The Eight Forms Of Capital

Episode Summary

In this episode, Brian explores a framework from permaculture that expands what we mean by wealth. Drawing on the work of Ethan Roland and Gregory Landua's 2011 paper Regenerative Enterprise, he walks through the eight forms of capital — and argues that sound money and regenerative living aren't competing philosophies. They need each other.

He also gets personal: what it means to sell chemicals for a living while believing in regenerative agriculture, why the family is the most underrated unit of resilience, and why Bitcoin may matter most not because of what it stores — but because of what it gives back.

What We Cover

The system we built — Why a world optimized for efficiency is quietly becoming more fragile. The soda can supply chain as a case study in converting living capital into financial capital at a loss.

The real problem is time — All capital is just time and energy stored in different forms. When money can be created without either, everything gets mispriced.

Scarcity and abundance — Why real abundance comes from constraints, not from removing them. And what we've done by creating artificial abundance in money while destroying real abundance in soil and health.

The eight forms of capital — The full framework from Roland and Landua, with Brian's commentary on each:

• Financial capital
• Material capital
• Living capital
• Social capital
• Intellectual capital
• Experiential capital
• Cultural capital
• Spiritual capital
• Plus one Brian adds: time capital — sovereignty over your own attention and future

The two incomplete solutions — Bitcoiners see the money problem clearly but often miss the living and social capital question. Permaculturalists see the ecological and community problem clearly but often ignore incentives. Neither works without the other.

The synthesis — Locally rooted. Globally connected. Not isolation, not collapse-fantasy, not nostalgia. Balance achieved through distributed consensus.

The family as base layer — Why every form of capital ultimately lives or dies at the household level. What it actually looks like to build systems optimized for healthy families.

Bitcoin as the base layer for money — What sound money actually restores, and why the most important thing it might give back is time.

Referenced

• Ethan Roland & Gregory Landua, Regenerative Enterprise (2011) — the original eight forms of capital framework
• Sri Lanka's 2021 chemical fertilizer ban and the famine and political collapse that followed

Key Quotes

"Sound money is necessary. It is not sufficient."

"You can understand Bitcoin perfectly and still be completely dependent on fragile systems."

"When you lose sovereignty over your time, you lose everything else too."

"The goal isn't to tear down the system. It's to stop needing it for things it was never meant to provide."

"Real wealth isn't just what shows up in your bank account or your hardware wallet."

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