Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thomas Piketty’s plan to fix the economy

newrepublic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 51 posts

Re: Thomas Piketty’s plan to fix the economy

#21

Post by rathel »

missedthecue wrote: post #2

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…

Economic inequality (and erosion of middle class) is water to populists' mill. We have living examples of this right now.

Re: Thomas Piketty’s plan to fix the economy

#22

Post by skitout »

seibelj wrote: post #3

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 fairl…

The fact is people are forced to participate in our current society. There is more freedom than in Cuba, but there are still huge number of things constraining my freedom, how I can use it, how much would cost to exercise this freedom...

How capital and revenue is unequally (and many says unethically) shared in our current system, and how it is structured to favor people who have more capital, create many huge constraints for most people, while favoring few.

The goal of Pikety and of many others is to change the rules of the game, the rules we are force to live with and that have huge impact on our freedom.

Starting a non-profit does not change the rule of the game, it change only the way we live with the rule.

Re: Thomas Piketty’s plan to fix the economy

#23

Post by pc2g4d »

neilwilson wrote: post #12
0x8BADF00D wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They tried that in Waco. Didn’t work out so well for them. It turns out that you can’t really escape the tyranny of the government. Might as well suck it up, and have strong property rights. At least that is a check on government tyranny.

How is it? Who grants these 'rights' and who enforces them? Distributed enforcement always ends up being who has the most and sharpest pointy sticks. Centralised enforcement is called "government" Pick your poison.

The norm of private property rights gives citizens a powerful tool against government overreach. Norms alter how power is legitimized and as such make new things possible---it's not just about pointy sticks.

Re: Thomas Piketty’s plan to fix the economy

#24

Post by dragonwriter »

pc2g4d wrote: post #23
neilwilson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it? Who grants these 'rights' and who enforces them? Distributed enforcement always ends up being who has the most and sharpest pointy sticks. Centralised enforcement is called "government" Pick your poison.

The norm of private property rights gives citizens a powerful tool against government overreach. Norms alter how power is legitimized and as such make new things possible---it's not just about pointy sticks.

It is, in fact, always about pointy sticks, which becomes shockingly apparent any time norms and the desires of those with the pointy sticks diverge too far, and having and consistently applying pointy sticks with a given rule is a very powerful method of establishing norms aligned with the stick holders desires, which then reduce the need for pointy stick holders to stick people with the sticks.

(This fact is also why a number of people have a strong preference for the norm of the wide distribution of pointy sticks, to try to better align the desires of those holding pointy sticks with general norms.)

Re: Thomas Piketty’s plan to fix the economy

#25

Post by 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.

Re: Thomas Piketty’s plan to fix the economy

#26

Post by jaldhar »

mcv wrote: post #16
neilwilson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, th…

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…

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.

Re: Thomas Piketty’s plan to fix the economy

#27

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

credit_guy wrote: post #20
missedthecue wrote: post #2

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…

It's very easy to make the logical leap that increasing inequality is equivalent to "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer". And most people don't necessarily have a problem with "the rich get richer" part, but they do object to "the poor get poorer". It is a leap though. Bezos, Gates, Musk, Buffet, Page, Brin, Zuckerberg all started as regular people and became ultra-rich through their work and ideas. But it's…

I'm pretty sure that all of the people you note had middle-class to upper-middle-class parents, so potentially you are proving Piketty's point.

Re: Thomas Piketty’s plan to fix the economy

#28

Post by mcv »

jaldhar wrote: post #26
mcv wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 messa…

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.

Re: Thomas Piketty’s plan to fix the economy

#29

Post by credit_guy »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #27
credit_guy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very easy to make the logical leap that increasing inequality is equivalent to "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer". And most people don't necessarily have a problem with "the rich get richer" part, but they do object to "the poor get poorer". It is a leap though. Bezos, Gates, Musk, Buffet, Page, Brin, Zuckerberg all started as regular people and became ultra-rich through their work and ideas. But it's…

I'm pretty sure that all of the people you note had middle-class to upper-middle-class parents, so potentially you are proving Piketty's point.

We can do a random search through the founders of various unicorns. My first hit was Brian Chesky [1], one of the Airbnb founders. His parents were social workers. Stripe was founded by two brothers who were born in Limerick, Ireland. Maybe they were middle class in Limerick, but most likely not rich by global standards. They are now worth $3BN each [2]. Instacart was founded by Apoorva Mehta, who was born in India, and whose parents immigrated to Canada in 2000. Apoorva doesn't have a wikipedia page, but again, very likely his family was not rich.

If you go through the wikipedia unicorn list [3], you'll find many founders that appear to be from middle or upper-middle class, but also many founders from lower-middle class as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Chesky

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Collison

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unicorn_startup_compan...

Re: Thomas Piketty’s plan to fix the economy

#30

Post by slawekrewaj »

kdtsh wrote: post #19
ChrisLomont wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labor doesn’t create all value.

Where does value come from besides labour? If gold was everywhere, it wouldn’t be as valuable as it is - but it’s not, you have to dig it out of the ground and it can be hard to find; the labour input into the process of producing gold is what gives gold its value. A silicon rock is about as useful as any other rock, but the labour which goes into fabricating it into useful components is what gives it its value. A ha…

As a resident of a former communist country I can tell you, from my country experience, that labor is definitely not enough to create any value. You need two other things:

1. Savings which you can use as a capital to improve the efficiency of labor - think buying tools before you start working.

2. Proper organization of work, which is the task of entrepreneurs. Without them people can work hard and produce no value at all. It happens everywhere in the world today, where some bureaucrats get the power to decide what people should do. It happened a lot in all communist countries, where large parts of people's effort were under their control.

If people's labor was everything you need to create value, then why are people in North Korea starving? Do you suggest that they don't work hard enough?

Post reply on HN