[throwaway894345]

The parent said "no one is entitled to anything". I take that to mean "neither capital nor labor is entitled to a return". It's probably also useful to scope this conversation to a certain context: "in a free market, no one is entitled to anything". This is a sort of hypothetical scenario since there are no perfectly free markets, and a completely unregulated market is very likely not a desirable thing (evolutionary forces aren't stable and stability is a prerequisite for sustained prosperity, security, etc); however, it's still a useful concept to guide discussion.

[tfehring]

They didn't explicitly say that capital is entitled to a return, but the comment pretty clearly indicated an asymmetry between capital and labor. You could invert the wording to the following

> You aren't de facto entitled to receiving a return on any capital you may provide, regardless of whether that capital is put to productive use or not. A company exists because one or more people provided their labor in order to create a net positive system.

and the tone clearly changes from the original. I agree that neither capital nor labor is entitled to a return, but I don't think that's what the parent comment was suggesting.

[throwaway894345]

Via "no one is entitled to anything", the parent explicitly said that capital is not entitled to a return. No need to read between the lines here. We can all agree that no one is entitled to anything in a free market and move on to the next question, which is probably something like "to what extent does a perfectly free market deliver on our collective objectives"? I.e., "Can we balance market freedom with some amount of regulation to deliver a system that is both prosperous and stable/sustainable/equitable/etc?".

[ccffpphh]

That's exactly what I was suggesting. The throwaway was correct.