I’ve been wondering lately if we’ve let the word capitalist calcify into something too blunt to be useful. Somewhere along the way it became shorthand for extraction, exploitation, and the hollowing out of meaning. Fair enough — those systems exist, and they do real harm. But when I look at my own life, the word attaches itself in ways that feel quieter, more human, and frankly more honest.

By any technical definition, I’m a capitalist. I run a small studio that makes things people value like ideas, artifacts, community experiences, seminars, books, talks, the podcast, essays, card decks and such — and, when things go well, I receive value back in the form of folding money. Ideally the time and effort and costs of creating those things-of-value is returned with more than I put in with good vibes and folding money. BUt the point is this: it’s nothing predatory. (Although some will assume it is when they ask for my time for nothing in return, for example.) Overall — nothing extractive is going on here. Just the oldest economic relationship in the world: make something meaningful, offer it to the world, and hope the exchange sustains the next thing you hope to make.

I started, built, grew and sold a hardware company a couple of years back. The effort, time, and risk I put into that venture was significant. The return was meaningful, too. But at no point did I feel like I was participating in some kind of exploitative system. I was simply trying to create value for people who wanted what I was making. If they felt the exchange was fair, we made a deal. If not, we walked away. It’s hard to feel you’re an extractive and exploitive capitalist when you’re sitting alone in a backyard studio, developing a brand and a product, writing your own App — and marketing copy — and shipping and supporting it all by yourself.

I’m working on software now that I wouldn’t consider giving away for free or as open source, although I’m grateful for the open source sensibility (considering the Internet runs on it). But no one can eat for free, so someone somewhere is circulating value to directly or indirectly support that work and to do so they need excess “value” (folding money or time or other resources).

(Once, when I determined the value exchange wasn’t fair, I simply and unilaterally set the terms straight. That was tough, but it felt right on the other side of the decision, for 100% sure. And that’s a measure of independence, too.)

Just to be clear, this is not some ideological confession. It’s an acknowledgment that independence — the ability to survive by making things — is part of the life I’ve built. And it’s not new. My mother ran several small businesses: a hair salon, a clothing boutique, an small town art gallery. Each one was a tiny ecosystem of hustle, taste, community, and service. These were capitalist enterprises in the literal sense: they were built on taking risks, creating value, and helping to support a family of five at a time when it was still unexpected to see a Black woman run their own businesses. None of these were meant to be engines of domination. They were vehicles for dignity, creativity, and perhaps lessons about how to navigate a world that often seemed designed to block the path forward.

And my grandfather — a Black tobacco farmer in rural Virginia — lived a version of this that gets written out of most economic narratives. He was poor in the way that census tables love to measure, but rich in the things that don’t get counted: stability, responsibility, the pride of feeding a large family from work that was his. He was participating in a system of exchange long before we attached the word “capitalist” to tech CEOs or hedge funds. He created value with labor, land, and knowledge. He traded that value to sustain a way of living.

When we say “anti-capitalist,” I get what we’re reacting against: the violence of scale, the machinery of extraction, the algorithmic thinning of life into measurable units. But I also think we’re sometimes imprecise. We collapse the monstrous and the mundane, the hedge fund and the corner store, the predatory and the purposeful.

There is another version — a smaller, older, more personal one — that is about independence, creativity, and sustaining a life by circulating value within a community. A version where “capital” isn’t a weapon but a tool. A version where making things is the point.

Maybe the task isn’t to abandon the idea of being a capitalist. Maybe it’s to reclaim the word from the forces that distorted it — to remember that there’s joy in building something with care, offering it to people, and making enough to keep going.

Not extraction.

Not domination.

Just the simple, stubborn desire to create value, circulate meaning, and live a satisfying and purposeful life.

Make meaning. Make money. That isn’t too much to expect, is it?