Capital is not what most people conceive of it to be. Capital is commonly (and correctly) viewed as a &quot;store of wealth&quot;, or as &quot;the crystallisation of labour-time&quot; - but capital comes in different flavours, and when you deal with capital in the form of goods which provide an incremental benefit to the user, what you have is indeed capital, but when you deal with money... it&#x27;s up to you whether it&#x27;s capital or not.<p>Often, people confuse <i>money</i> with <i>capital</i>. Money is an exchange mechanism which facilitates the transfer of value between parties through a common unit of exchange. Money can be viewed as a subset of capital (i.e. as a sedentary store of value), or it can be viewed <i>as the destruction of the benefits of labour</i>, as it converts an active instrument (i.e. the work I am doing, or the goods I have produced) into a sedentary instrument which provides no incremental benefit, <i>unless it is spent</i>.<p>So - how this relates to the article - capitalism is a system which currently optimises for money. When you take a step back and consider that by converting labour and value into money, you are effectively freezing the benefit of that labour away, accruing money as an end of its own ceases to make sense, as much of this value ends up lying in the ledgers of corporates, governments, or wealthy individuals, doing nothing for anybody other than perhaps dealing with some of the more fragile elements of human psychology (security).<p>We have let a means become the end, and have forgotten that the Purpose of all of this is to promote human happiness - I mean, what other possible Purpose <i>can</i> there be?