I agree, the economy we live in is a made up one. It's basically fake. It's not based on any of the things you mentioned though. It's based on credit. I've argued against credit here on HN a few times but in hindsight it should have been obvious to me such views would not be accepted in a startup friendly forum. After all, startups are a low interest rate phenomenon.

Still, the concept of an economy is not made up at all. Economies arise naturally wherever there is scarcity and people gotta figure out who gets the limited amount of resources available. Some metric is going to be used to decide that.