So you are saying capitalism has nothing to do with property rights, self interest incentives, or profits?
Discussion
I'm not saying what it means, I'm just presenting the question. What SHOULD it mean?
Oh, lol, honestly I don’t typically use the word “should”. I can only assume we would use Adam Smiths defining tenets of Capitalism.
He wrote Wealth of Nations in 1776. We have learned a lot since then.
He defined capital as "that part of a man's stock which he expects to afford him revenue."
Notice the framing: capital as a subset of **stock**.
Smith wasn't wrong—he was emphasizing one component. He divided capital into "fixed capital" (durable goods like machines) and "circulating capital" (consumable goods like raw materials and wages). Throughout his analysis, he understood capital as active—stock being deployed toward production, not sitting idle.
But by anchoring the definition to stock—to accumulated things rather than transformation rate—Smith inadvertently set economic thinking on a path toward emphasizing accumulation over velocity.
**The focus began shifting from "how fast can you convert resources into value" to "how much do you possess."**
Yes, but I believe the focus of Smiths tenets was really the self interest and profit incentive…those being the main driving force. Do you agree?
Are we dependent on his motivations in 1776 to decide our actions in 2026?
I know I'm not.
No, not at all but we need a baseline and not a moving target.
To you, is profit and self interest incentives key tenets of capitalism?
No. I find them to be distractions. But then I reject the debt based framing of capitalism that you are using, entirely, so that shouldn't be a surprise.
That is very interesting. So capitalism to you is just the transaction between two or more people?
The current definition of capitalism—profit motive plus self-interest—describes participant behavior, not system architecture. It's like defining a bridge by how drivers behave on it rather than by the load paths that keep it standing.
What we call 'capitalism' today is actually debt-based extraction wearing capitalism's name. It optimizes for profit by borrowing from future capacity—inflating stock through credit creation, degrading velocity infrastructure through deferred maintenance, and preventing exit to hide insolvency. The accounting equation 'revenue minus costs equals profit' measures extraction efficiency, not capital function.
Wealth-based capitalism means systems where capital actually works: Stock × Velocity → Work. Capital isn't money to be extracted. Capital is the multiplicative relationship between accumulated capacity and conversion rate that produces sustained output. Profit isn't the goal—it's a signal that work is being produced efficiently. Self-interest isn't the engine—it's what exit rights harness to discipline conversion systems.
The difference is geometric, not moral. Debt-based systems can generate massive profits while destroying capital. Wealth-based systems generate sustainable returns because they maintain capital. One optimizes the accounting equation. The other maintains the multiplication that makes the accounting possible.
Economics is the study of transactions. Politics is the study of human interactions. Civilization walks on two feet, one is economics and the other is politics. If we study what these things actually are, the picture becomes clear. If we distract ourselves with the hype of 300 years of extraction memes, we trip on the language and get nowhere.
Rand got the incentives right but missed the architecture entirely. Self-interest doesn't automatically produce good outcomes. Self-interest plus exit rights produces selection pressure that forces systems to serve rather than extract. Remove exit and self-interest becomes extraction. Maintain exit and self-interest becomes optimization.
We're not arguing about whether self-interest should drive economic activity. We're arguing about what system architecture channels self-interest toward building rather than consuming.
I don’t want you to think I’m ignoring this comment. Will respond when time allows.
I don't know what he wanted, I only know what he wrote. He was trying to describe what he saw from his investigations. He did a pretty good job. Now the world is in our hands to shape.