The Capital Operator Stack: Theoretical Landscape and Contribution — A Political-Semantic Analysis of Meaning Governance

The Capital Operator Stack (COS) is a theoretical and diagnostic framework identifying the standardized set of filters through which capitalist power governs the convertibility of meaning into capital. Building on Guattari, Jessop, and Bourdieu, the COS provides a grammar for understanding why certain high-density meanings fail to convert to capital flows. It reveals Transaction Cost Economics' blind spot: the semantic transaction costs that must be paid before a Williamsonian transaction can even be conceived. The framework positions AI summarizers as COS instantiated as infrastructure and proposes 'Operator Capital' as a new category. Part of the NH-OS framework. All components are co-constitutive. The Semantic Economy provides alternatives through the Liberatory Operator Set.