Three Mountains (6) - Capital

Capital goods are important, because they make humans more productive. Capital and trade are the keys to escaping subsistence.

Economists distinguish between capital goods and consumption goods. The word capital is used to describe goods that can be used to produce other goods. A spade is a capital good. You cannot eat it if you are hungry, but you can use it to produce food. Capital goods include machinery and factories.

Consumer goods cannot be used to produce other goods. They produced for household or personal in satisfy human wants and needs. A banana is a consumer good. You cannot use it to make things, but it will satisfy your hunger. Some goods are both capital and consumption goods. When I use my computer to write articles, it is a capital good. If I play games on my computer for entertainment, it becomes a consumption good.

In Jesus time, the most important capital good was land, but oxen, donkeys, fishing boats, nets and builders tools were also important. A family with a fishing boat and nets could feed and clothe themselves, whereas those without some capital might be destitute. In modern times, capital has become more complex. The capital of an airline is its aeroplanes. The capital of a courier business is its vans and computers.

The wellbeing of a community is largely determined by the volume of capital goods available. A society with no capital goods is forced into subsistence. A society with capital good will have a better lifestyle.

God blesses capital when it is acquired righteously and used wisely.

The crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks will be blessed. Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed (Deut 28:4-5).

Cattle, flocks, baskets and kneading troughs are capital equipment that make people more productive in their work. God promised to bless capital that is used wisely.

Modern corporate capital to be rootless and with no loyalty except to itself.

Roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it (Job 1:7).

The shareholders of a modern business may be scattered all over the world, so the business has no loyalty to any community. Modern business managers tend to be cosmopolitan. As they climb the corporate ladder, they often have to live and work in different countries, so they tend to have more loyalty to their business than to a particular place.

Modern business concentrates huge amounts of capital equipment in a single place to achieve economies of scale. Businesses tend to gather together in the same place, often close to energy sources or their clients. Electricity and electronic communications remove many of the reasons that business concentrate in the same place.

As the influence of the Kingdom of God spreads in society, we should expect to see more capital goods being spread out in local communities and being owned by families. The owners of a family capital will have a loyalty to the community in which they live. They will use it to provide employment and income for people of their community. The families in a wider community may pool their capital into a larger company to achieve the necessary scale, but they will retain ownership of the capital as a family heritage.

Christian have a huge amount of wealth tied up in superannuation schemes and banks. This wealth is used to provide capital in other countries, often in China. They should seek ways to use this wealth to build capital in their local communities, where it will provide employment and blessing to the people they are related to.

More on this topic at Capital.