6 ms·

Sure, but replace the term "gold" above with lumber/steel/concrete/apartment buildings/oil/prepaid employees/automobiles/etc. If I have a bunch of stuff which

by nstj 10y ago

Sure, but replace the term "gold" above with lumber/steel/concrete/apartment buildings/oil/prepaid employees/automobiles/etc. If I have a bunch of stuff which I can loan to someone else then I have "capital". That "capital" can just as easily be physical as it can be financial. edit: placed "gold" in quotes.

rosser 10y ago
No, "capital" is the value we attach to the object; it's the belief, itself. The object is just an object.
- nstj 10y ago
  That sounds like your opinion, so I can't say that it's "wrong", but according to the dictionary "capital" is defined as follows[0]: > wealth in the form of money or other assets owned by a person or organization or available or contributed for a particular purpose such as starting a company or investing. Capital is just wealth in some form which is available for investing. You don't have to ascribe a dollar value to tree trunks to say they could be used to build houses. That's capital. [0]: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=capital%20definition https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...
- rukittenme 10y ago
  Capital has universal value. The value of food is the preservation of life. That has value. That is objective reality for all life on Earth. If an animal can store food (read capital) then it improves it survivability.
  - the8472 10y ago
    > The value of food is the preservation of life. Once basic needs are satisfied you cannot double-satisfy them. Paying for twice the amount of food does not make you live twice as long. So that's a fixed demand, while luxury goods are unbounded in their potential costs. If you subtracted all that value spent on basic needs there there still would be a lot of capital flowing around. I think the ancestor comment is arguing that there basically are two separate value circulations. One to distribute and allocate the essentials and the rest for social-value-signalling. Maybe that's also something UBI gets wrong. That we actually would need two currencies. Post-scarcity scifi settings often feature something like that a) all the basic stuff including housing is essentially given away for free b) you get a fixed amount of luxury resource allocations on top of that c) you can gain additional ones via some kind of work d) they can be traded if others find whatever you're doing valuable. so you don't have to work for the government or megacorp.
    - rukittenme 10y ago
      > Once basic needs are satisfied you cannot double-satisfy them. Yes you can, food can be stored! At a later date less food can be consumed with no work was needed to harvest it. > Paying for twice the amount of food does not make you live twice as long. No but using your acquired food (read capital) to trade for medical supplies will increase your longevity. And it will increases the doctor's because he gets to eat! > If you subtracted all that value spent on basic needs there there still would be a lot of capital flowing around. Yes and isn't it wonderful? Its what allows things like food stamps and vacations to exist. Excess capital allows things like scientific research to occur. > ...the rest for social-value-signalling. That's a pretty pessimistic view of wealth. --- I think I've been pretty realistic in my assessments of capital and its uses. But now, I'm going to enter territory where I'm wildly speculating. I don't believe post-scarcity can exist or should exist. I don't believe it can exist for two reasons: 1). There simply is not an infinite amount of energy and matter (but there may be enough that it doesn't matter that its finite). 2). Even if there is enough resources, time will always be the limiting factor. Time contributes to scarcity the same way money does. I don't believe it should exist because I believe that is the end of human progress. Scarcity, whether its a desire to own an iPhone or to acquire knowledge of quantum gravity, motivates humans to achieve.
      - hashin 10y ago
        One reason for post-scarcity to not exist is that the more resources we have, the more we will reproduce which will end up in consuming more and more resources. It degrades the ecosystem and brings down the quality of living for everyone involved. This is pretty much what is happening around us. As we get hold of better resources, we reproduce more to make it impossible to have everything for everyone. Again, we will have to re-discover the definition of scarcity because we have too many people unhappy with the system.
        ryandrake 10y ago
        > This is pretty much what is happening around us. As we get hold of better resources, we reproduce more to make it impossible to have everything for everyone. How does that jive with the fact that every developed country's reproduction rate has dropped as they developed?
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  (General reply to sister comments) Sounds to me like there some cross purpose debating going on here. To me it is simple. If by "Capital" you mean "money" then of course it has no intrinsic value, it is based on faith. Zimbabwe's currency is an obvious example of that. If we are talking about other stuff that is useful to our lives, then the value is relative to the beholder and their situation. Water is more valuable than gold from a survival point of view, but not from a $ point of view.
  - nstj 10y ago
    You're spot on, and this is a bit of an issue - there are a huge number of cross purposes in economic definitions, and the word "capital" is one of them. My personal take on the word (informed by the dictionary source I gave above and a rather pragmatic approach to economics) is that "capital is stuff". Typically this "stuff" is in the form of either physical goods (lumber, food, concrete, gold, etc) and services (and I know services can't really be 'physical' but I can have a reasonable claim on the labour of someone through prepayment of salary, or a labour contract, etc); or financial assets (such as bank balances, stocks, bonds, etc). Ultimately though, the "financial capital" is just a slightly divorced claim on the physical capital, and all anyone really cares about is the real stuff which they can eat or build with or develop, etc. You might have a big bank balance, but all you really care about is what you can ultimately cash it in for.

