Etymology of Capitalism; or The Noble Calling

There is a reason, Capitalism, was called Capitalism, and not incomism, or classism, or freedomism, or productionism, or consumerism, or marketism.  Capitalism, is a function, modality, and a value system and worldview (implicit in the actions of its participants), which seeks to maximize capital, not income, not class, not freedom, nor production/consumption, nor markets.  Therefor, what is the root meaning of capital?  Per Etymology Online, it means both death and life, mortality and primacy; it is the head and center.  Ergo to be a capitalist (one concerned with the maximization of capital), one must be concerned with death and life, with mortality, with primacy and meaning, with the sound, shape, weight, essence, center and borders of existence.  The capitalist is no mere legislator of matter, no simple conductor of supply and demand, but to be a capitalist is to first be a philosopher and steward of existence.  The capitalist must understand reality in order to use market forces to maximize reality’s expression.

If a capitalist is first a philosopher, where should a capitalist begin his study and career?  Well let’s just start with what we don’t know.  Among the myriad challenges every capitalist should bear in mind, here are three...

1. We don’t know about physics.  In recent years, we discovered that 85% of matter is dark and of this dark matter we know almost nothing.  We have yet to divine a unifying explanation for really small things (quarks, etc.) and really big things (stars).  Thus to be a capitalist, is to be humble about the extent of one’s knowledge of the physical world, i.e. one’s margin of error is enormous.
2. We don’t know about consciousness.  We know there is a consensual reality, a medium through which we convey approximations of our individual meanings (but never 100% accurate cognitive understanding).  We don’t know where the personality is, only that our experience of personality (our own and that of others) is fluid, multiple, yet consistent enough to predict thoughts, feelings and actions in ourselves and others.  Thus to be a capitalist, is to always carry the realization that there is no shared reality, only a world of semantic venn diagrams that overlap to varying degrees.
3. We don’t know about time.  It literally changes with motion.  We have instruments that, with increasing precision, asymptotically approach a time constant, but actually never reach it.  Further, time is a concept we made up.  A capitalist therefor must be humble in his theoretical dealings with the future (time value of money).

Secondly, the capitalist is a maximizer of capital.  Without getting into the uncertainties just described, we share an understanding (via Etymology Online) that capital is a measure of everything in the Universe.  It is trees, ideas, currency, buildings, roads, water, air, children, sex, disease, birth, death, tv shows, meals, events, values/mores, systems, the Universe itself.  Thus a good maximizer of capital isn’t one who borrows from Peter to pay Paul, or who burns the furniture to heat the house.  In fact a capitalist is the opposite, he maximizes the expression of the universe through the manipulation of matter and energy, in such a manner that he has increased the value of the Universe through his efforts.  In more simple and traditional business terms, a capitalist minds the Universe’s balance sheet.  In domestic terms, and given the global extent of commerce, a capitalist on Earth maximizes the value of everything contained within the Earth and its atmosphere.

Thus, a capitalist is concerned with the various types of capital he can measure and secure, with the intention of combining them in unique ways, such that these efforts do not destroy capital, but increase it.  That said, our energy to do so comes from a dying star around which we move.  On Earth, this energy is stored in chemical bonds within animate and inanimate matter and can be release in a number of ways, that have varying effects on the whole planet.  Energy is also stored in financial capital, in that money/currency can be exchanged between humans for the energy released by a mechanism, such as an hour of labor or a gallon of gasoline.  Each store of energy has a capacity to be drawn down in a sustainable manner, whereby another earth/sun process replenishes that store of energy, or removes the waste products of the use of that energy, and vice versa – drawing down energy can be unsustainable, beyond horribly inefficient, but harmful to the whole (diminishing the Earth's capacity).

So what does this mean for the capitalist who understands his place in the Universe, the origin of his noble calling?

1. With the knowledge that he is both philosopher and king, in addition to commercial actor, he devotes himself to knowledge and stewardship, beginning with understanding physics, chemistry, organic chemistry, biology, system sciences (geology, oceanography), and social sciences.  He explores other ways of knowing through meditation, comparative religion (especially religious experience), philosophy, psychology, nature, human relationships and creative arts.
2. He becomes singularly focused on the balance sheet, moving as many forms of capital as he can from his income statement to his balance sheet, such as labor, the biosphere, intellectual capital, culture/social capital, etc.
3. As such he is in favor of a progressive consumption tax (to fund other city/state/nation/globe/Universe maximizing endeavors by civil governing bodies), that punish man for inefficiently combining assets (luxury taxes), and reward man for the efficient and optimal expression of reality, via his own understanding thereof and values, e.g. equality, beauty, vivaciousness, simplicity, abundance, etc.  It rewards a rich and verdant biosphere, human and animal rights, creative arts, opportunity creation, and punishes unemployed and inefficiently employed financial capital.