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

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

#201

Post by cbnotfromthere »

take_a_breath wrote: post #108
codingslave wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always viewed it as paradoxical that the left is both: 1.) For the welfare of the worker, social programs, universal healthcare, "standard of living" 2.) Open borders immigration, free trade, outsourcing, and other ultra capitalist policies.

I can never find this left block of "open borders" support. Can you provide some sources?

All of the candidates for the Democratic Party nomination for presidential elections agreed with open borders and Medicare for illegal immigrants. In a televised debate. Live.

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

#202

Post by cbnotfromthere »

cwperkins wrote: post #87

If anyone enjoys reading about income inequality, I also recommend Joseph Stiglitz' book called "The Price of Inequality". He speaks of inequality more from an American perspective and he's one of the thought leaders I personally like to hear from. I am a staunch Capitalist and I'd like to see another great era of America ingenuity and invention. I think the path to solve inequality comes from creating wealth and sol…

[dead]

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

#203

Post by leftyted »

dopu wrote: post #113
leftyted wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth noting that Piketty has an astonishingly basic misunderstanding/non-understanding of the marxist analysis of capitalism despite the titles of his books. He hasn't even read Capital. I like his politics relatively well as far as most liberals go but that is still pretty disappointing. Economists use the word "capital" without making reference to Marx. Marx didn't come up with that word, it had a meaning i…

> Economists use the word "capital" without making reference to Marx. Marx didn't come up with that word, it had a meaning in classical economics since Adam Smith (and maybe before). How does this refute OP's point? They're really just pointing out how absurd it is that a study on wealth inequality and class fails to even consider the Marxist perspective. Genuine scholarly negligence. > This is also bizarre. Piketty…

> How does this refute OP's point? They're really just pointing out how absurd it is that a study on wealth inequality and class fails to even consider the Marxist perspective. Genuine scholarly negligence.

I don't know how to break this to you...but you not everyone accepts the Marxian viewpoint. It's utterly bizarre to speak of "genuine scholarly negligence" when you mean "difference of opinion".

> OP isn't arguing that Piketty has no theory -- just that it's a pretty naive one. A Marxist perspective understands that "changing the laws to fix it" is not enough.

Right, and Piketty says it is. You (and the original poster) have a serious problem distinguishing between disagreement and being wrong.

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

#204

Post by leftyted »

0x262d wrote: post #155
leftyted wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth noting that Piketty has an astonishingly basic misunderstanding/non-understanding of the marxist analysis of capitalism despite the titles of his books. He hasn't even read Capital. I like his politics relatively well as far as most liberals go but that is still pretty disappointing. Economists use the word "capital" without making reference to Marx. Marx didn't come up with that word, it had a meaning i…

> Marx does argue for a "mechanical determination of ideology" He literally doesn't. He is a materialist in that he doesn't believe in magic or god. He is not a mechanical, deterministic one because he doesn't think there's an obvious 1-1 determination of social structure -> ideology, but instead that the two influence each other in extremely complicated ways even though ultimately everything flows from material real…

You're playing the game that Marxists always play, which is to claim that no one understands Marx except you. It's a silly, silly game and totally played out.

Piketty's summary of Marx is accurate as far as I'm concerned. If you want to show that it's not, please provide some evidence.

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

#205

Post by 0x262d »

uk_programmer wrote: post #196
0x262d wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still a misunderstanding, sorry. In your hypothetical, the price of oil would nosedive for a while as long as there was over investment in getting it out of the ground that would be wasted if it wasn’t sold low. This is just a higher supply. But at some point, the lower demand for plastics, etc would use that up, leading to a steady state - one in which oil would again be sold at its value, its labor cost. It…

> This is still a misunderstanding, sorry. No it isn't. You are constantly using the term value when you should be using the term cost. The monetary value of something is largely subjective and is dependant on whoever is purchasing, the cost of something is objective. To someone that cycles everywhere the price of petrol is always too high because a bicycle doesn't need petrol. For example there was Head and Shoulder…

you’re now making several of the same points I already responded to several times.

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

#206

Post by uk_programmer »

0x262d wrote: post #205
uk_programmer wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is still a misunderstanding, sorry. No it isn't. You are constantly using the term value when you should be using the term cost. The monetary value of something is largely subjective and is dependant on whoever is purchasing, the cost of something is objective. To someone that cycles everywhere the price of petrol is always too high because a bicycle doesn't need petrol. For example there was Head and Shoulder…

you’re now making several of the same points I already responded to several times.

