Talk:Capital

Discussion

Deleted the comment here about "capitol." It was just false. The capital of England is London. The U.S. Congress meets in the Capitol, which is a building located in the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C. The Alaskan state assembly meets at the Alaskan capitol, which is located in Juneau, the capital of Alaska.

http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=capitol

http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=capital

By the way, one of the things that Wikipedia is not is a style guide... --LMS

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I seem to recall countries with joint capitals. Anyone know if this actually happens?

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Yes, South Africa -- the judicial, executive and legislative branches of government are located in different cities.

Also, although it isn't a country, a similar thing can be observed with the European Union: the executive branch meets in Brussels, the legislative branch is split between Brussels and Strasbourg, and the judicial branch is in Luxembourg. -- Simon J Kissane

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I am very tempted to rearrange these entries in chronological order - i.e., reversed: architecture (securely attested by 30 B.C.E.), political (I'm not sure), then economic (please!).

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The Harding article is a terrific guide to this idea of "styles of capital" including social capital especially, which is always the messiest one...

There's another analysis by Baruch Lev that lists an additional thing he calls "brand capital" but I think Harding would say that was social capital with some instructional niblets telling you how to identify it, and not any new thing at all. An asset, in other words, rather than a style of capital.

I'm rather upset that I didn't fit in means of production and means of protection which is the most neutral way to describe capital - and in fact when Marx defined the word "capital" he meant it as means of production... including protection.

These days there is almost no difference between the way capitalists write about this stuff and socialists writing - they just ignore different aspects of it, i.e. capitalists happily lump infrastructural and natural together and also lump individual and instructional together, and try to claim that social is magic, but they won't disagree on the basic divisions as presented here...

If they do, let 'em improve these definitions, which are mostly Harding's.

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I wonder whether the articles describing the different types of capital should be shifted back here, seeing they're basically definitions and I can't see how they can grow much beyond just being a definition. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. --Robert Merkel

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Did you read them? Each of them grows in a quite different direction - the Harding article alone shows what an incredible rat's nest social capital is.

The others are also rat's nests. It's only the interaction *between* them that is clean, which seems to be why there's little dispute that they exist.

Encyclopedia articles, I think, should allow and encourage that growth rather than confine the subject to a set of one-liners under "capital". For instance there's a whole literature on inalienable individual traits in economics: leadership, invention, creativity, etc.. There's also all this stuff about Ayn-Rand-type worship of the inventor, anti-Napster rants by the RIAA, etc., etc., and that will spread all over the place if it isn't contained... so let the cranks all hack individual_capital.

Oh, yes, and another whole gang of cranks will hack instructional_capital with their pet view of open source, patents on life, etc., etc., etc,. etc., which has nothing to do with individual creativity and rewarding of artists.

Then the money supply and usury cranks will go at financial_capital...

Rather than make assumptions, though, we might be better off just emailing some of these people whose definitions are referenced (Hawken, Harding, Hubley, Putnam, etc.) and seeing if they want to take a stab at this stuff. Before the cranks show up.

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Most recent rewrite helps - putting economics last makes more historical sense.

I'm wondering about " imitative, creative, and social " components - this I understand as only applying to "human capital", i.e. "instructional, individual and social" is a breakdown of human capital that doesn't seem to apply to natural, infrastructural or financial forms - unless we want to include "creative accounting" and "imitative infrastructure " (biomimicry)?

Now that I think about it, it makese some sense, especially w.r.t. Lev and his "brand name capital"....

Am I wrong in assuming imitative=instructional, creative=individual? Maybe I assumed too much there...

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Dear English speaking People! There are different translations for the word capital in many languages according to the meaning. For example in Polish language the word Capital does not have a meaning related to the city (political capital). There should be a disambiguation page for interwiki links to work!

Dear person, this article is about the english meaning. This is, after all english wiki. What other words are used in other languages can be dealt with on other language wikis, not here. ÉÍREman

To clarify - our Polish friend was talking about an earlier version of the article which had several sections - one about capitals of countries, one about capital in economics, etc. He was making the valid point that this style of article makes interlanguage linking difficult - in Polish the same word isn't used for capitals of countries and capital in economics. So a proper disambiguation page was called for, which has since been created. Enchanter 23:03 Apr 25, 2003 (UTC)

good disambigulation page. ÉÍREman 23:10 Apr 25, 2003 (UTC)

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whats the intention behind Docu's recent edit (8 Oct) ? The other language links have been moved from the top to the bottom. If this is part of some convention then its ok.

Also why has the meaningful disambiguation line been replaced by "Alternate uses". i feel the earlier line made more sense. Jay 09:23, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)

British term

Which spelling is used for the British slang -- capital or capitol? Forgive my ignorance. —scarecroe (talk) 16:11, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

You mean, as in That is a capital idea! ...? (Found it in wiktionary) --Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 02:59, 10 February 2008 (UTC)