation and the dollar again becomes de facto currency (despite the government's halting attempts to outlaw this).
So economic laws have this dual aspect where on the one hand, it's simply a human invention, but on the other hand it appears to reflect some deep laws of nature regarding how energy and information flows through our societies, and you can't push the definitions too far from reality on the ground.