One economist argued that taking longer to build things creates capital

Why a Net Can Be Worth the Wait

Böhm-Bawerk’s fishing example illustrates what economists call roundabout production: instead of using labor directly to catch fish by hand, a person spends time making a net, then uses it to catch more fish. The net is capital—not money, but a tool made to help produce something else.

The longer method has an immediate cost. While making the net, the fisher is not catching fish, so the plan works only if there is enough food or other support to get through that interval. If the tool raises future catches enough to compensate, time spent preparing has made production more productive.

How Time Enters the Explanation of Interest

This creates a question: why might someone who supplies resources now expect more back later? Böhm-Bawerk treated the delay between investment and usable output as economically important. A person who gives up present goods to finance a longer production process must wait for its result; interest is one way economists describe the extra return associated with that advance and delay.

The net example does not mean that every longer process is better, or that waiting alone guarantees a profit. A net that takes too long to make, or catches too few fish, wastes resources. The central tradeoff is between giving up some output now and potentially producing more later.

The Dispute Over What Capital Means

Marxist economists challenged the account’s implications. In Marx’s framework, tools and other capital do not independently create value; profit ultimately comes from workers producing more value than they receive in wages. Böhm-Bawerk’s emphasis on time and productive methods offered a different explanation of why returns arise, and his criticism of Marx helped fuel a long-running dispute over whether capital’s return reflects productive contribution, workers’ exploitation, or both.

The fishing net makes the disagreement concrete: the tool can increase the catch, but that fact alone does not settle who deserves the resulting gain. It shows why a theory of interest is also a theory about how production’s rewards are divided.