Monday, September 21, 2015

What a Hoot!

I am finally getting around to reading Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

If I had known what a thigh-slapper the book was, I would have taken on the 685 page monstrosity much sooner. The book is, of course, Piketty's rage against capital and wealth accumulation. I will have a full review down the road, but here's a teaser of what the book is filled with.

As Piketty puts it (p. 571), his thesis is that
The inequality r>g implies that wealth accumulated in the past grows more rapidly than output and wages. The inequality inevitably tends to become a rentier, more and more dominant over those who own nothing but their labor. Once constituted capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future.
But at the start of the book, in the very introduction he writes that it is technological advances that allowed him to write the book (p. 20).
[A]dvances in computer technology have made it much easier to collect and process large amounts of historical data....This book is heavily indebted to recent improvements in the technology of research.
In other words, the capital that has fueled improvements in technology research  did not devour laborer Piketty, but has made him rich, because of a best-selling book that could not have been written, without the advances in technology, most certainly the result of wealth accumulation by others.

Perhaps he can write a second book, using more capital fueled technological research innovations showing us why he is an outlier:)


 -RW


6 comments:

  1. It's fuck-wits like you who issue in communism. Anyone with half a brain can see that if capitalism is what you are then who wants it and how might it be speedily destroyed?

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    1. Who would want a voluntary mutually beneficial transaction between people? I'm guessing people who believe in freedom not force.

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    2. Is this poetry? Because it doesn't really scan as English.

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    3. This smells of a French-to-English translation. Et tu, Piketty?

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    4. Capitalists don’t think it be like it is, but it do.

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  2. ─The inequality r>g implies that wealth accumulated in the past grows more rapidly than output and wages. The inequality inevitably tends to become a rentier, more and more dominant over those who own nothing but their labor. ─

    Translation: Laborers don't accumulate wealth. Ever.

    ─ Once constituted capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future.─

    Translation: You see, capitalists are really bamboozling laborers into working for nothing and that means laborers will eventually starve over the automatic machines that produce diapers, or fake fingernails, etc.

    Oh, I'm not being facetious! That is the logical implication of what Picketty argues. I've told a lot of friends (well, Facebook "friends") that this is exactly what Picketty argues. I also told them that this idiocy is nothing more than a repackaging of Marxian exploitation theory of profits and that Picketty commits the exact same mistake that Marx committed of ignoring TIME as a factor.

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