>, but I've never heard of someone claiming that skills are capital. Both the academic and business worlds acknowledge that skills in the brain are capital. L

>, but I've never heard of someone claiming that skills are capital. Both the academic and business worlds acknowledge that skills in the brain are capital. Like the other poster mentioned, the academic world labels it "human capital". The business world also acknowledges it by investing in people and not necessarily factories. This business behavior refutes the other poster's point that it is "ultimately is traded on the market for wages". Wages are not the only endgame. YCombinator is an example of investing in brains, not factories. What is the "means of production" of a YC2016 company?!? The amazon AWS credits? The laptop that the programmer types on? No. The "means of production" is the programmer's brain. This is why the YC application has questions probing the founders' backgrounds and has zero questions about what gigahertz+RAM+disk of the laptops the programmers use. What is the songwriter's "means of production"? (It's not the pencil and paper.) What is the dentist's "means of production"? (It's not the reclining chair or drill.)