During 2014-2015 I've participated in a lot of share issues to provide cash for gold mining companies requiring capital to move into or expand production.
These are companies with a few hundred shareholders or so.
The profits I've made in the past few months from gold mining companies, I think is perfectly justified. I've done my research and invested in these companies when everyone else has shunned gold and gold related investments. These were companies whose market capitalisation were less than their projected cash flows for the next year. I've invested in these companies when few other people would.
These gains I've made, are completely backed by productivity. Without these latest round of share issues, many of the companies would have gone under, and there would be no gold coming out of the ground.
(You could argue gold has no value beyond being a good material and I'd respond, neither do paint or flowers. With gold, people can use it as an asset without counter party, and provides zero interest, guaranteeing capital during times of negative interest.)
Gold has a value purely due to it being vital in many technologies. That said I can't imagine the price we pay for mined material, gold or otherwise, even comes close to reflecting the cost of what it will take to repair the damage we are doing to our environment during the extraction of these materials.
Regarding productivity there are many instances of financial products which are not even remotely linked to any kind of productivity. If the stock market was strongly linked to productivity the down cycles it experiences would be minor in comparison to what they are.
The down cycles and bubbles are pumped up by central banks. When the stock market isn't doing well central banks lower interest rates, encouraging people to take out loans, to buy houses and stocks, and if they didn't, the central bank would lower the interest rate until they did.
It is market intervention that is exacerbating the phenomenon you're talking about. A small down cycle is a healthy event that cleans up all the almost productive companies and reallocates their capital through liquidation. It is zombie companies propped up by government subsidies and central bank intervention that is causing the rot in America's economy. It is akin to a forest fire burning all the weeds so the forest can rejuvenate.
I hope that's enough to refresh your memory? It's irrelevant to my original point though as capitalism is by definition hoping to get something from doing nothing (or making money work as the propagandists like to dress it up as).
> It's irrelevant to my original point though as capitalism is by definition hoping to get something from doing nothing
You have to be really stupid to think that, and deny all the benefits to our society that capitalism enables. Or, could you please explain how you would e.g. start an airline, or build a hospital, or your house's sewage system, without utilizing capital?
