“I don’t know which is worse… that everyone has his price, or that the price is always so low.”
– Hobbes
The capitalist framework is quite general, because as much as capitalist theories dictate when one should invest, they are completely agnostic as to what/when one should consume.
The idea of consumption is exogenous to capitalism and can be defined to be anything. For investment to take place, all that is required is a sufficiently low discount rate. For example, let’s say you want to save starving children in Africa. If you value feeding 10000 starving children in a year more than you value feeding 1000 starving children now, you have a 900% discount rate and should invest in anything with greater than 900% annual return. This particular hurdle rate would almost be impossible to overcome, but most altruistic goals have lower discount rates than that.
Extra credit: does morality have a discount rate?