On the other hand, it's relatively easy for me to ask a bunch of my friends to each lend me $10,000. And, that is more because of the cumulative result of decades and decades of productivity increases in addition to a society that values electronics and computers and the internet. Those factors give these software engineer friends the extra discretionary money to lend to me. It's not because of the magic of the financial system.
The author is saying that there's a huge excess of capital and productivity that could theoretically 'pay' for other types of work. But, instead, we as a society, decide to funnel most of our excess to people who push around accounts ledgers, ruminate on legal logic, generate sales ads, and do other sorts of 'educated' busy work.