Laying Groundwork

One objection to Capital is that the owners aren’t doing the work. There is a moral feeling that the people involved should be the people being rewarded. It’s complicated. Reward and input don’t go hand-in-hand. The feedback isn’t instant or clear. Often there is a substantial delay. If you look at an ultra-long-term growth chart of GDP in the UK, you will see that a lot of the value “has been added recently”. Rubbish. The majority of value gets added in laying the foundations. The dirty, unglamorous, upfront work. Like in Rugby. The match is won by the forwards, and the backs determine the scoreline. “Meritocracy” tends to financially reward the last decision maker in a binary, “what would it have looked like without this decision” way. That is lazy attribution. Capital allows owners to do the dirty work knowing they will benefit even if they walk away when different skills are required. Or they get tired and lose sufficient inspiration to overcome the attached nonsense. The challenge is hereditary entitlement. The balance between passing on unearned wealth, and recognising that most of the groundwork for today’s Merit has been layed over the 50,000 to 2 million years since we started speaking to each other. Community Wealth.