Macroeconomics treats capital as a cumulative stock.
Capital persists through time, can be inherited, and therefore appears in macroeconomic accounting as a stock variable.
But there is a curious asymmetry.
Human lifetime also accumulates historically: humanity continuously adds lived time across generations. Yet cumulative lifetime never appears as a macroeconomic stock.
Instead it only enters macro models as a flow (labor supply) or as a demographic constraint.
One possible explanation is institutional rather than physical.
For a variable to qualify as a macroeconomic stock it must satisfy two conditions:
1. Detachment from biological identity
2. Institutional continuity across generations
Capital satisfies both conditions. Lifetime does not.
If this reasoning is correct, macroeconomic accounting may structurally privilege capital accumulation.
Curious how economists or system designers here think about this asymmetry.
