User:John Bessa/Capital Structure/Preface

Knowing that the Web works best in bite-sized (or byte-sized) bits of information, and that beneficial changes require clear maps, I have attempted to introduce the classic structure of Capital (mostly as I learned it from Lewis Mumford, Joel Spring, and Will Durant) in the context of recent experiences that can easily be pointed to and confirmed by others. Many people have difficulty grasping Capital as an entity, and try to think of capital (with a small "c") in terms of its minor components, such as bank accounts and home equity. Many also deny a relationship between Capital and family capital, but I attempt to link the two by showing that the big Japanese firms developed very recently as corporate (and hence Capital) families--a "clean model" of Capital development and growth.

(I recall that the term "byte" was derived from "bite" as an extension of the "bit," and that there was also a "nibble," which is now deprecated.)

As I began naming Capital components and developing a structure, I started to think of Capital more in terms of a template for an entity rather than a culture of business people. And this leads me to think that the culture of Capital (there definitely are such things as financial communities) as a template. Present-day Capital culture as multiculturalism, would not then be a circle of friends, but actually a cooperative process. Capital culture is unlike, say, the artists cultures of Torrington or New Paltz, Capital culture is not about community and mutual support, but, predictably, about making money. Capital culture is structure of Mumford's machine, and not a culture at all. If you follow the evolutionary concept that community and morality spring from Darwin's idea of "natural affection" among the higher animals, then Capital culture is a reversal of natural evolution, and hence shares precious little with humanity. Mumford easily pointed to the few things Capital presents as humanity as "false charity."

I have found Durant's writing to be very useful in helping understand the roots of Capital components in Roman history, such as the bureaucracy. He shows bureaucracy to be beneficial in that it was designed to prevent the capital families of Rome from swallowing the state. Durant's description goes a long way to help explain corporate hate for government; I found the level of hate perplexing when I was on Wall Street. My thought back then was "where is the manual for this thing?" Well, I now think that this mysterious handbook is the Capital template that has been passed down through many generations, and hence my excitement about this writing.

Durant is helpful, also, because he is pro-Capital and pro-Roman--despite Rome's cruelty--and seemingly pro-killing in his writing about both Rome and primitive man. I don't buy his rationalizations for accepting the cruelty of humanity as an indirect contribution, but I respect his research, and his pro-Capital slant helps balance the anti-Capital approaches of Mumford and Spring. (Perhaps anti-Capital is strong when applied to Mumford and Spring, but both seem socialist at times.) Durant also easily shows that our contemporary culture is well-preserved version of the Roman empire. I attempt to extend his idea by showing that the Capital arrangement is largely universal, and that resource exploitation systems arrange themselves in much the same way everywhere, and that denying this universality is biased thinking. I deny that capital development is evolutionary, because evolution is empathy-based (or affection-based, if you prefer) as there is nothing affectionate about big business!)