[yedava]

It's interesting to see how new religions are born after old religions are found wanting. Whereas earlier we had a God overseeing Earth, we now have Teleological Universe that ordains capitalism. But just like old religion, the new religion too works purely out of wishful thinking and not on evidence.

In a Universe that favors capitalism, you would think there would be plenty of evidence of a few entities exploiting the rest to drive entropy maximization. Instead what we see is that life is scarce, so scarce that we can't even be sure that there is other life in the Universe. Where are the Universe's capitalistic overlords who can make us pee in bottles lest we waste precious time maximizing entropy generation?

[mikhailfranco]

There is sense in which the core essence of capitalism is derivable from the entropic laws of nature.

Consider an active entity with a finite lifetime (e.g. child, factory). A production function can be defined as the net balance of flows in/out of the entity. This could be resources, energy, money.

As time progresses after t=0 (pregnancy, project plan), the production curve starts off negative (even a self-employed craftsman has to buy tools), perhaps it dips more negative (debt, nurture/education).

Eventually the curve slopes upward and crosses the breakeven point. Growth slows, the curve reaches a maximum positive value, then falls asymptotically toward zero, maybe going a little negative, before being truncated (death, scrap - even funerals and demolition cost money).

The net contribution is the area under the curve.

Resources have to be invested before there can be any benefit. The fact of any final net positive contribution is uncertain at the outset.