You didn't address anything. It is absolutely infuriating with people like yourself that say they addressed a complaint and they clearly haven't (I've re-read the thread several times) and then tell me to go and read some marxist pamphlet.

This is ridiculous. Goodbye.

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

#207

Post by liamconnell »

bisRepetita wrote: post #101

I am reading Capital & Idelogy currently. I find interesting how Piketty challenges the view of property rights. Many think it is something completely natural, sacred. But he shows it is actually ideology. It is not "the nature of things". As I understand it in the book, property is not, and should not be seen as, a 100% inalienable human right. If it was so, it would be completely fair that slave-owners in Haiti and…

Interestingly, the moment when property was supposedly deemed sacred was the end of the 18th century ("Life, liberty, estate", derived from Locke but was codified in society with the US Constitution and French Revolution). This idea is deeply ingrained in our values, but let's investigate what those founders actually believed.

At the time of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were in agreement about playing down the protection of property. Franklin saw property as a "creature of society"[1]. This is why they changed the language of the Declaration of Independency to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". The last is not meant to be a stand-in for "property" or "estate," it actually derives from a separate clause in the Virginia Declaration of Rights[2]: "life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." Jefferson intentionally dropped the property clause in the Declaration of independence, reflecting how he saw property: not an inalienable right.

Entering into the early US, the majority of fiscal revenue was based off of taxing property (there was no income tax). This aligns with Franklin and Jefferson in basically saying that the state has a claim to the property that is possessed by citizens.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_... [2] The Virginia Declaration of Rights was an influence on Jefferson's Declaration of Independence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_I...

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

#208

Post by liamconnell »

throw0101a wrote: post #62

Paul Krugman's review: * https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/08/books/review/capital-and-... Krugman liked Piketty's previous book ( Captail-21C ), but concluded this one needed some more editing: > The bottom line: I really wanted to like “Capital and Ideology,” but have to acknowledge that it’s something of a letdown. There are interesting ideas and analyses scattered through the book, but they get lost in the sheer vo…

Krugman also claimed in the same article that Capital in the 20th century was not fully read by most "Like A Brief History of Time".

He is right that Piketty's first book is probably just worth it for the introduction and most non-economists never read the rest, but if he cant get through A Brief History of Time then he's got other problems. Hawking made that book very readable and accessible!

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

#209

Post by sireat »

lliamander wrote: post #99

I was watching a documentary[1] about Sweden's shift away from social democracy in the 70's/80's time-frame that Piketty talks about. From the way it sounds, the program of social democracy nearly destroyed the country. I would take Piketty's nostalgia for those times with a grain of salt. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcX6BUZlEw4

If I see Cato economist talking for the first 5 minutes I immediately suspect I am not getting a very balanced view.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute

Continuing with wikipedia: Sweden is a competitive and highly liberalized, open market economy. The vast majority of Swedish enterprises are privately owned and market-oriented, combined with a strong welfare state involving transfer payments involving up to three-fifths of GDP.[27][28] In 2014 the percent of national wealth owned by the government was 24%.[29]

So again this is not the Soviet type of socialism(which I've lived through) but strong welfare state is definitely part of Sweden.

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

#210

Post by lliamander »

scarejunba wrote: post #180
lliamander wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate?

When deciding 'did something happen?' I need the sources to be generally reliable about fact reporting because they do not rely on pure reason. For fact reporting which is an aggregate, I need to rely upon the track record of the sources. In this case, some of the second-level sources are from the Cato Institute, which I know to be low trust source of truth[0]. This means I have to assign this a low-magnitude coeffic…

I am unfamiliar with the history of that particular document. I don't really want to get into the question of climate change here.

Nonetheless, I see what you mean about high vs. low magnitude coefficient trust. Personally, I don't assign a particularly high-magnitude coefficient for Cato either. However, I don't assign a particularly high magnitude coefficient to any economic/political think tank. For two reasons:

1. Economics is not a science in any meaningful sense of the word. There is no empirical process for falsifying theories; there is merely a dialectic. Now, the dialectic can be more or less rigorous, but there is an upper-bound to the level of certainty that dialectic can provide.

2. Everyone has an agenda. This is inescapable when it comes to politics. The best we can hope for is that all parties demonstrate some self-awareness of that fact.

Relative to plenty of other sources, I would say that Cato ranks relatively well. At the very least, they are one of the most respectable libertarian sources, and should probably be taken seriously (even if you disagree with them).

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