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smallmancontrov 3 hours ago

No mention of Piketty or r>g?

Look, I know this is a tech forum and we don't claim to be good at the social sciences, but this is a central debate and r>g, the idea that the rate of return to capital tends to exceed economic growth over the course of history, is a major result from Piketty's Capital In The 21st Century that people interested in "grow the pie" vs "trickle down" really ought to be familiar with. Even if you disagree, you ought to be able to articulate why, and "the average includes winners and losers" ain't it.

"But life has improved, r>g couldn't have been true forever" -- last time the inequality bubble popped because of a great depression and two world wars. The capital was incinerated, metaphorically and literally. It's a cautionary tale and we should aspire to do better.

dnautics 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> It's a cautionary tale and we should aspire to do better.

Why is it a cautionary tale? Sounds like we should have a bunch of incinerations of capital, ideally let the capital mobilizers that are actually competent survive.

tikhonj 2 hours ago | parent [-]

"Let's have more world wars" isn't a great thing to aim for.

dnautics an hour ago | parent [-]

I'm suggesting deflationary contractions, but okay. Note that deflationary contractions in 1930 sucked because we didn't have solid supply chains, modern agriculture, liquid asset markets turbocharged with rapid information interchange etc. Might be worth trying in the 20X0s