Capital asset model
From eg
A capital asset model provides clear tests and criteria for categorizing capital assets for purposes of their actual use. This may or may not resemble their capital cost allowance treatment for corporate income tax purposes - usually it doesn't. There are also many simplisitic models of capital asset management accounting, and some deliberately designed as creative accounting - thus this is an abused term.
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[edit] Reporting value of "intangibles"
The worst abuse may be to consider clearly measureable assets intangible and dismiss them for that reason. The use of this term is extremely controversial [1] and rather than using it, ECG recommends to cite economists or experts invalue creation [2] and the more contentious value reporting [3].
To assume that all value is tied to an asset or portfolio of assets with possibly-intangible ties or reinforcing characteristics, but not to assume that any other than financial capital is fungible, is the ECG approach. Models can thus include multiplying value effects. For instance in the "open politics in force", scores in each category of performance are added up and then all of the category scores are multiplied together. This means that extremely good performance in most but poor performance in one category of value is not as good as simply good performance in all areas. By contrast a linear financial capital approach would simply add up the various categories and result in a misleading value assessment, one that did not inherently value in fundamental risk. Similarly, this approach better models the often-observed phenomena in mergers and acquisitions when the same asset is of markedly more value in one owner's hands than another, due to these reinforcive effects, or the negative effects of diluting a brand or reputation with an inappropriate venture.
Applying any value reporting model to so-called human capital is among the most difficult of problems in economics. In an analysis by Craig Hubley, he claims that "human capital" in macro-economics is simply the amount of financial capital required to yield the human's salary. A typical objective of macro-economic optimization is so-called balanced growth of human (by which they include all intangibles) versus all other kinds of capital (which presumably are the only "tangibles")." He found this approach to both value reporting and value creation utterly inadequate, as the "balance" between the human and say infrastructural capital was entirely provided by the monetary policy, hardly an objective arbiter.
[edit] Hubley's six styles
Analysis at eg:itself follows Craig Hubley's six styles of capital, an example of its application to a large urban area's management problems and an example of it applied to the telecom industry. There are also examples of its use to categorize political issues and to calculate value of life ratios: it's impossible to calculate such ratios without distinguishing the two living forms of capital (individual persons and natural ecosystems) from all others. John McMurtry's model likewise distinguishes the processes that further living beings from those that simply satisfy abstractions or mechanistic ideas of efficiency.
[edit] "human capital"
The thorniest problem in any capital asset model is how to deal with human capital: talent tied to bodies that can leave or go on strike at any time. Hubley simplifies the problem by treating individual bodies as a different capital asset type than the social capital entrusted in them or the instructional capital they document and teach. Even such a complex and emotionally loaded situation as a talent strike becomes comprehensible as a withdrawal of bodies and of trust, while reputations for integrity are kept intact. See the magic beanie cap for an even more extreme method that makes calculated risks with this reputation in order to force talent succession.
Neoclassical economics defines human capital strictly in terms of financial capital: salary yields or other cashflow realized from exploitation of humans, including not just their individual performance talents but also instructional capacities and social attachments. In green economics this view is deprecated as hopelessly oversimplified and highly prejudicial against creative work: a green analysis of urban problems for instance emphasizes need to balance the assessment and investment in various aspects of the human being, their society and organizations.
[edit] "intellectual property": Lessig, Hubley, Stallman
Hubley's instructional capital definition makes no assumptions other than the usefulness of the instructions in creating skilled individuals, working infrastructure, social trust relationships and perhaps also in protecting ecosystems and persons. It does not include instructions used only to enhance financial capital performance, except insofar as these perform some more fundamental sort of regret minimization. Hubley's model is agnostic on the question of the value of combining an instructional asset with another, advocates of private ownership of means of instruction and those who reject this concept can argue using the six styles as a foundation.
Hubley has contested Lawrence Lessig's assertion that it's useful to apply ideas from patent to copyright law. Hubley's approach dovetails more with Richard Stallman's insofar as each asserts that a monopoly on instruction, monopoly on trusted name and monopoly on creative work are radically different. There are quite different bodies of law (patent, trademark and copyright) to deal with these, and rightfully so. They defy any common categorization under the propaganda "term:intellectual property". Both believe that asserting such a category makes it easier to inappropriate apply rulesets from individual capital or social capital to instructional capital. Assigning moral rights for instance may be an inappropriate transfer of individual rights to a group entity that doesn't deserve them and can't exercise them as intended. Or, worse, the right to individual opinions and to their expression necessarily implies a right and need to defame, using specific factual evidence, the brand names of parties who acquire trusted names, then proceed to debase the products they offer. If trademarks cannot be used in satire or other comment of this nature, the public interest is not served, as the specific entity can then hide between its entire industry's repute. Worst of all, extremely long-lived rights to social or creative works may be applied to patents on fundamental physical inventions, or worse than that, to actual elements of nature. In all these cases, the most advantageous treatment is selected by a property owner and assigned to a style of capital asset that has wholly different characteristics. Stallman may be more radical than Hubley in deprecating the property approach. Hubley may be more radical than Stallman in also advocating that domain names be (by default) democratic domains under their users' controll.
[edit] Hubley vs. other value reporting models
Other models of value added by humans, Hubley noted, tend to fail operational tests or not distinguish between extant legal instruments. They rely ultimately on an utterly artificial construct, monetary policy, putting control over any concept of value in the hands of the bankers.