by nstj 10y ago

rosser 10y ago

No, "capital" is the value we attach to the object; it's the belief, itself. The object is just an object.

nstj 10y ago
That sounds like your opinion, so I can't say that it's "wrong", but according to the dictionary "capital" is defined as follows[0]: > wealth in the form of money or other assets owned by a person or organization or available or contributed for a particular purpose such as starting a company or investing. Capital is just wealth in some form which is available for investing. You don't have to ascribe a dollar value to tree trunks to say they could be used to build houses. That's capital. [0]: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=capital%20definition https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...
rukittenme 10y ago
Capital has universal value. The value of food is the preservation of life. That has value. That is objective reality for all life on Earth. If an animal can store food (read capital) then it improves it survivability.
- the8472 10y ago
  > The value of food is the preservation of life. Once basic needs are satisfied you cannot double-satisfy them. Paying for twice the amount of food does not make you live twice as long. So that's a fixed demand, while luxury goods are unbounded in their potential costs. If you subtracted all that value spent on basic needs there there still would be a lot of capital flowing around. I think the ancestor comment is arguing that there basically are two separate value circulations. One to distribute and allocate the essentials and the rest for social-value-signalling. Maybe that's also something UBI gets wrong. That we actually would need two currencies. Post-scarcity scifi settings often feature something like that a) all the basic stuff including housing is essentially given away for free b) you get a fixed amount of luxury resource allocations on top of that c) you can gain additional ones via some kind of work d) they can be traded if others find whatever you're doing valuable. so you don't have to work for the government or megacorp.
  - rukittenme 10y ago
    > Once basic needs are satisfied you cannot double-satisfy them. Yes you can, food can be stored! At a later date less food can be consumed with no work was needed to harvest it. > Paying for twice the amount of food does not make you live twice as long. No but using your acquired food (read capital) to trade for medical supplies will increase your longevity. And it will increases the doctor's because he gets to eat! > If you subtracted all that value spent on basic needs there there still would be a lot of capital flowing around. Yes and isn't it wonderful? Its what allows things like food stamps and vacations to exist. Excess capital allows things like scientific research to occur. > ...the rest for social-value-signalling. That's a pretty pessimistic view of wealth. --- I think I've been pretty realistic in my assessments of capital and its uses. But now, I'm going to enter territory where I'm wildly speculating. I don't believe post-scarcity can exist or should exist. I don't believe it can exist for two reasons: 1). There simply is not an infinite amount of energy and matter (but there may be enough that it doesn't matter that its finite). 2). Even if there is enough resources, time will always be the limiting factor. Time contributes to scarcity the same way money does. I don't believe it should exist because I believe that is the end of human progress. Scarcity, whether its a desire to own an iPhone or to acquire knowledge of quantum gravity, motivates humans to achieve.
    - hashin 10y ago
      One reason for post-scarcity to not exist is that the more resources we have, the more we will reproduce which will end up in consuming more and more resources. It degrades the ecosystem and brings down the quality of living for everyone involved. This is pretty much what is happening around us. As we get hold of better resources, we reproduce more to make it impossible to have everything for everyone. Again, we will have to re-discover the definition of scarcity because we have too many people unhappy with the system.
      - ryandrake 10y ago
        > This is pretty much what is happening around us. As we get hold of better resources, we reproduce more to make it impossible to have everything for everyone. How does that jive with the fact that every developed country's reproduction rate has dropped as they developed?
bbcbasic 10y ago
(General reply to sister comments) Sounds to me like there some cross purpose debating going on here. To me it is simple. If by "Capital" you mean "money" then of course it has no intrinsic value, it is based on faith. Zimbabwe's currency is an obvious example of that. If we are talking about other stuff that is useful to our lives, then the value is relative to the beholder and their situation. Water is more valuable than gold from a survival point of view, but not from a $ point of view.
- nstj 10y ago
  You're spot on, and this is a bit of an issue - there are a huge number of cross purposes in economic definitions, and the word "capital" is one of them. My personal take on the word (informed by the dictionary source I gave above and a rather pragmatic approach to economics) is that "capital is stuff". Typically this "stuff" is in the form of either physical goods (lumber, food, concrete, gold, etc) and services (and I know services can't really be 'physical' but I can have a reasonable claim on the labour of someone through prepayment of salary, or a labour contract, etc); or financial assets (such as bank balances, stocks, bonds, etc). Ultimately though, the "financial capital" is just a slightly divorced claim on the physical capital, and all anyone really cares about is the real stuff which they can eat or build with or develop, etc. You might have a big bank balance, but all you really care about is what you can ultimately cash it in for.