
Thomas Piketty’s plan to fix the economy - hhs
https://newrepublic.com/article/157576/thomas-piketty-new-book-plan-fix-economy-review
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thedudeabides5
_Piketty’s solution is that we move beyond private ownership to some blend of
private, public, and temporary ownership. (Total abolition of private
property, à la Soviet Union, for Piketty, was an ill-advised failure.) Since
many societal goods are often already owned publicly, like electrical grids,
highways, or parks, and some are owned communally, like worker cooperatives,
it is easy to imagine this realm expanding._

1800 words into the article and finally we get the grand plan.

Like the rest of Piketty's work, yell real loud about a real pain, make
interesting allusions to economic history, and offer no real solutions.

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missedthecue
I am still unable to fathom why he thinks inequality is a problem in and of
itself. Hunger, famine, war, disease, we all understand are bad because they
have negative consequences on real human lives. Jeff Bezos owning 12% of
Amazon does not make me any worse off and if he owned 11% instead it would not
make my life any better.

Now there are certain things that can that can contribute to people
accumulating excessive amounts at another person's expense. Regulatory capture
and economic cartels for instance. But those are never brought up by
Picketty's breed. Their issues is that someone owns more than someone else. I
suppose my advice to Picketty would be that if he is going to commit one of
the seven deadly sins, he might choose a funner one than envy.

~~~
neilwilson
The worst thing is that it is not the inequality of wealth that matters. It's
the inequality of power.

What Piketty and others of this philosophical movement believe is that taking
money away from people is the same as removing power.

They are going to be disappointed. Power is a capital item, not a revenue
item. Money gets you the contacts with the right people. Lack of money doesn't
remove them.

Plus, of course, there isn't a fixed amount of wealth - particularly not
financial wealth. So why confiscate when you can accommodate?

~~~
mcv
Lack of money absolutely does remove them. Billionaires like Murdoch and the
Koch brothers have had a massive detrimental effect on US politics (and
British, in the case of Murdoch). Without the capital they control, they
wouldn't have anywhere near that kind of impact.

Not every billionaire uses their money for that kind of power, but some do,
and it hurts democracy when they do. In fact, it's even been argued that
legitimate philanthropy is undemocratic, because it's rich people deciding
which problems society will fix, rather than a democratic process.

If money only provided luxury, people would have less problems with this
inequality. And people would probably be less interested in amassing more
wealth than they can consume.

~~~
jaldhar
Counterpoint: Michael Bloomberg recently spent almost half a billion dollars
trying to convince people to make him a presidential candidate. How did that
work for him?

What a lot of people don’t seem to understand is that propaganda doesn’t cause
beliefs, it focuses and amplified beliefs that preexist at least in nascent
form. The Koch brothers would have no power if there weren’t people ready for
their kind of message. In fact this is a good example. The Koch Brothers were
against the Trumpian turn in Republican politics and spent heavily against it.
How did that work out for them?

Sorry money == power is too facile.

~~~
mcv
There are effective and ineffective way to use your money for power, of
course. But many US politicians work for their wealthy donors. Most Senators
are millionaires, no presidential candidates are poor.

The fact that some rich people only get part of what they want because they're
opposed by other rich people, does not mean that their money didn't get them
power. The Koch brothers got a lot of what they wanted.

And even if poor people, if there are enough of them and they are sufficiently
organised, are able to oppose rich people, that still doesn't mean that the
rich people don't have more power individually. Their resources make it much
easier to organise, to buy influence and support, to reward politicians who
legislate the way they want.

In the US, even more than in other countries, money is absolutely power.

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grandridge
Piketty is a fool. End central banking and lender of last resort. That is it.
There will still be a natural order of poor and rich just like every other
natural system but it will not be as extreme and it will not reward the wrong
people

~~~
dang
Please make your points without calling names. Maybe you don't owe Piketty
better, but you owe this community better if you're posting to it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
grandridge
No thanks, I'm good

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seibelj
In a voluntary society, why don’t people who advocate for things like the
abolition of private property (the thesis of the linked article) just create
this themselves?

Absolutely nothing stops a group from creating a non-profit, electing a board
of trustees that appoints managers, and signing lifetime contracts to pledge
their income to it. Then the board and it’s managers can divvy up the income
among everyone fairly, build communal housing, negotiate to provide health
benefits for all at group discounts, provide retirement income, etc. And if
people sign on when they are young, then some will become more successful and
provide more income for the whole.

This is the same as taxes, except even better because all group members are
ideologically aligned and would be happy to give all their income away to an
elected group of people who will spend it on everyone fairly. And this way,
people who don’t want to participate aren’t forced to do so.

~~~
neilwilson
"Absolutely nothing stops a group from creating a non-profit, electing a board
of trustees that appoints managers"

We have done. They're called nations.

Other nations are available. You're not forced to stay in the one you are born
in. That's enshrined in the United nations charter on human rights.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
> That's enshrined in the United nations charter on human rights.

Good luck turning up at $country’s port of entry with that as your only
immigration document.

~~~
neilwilson
That's a straw man isn't it.

The UN charter enshrines your right to leave a nation. And that's all it
enshrines.

It's more the port of exit that is the issue.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Fair point. Being _stateless_ may very well be an improvement.

