When capital is mentioned in the present-day political debate, the term is usually subject to a rather one-dimensional interpretation: Whether capital saved by citizens, the question of capital reserves held by pension funds, the start-up capital of young entrepreneurs or capital gains taxes on investments are discussed – in all these cases capital is equivalent to “money.” Yet capital is distinct from money, it is a largely irreversible, definite structure, composed of heterogeneous elements which can be (loosely) described as goods, knowledge, context, human beings, talents and experience

The vote for Brexit and the election of Donald Trump has baffled the main stream and the establishment. Most market participants and observers didn’t believe ex ante that they were possible, and as a result were completely surprised when the unexpected happened. Ever since the term populism has become socio-politically relevant in modern-day public discourse. Google Trends illustrates that there was a veritable explosion in search queries for the term “populism” last year:

This month is the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party’s seizure of power in Petrograd, Russia. British Guardian columnist Paul Mason recent declared that the Soviet revolution provided “a beacon to the rest of humanity, no matter how short lived.” The New York Times has exalted the Soviet takeover in a series of articles on the “Red Century” – even asserting that “women had better sex under communism” (based largely on a single dubious orgasm count comparison of East and West German women.)

The government tells us we must recycle all kinds of stuff: bottles, cans, paper, plastics etc. They say that recycling reduces the number of products made from natural resources, which means more resources are conserved and our energy costs are lower. Superficially, this seems plausible. Surely it is more wasteful to manufacture products by digging resources out of the ground than to use discarded resources which already exist above ground – right? Not necessarily.

A key factor that constrains people’s ability to generate goods and services is the scarcity of funding. Contrary to popular thinking, funding for consumption and production is not about money as such, but about real savings.

Note that various tools and machinery or the infrastructure that people have created is for only one purpose and it is to be able to produce final consumer goods that are required to maintain and promote life and well-being.

Apparently, South African Airways is “on the verge of bankruptcy” and is, according to the BBC, ”haemorrhaging cash.” Unfortunately for South African taxpayers, SAA is also a state-owned operation, it’s deeply in debt, and it may not be able to make payroll in the near future. 

Clearly, there’s a problem. 

With the horrific shooting that recently took place in Las Vegas, debates over gun control have been given center stage in our media and politics once again. And while every pundit seems to have their own surefire way of combatting gun violence, they all gloss over the elephant in the room. Which is, although mass shootings have taken on a repulsive aspect of popularity recently, the gun violence surrounding the War on Drugs has created more casualties than every mass shooting in the U.S. combined.