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A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

bostonreview.net

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Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#181

Post by solveit »

bisRepetita wrote: post #150
roenxi wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the kind of weird, morally unacceptable reasoning about property rights that you will run into if you accept property as a all-powerful, unconstestable principle. The average person has no ability to connect past and future. Most people, when tested, struggle to connect yesterday with today. Typical people don't save enough, don't plan and don't risk assess. If society gives an inch on property rights as an…

This sounds like the "meritocracy" argument. To consider your example, in the current crisis, there are plenty of people who did not link anything from past to present, but who do show up in hospitals evry day, help people and save lives. They have a much bigger impact on society than the smart planner who could link past and present, but they see no rewards for it. Property rights do very little for those people. Se…

> To consider your example, in the current crisis, there are plenty of people who did not link anything from past to present, but who do show up in hospitals evry day, help people and save lives. They have a much bigger impact on society than the smart planner who could link past and present, but they see no rewards for it.

The same argument would argue that medical professionals could and should ask for much higher compensation in times like these, but they won't, because they're good people who wouldn't use other people's lives as leverage, and because the community backlash to doing so would be insane. It would go on to claim that if medical professionals did make bank in crises like these, we'd have more medical professionals ready to step in in times like these, and that this would save lives. Surge pricing makes surge capacity viable.

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#182

Post by viklove »

solveit wrote: post #181
bisRepetita wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like the "meritocracy" argument. To consider your example, in the current crisis, there are plenty of people who did not link anything from past to present, but who do show up in hospitals evry day, help people and save lives. They have a much bigger impact on society than the smart planner who could link past and present, but they see no rewards for it. Property rights do very little for those people. Se…

> To consider your example, in the current crisis, there are plenty of people who did not link anything from past to present, but who do show up in hospitals evry day, help people and save lives. They have a much bigger impact on society than the smart planner who could link past and present, but they see no rewards for it. The same argument would argue that medical professionals could and should ask for much higher…

The reason those medical professionals aren't paid better is because the money we spend on healthcare is going to pharmaceutical companies and hospitals, which eventually ends up in the hands of the private equity companies that own them. We've built a system that rewards those who accumulate the most wealth. Since we reward them, their wealth grants them more power (and more wealth) with a feedback loop. We've reached the point where there isn't a single transaction that occurs in this country where PE (aka billionaires) aren't granted a slice.

The reason the wealthy get wealthier in this country is because they can spend their wealth to motivate society to help them accumulate more wealth. Money is just a coupon that you can redeem by spending it on some form of human productive output. If we give all of the coupons to people who love accumulating wealth, they eventually redeem them all to channel all of human productive output into building more wealth for them.

A true capitalistic system can only work with some form of UBI, to break this feedback loop, and to allow society as a whole to decide where to spend human productive output, rather than just a select group of billionaires.

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#184

Post by viklove »

orthecreedence wrote: post #120
defterGoose wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly true. Guess it's war then?

I've been very interested lately in dual power as an alternative to both voting in a system where governments are captured agencies and also bloody revolution. In effect, forming a network that bypasses the current powers until they disappear.

You don't have to bypass the current powers, you just have to dilute them sufficiently. Currency is just a coupon you spend to redeem on human productive output (goods and services). Since the wealthy have most of the currency, they decide to "spend" human productive output on making them wealthier.

Billionaires shouldn't unilaterally decide how society spends its human productive output, that should be a decision society as a whole gets to make. How do you accomplish this? Universal basic income would dilute billionaire's ability to control how human productive output is spent, and instead, society as a whole would get to make that decision.

Inflation caused by UBI only hurts one class of people -- billionaires. Everyone else ends up better off, and has more of a say on the direction of human civilization.

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#185

Post by solveit »

viklove wrote: post #182
solveit wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To consider your example, in the current crisis, there are plenty of people who did not link anything from past to present, but who do show up in hospitals evry day, help people and save lives. They have a much bigger impact on society than the smart planner who could link past and present, but they see no rewards for it. The same argument would argue that medical professionals could and should ask for much higher…

The reason those medical professionals aren't paid better is because the money we spend on healthcare is going to pharmaceutical companies and hospitals, which eventually ends up in the hands of the private equity companies that own them. We've built a system that rewards those who accumulate the most wealth. Since we reward them, their wealth grants them more power (and more wealth) with a feedback loop. We've reach…

I agree with the last two paragraphs, but would quibble with the first.

> The reason those medical professionals aren't paid better is because the money we spend on healthcare is going to pharmaceutical companies and hospitals, which eventually ends up in the hands of the private equity companies that own them.

That's the result, but I think a big part of the reason that this is the case is because society (including the medical professionals themselves) absolutely refuses to let people use human life as leverage for bargaining. If workers cannot use the fruits of their labour as leverage, of course capital wins.

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#186

Post by atlih »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #141
mytailorisrich wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the idea of private property as an inalienable right is rooted in the enlightenment and on the same level as human rights. It is to protect individuals against spoliation by the state or powerful, and even to assert an even more basic right to own property at all. It obviously does not mean that property cannot be taken away from its owner but that this must follow a fair and lawful process.

The Enlightenment never really worked this through. In fact modern economics hijacks a lot of humanist rhetoric (including the idea of rationality and human rights) and glues it rather awkwardly onto concepts that are actually derived from monarchy - specifically individual sovereignty, and a kind of individualised version of divine right which elevates unlimited individual economic freedom-to-profit as the highest p…

Taxes are derived from monarchy as well.

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#188

Post by 0x262d »

nemo wrote: post #173
0x262d wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, people who believe in marxism are ideologues and people who believe in the predominant ruling-class economic wisdom are simply wisely following expert advice. I feel like I've been here before. If you dropped the constantly condescending hyperbolic anti marxist stuff and made substantive criticisms besides linking to wikipedia this could be a more interesting conversation!

[flagged]

this is obviously silly, opinionated and unsubstantiated. criticize it on the merits or don't. so far you've just said "anti empirical" and linked wikipedia.

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#189

Post by 0x262d »

nemo wrote: post #176
0x262d wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is entirely tangential to LTV. No one is denying the reality that supply and demand affect price in the short term. The argument is simply that in the long term as those equilibrate, the relative prices of commodities will tend to hover around their socially necessary labor times. Marxism/LTV distinguishes between value (socially necessary labor time) and price.

How does the LTV account for the labor involved in mining copper, silver, and gold being virtually identical but their values being quite different?

gold is more rare, right? so therefore finding it and concentrating it is part of the labor cost of obtaining it? I'm not an expert on this topic but that seems like a reasonable guess.

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#190

Post by nemo »

0x262d wrote: post #188
nemo wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

this is obviously silly, opinionated and unsubstantiated. criticize it on the merits or don't. so far you've just said "anti empirical" and linked wikipedia.

"Anti empirical" really should be enough.
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