Let’s take land as an example of capital. When allocating land as private property, something you can buy or sell. You can just sit on it, leaving it unproducti

Let’s take land as an example of capital. When allocating land as private property, something you can buy or sell. You can just sit on it, leaving it unproductive, or you can use it to produce something, or you can rent it out to someone who has some use for it. Now as the owner you can exercise that choice with no regard as to what would produce the most economic value. So the first option might very well be the most interesting for you even if there are more productive options. And the choice ultimately comes down to rent seeking, not value creation. If, instead, the land could only be leased. The speculation option would not be there. The only option would be to use it for something that could pay the rent. Now land is a bit special so perhaps not the best example. But to provide the details of how capital could be allocated as non-private property. In a similar line of reasoning there are coop models of organizations with joint ownership of the means of production such that there isn’t a need for external capitalist ownership. And as such having different priorities, with no intention to trade shares the company might not need constant growth to achieve its goals, instead focusing on value creation first. So the qualification was just that for a capitalist, acting only as the owner of capital, value production is secondary to return on investment. On the topic of markets. I’d say the truth is somewhere between our two descriptions. Some of the more spectacular failures might be more tied to capitalism than markets as such. But certainly you agree there there are lots of value created outside of the markets entirely just as there lots of value destroyed within markets. Competition has its place, but there also has to be room for cooperation. I will just leave the spectacular failure that is capitalistic intellectual property approach v. commons based peer production as an example of how we clearly have some policy work to do before we can call things a success.