Good questions!
If, by “money” you are talking about pocket cash, the family checking account or a “rainy day fund,” that would obviously be curtilage. If you are talking about personal investments in stocks, mutual funds, etc., that would seem to be capital. Retirement accounts and investment represent one of the places where the “common good” standard becomes most evident. The “business cycle” of boom and bust in terms of investment value hits retirees living off investments the hardest. Currently, the purpose of investment is solely viewed in terms maximizing return. The common good standard would suggest return needs to be balanced with market stability. This would result in slower growth and less speculation, but more security for those in later life depending on the market for their survival.
As for converting curtilage to capital, when money is used for investment, to buy income property or to invest for the purpose of earning a return, that would seem to convert it to capital. Conversely, when a stock is sold and the money is used for a new car, a child’s college education, etc, that would seem to make it curtilage.
As far as hedge funds, I don’t have much patience with them altogether. They are a product of Reagan’s dropping the marginal tax rate from 70% to 28%, resulting in very wealthy individuals with huge chunks of money, looking for a place to “hedge’ against downturns. In practice, they have become economic predators whose sole purpose is to serve their investors’ money, with little or no concern for employees, communities or the environment. They will invest wherever they get the highest return.
Beyond that, this idea is not a fleshed out economic system, but a reflection of values. In the 1950’s, high marginal tax rates and the three stakeholder model of capitalism: customers, workers, and investors, resulted in an economy where corporations understood that they operated for the good of the Nation as well as investors. When that model was replaced in the 1970’s with Milton Friedman’s model that the only purpose of a corporation is enriching investors, that notion of the good of the Nation went out the window, culminating in Reagan’s wholesale adoption of Hayekian neoliberalism idealized in Margaret Thatcher’s infamous declaration, “There is no such thing as society. There are only individual men and women.” My attempt is to articulate why the 1950’s system worked and make explicit the values and obligations behind it.
As far as capital flight is concerned, if capital became legally a trust for the common good and not just private property in the Roman or Hayekian meaning, then banking regulation or taxation could be put into place to make capital flight too costly to be a threat.
As far as the existing spaghetti plate of taxes are concerned, that again becomes an issue of common good versus individual gain or loss. Clearly, not everyone would be happy with a shift away from the traditional definition of property. This, however, is a big picture discussion, not one of the mechanics of implementation. The political will is more important than the political way at this juncture. There are lots of bright minds that can figure out the how’s and why’s on that granular level.
