One of the concepts that's absent from current economic theory is the difference between synergy/symbiosis and expropriation...

There's no reason why a loan can't be symbiotic.

Some loans will be synergetic. But the question is, what proportion? The amount of credit extended recently is staggering - but all for non-synergetic "investments" into bubles. There can't possibly be so much synergy gain to match the ridiculus amount of credit.

Absence of synergetic considerations in economic theories is indeed interesting. Synergies are abound in the natural world - almost compulsively. The role of government should be seen primarily as synergetic - i.e., capturing large common wins. But common interest is politically dead, and the government is unabatedly promoted as a free-rider helper. The libertarian understanding of "There is no free lunch" appears to mean "There is no synergy through governing" (but they appear to believe in a "synergy" of making money out of thin air through credit extension).

The brief history of government as "for the people" is finished and is being erased. The only "legal" cooperation is corporation - it feels like no one else is allowed to take care of own interests in a coordinated matter, or do any good to others. The rhetorical mix-up of what is a cooperator, or a free-rider, or a rentier is amazingly Orwellian in this world.