Salvage as Capital

In Salvage Accumulation Anna Tsing starts by asking how it is that "capitalism is at once so generative, flexible, and creative, and, simultaneously, so effective at doing certain things, such as making rich people richer." This question made me think of the early days of capitalism when supply chains offered capitalists the opportunity to take advantage of work done outside the "factory" and "translate" non-capitalist processes into profit. The spice trade was one such instance where a "salvage" good was traded as capital and used to make even more capital in the form of actual wealth. Even factories, as Tsing notes, were basically using "salvage" capital to create real wealth for labor "could not be made by capitalists." Agriculture and other natural resources are examples of non capitalistic processes turned into capital but what separates these from capitalist processes. If you think in terms of one definition that capitalism is making money from money then a woman's assumed knowledge of sewing or mushrooms picked in the American Northwest are certainly not capitalist processes. The women and pickers do not seek to create value with their actions, nor does the dinosaur that dies and becomes coal but the rich individual who seeks to become richer will take these processes and quickly convert them into value to become richer. How capitalism can be both "generative, flexible, and creative, and, simultaneously, so effective at doing certain things, such as [make] rich people richer" is because the generatively, flexibility, and creativity of capitalism only cater to those who have the means of turning"salvage" into capital. The factory worker and the sewer can only create "salvage" and have no way of converting it without previously converting the "salvage" of others for in capitalism it takes money to make money.