<story><title>A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”</title><url>http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/marshall-steinbaum-thomas-piketty-takes-ideology-inequality</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>bisRepetita</author><text>I am reading Capital &amp;amp; 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 &amp;quot;the nature of things&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;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 Santo Domingo were paid to forego slavery, when slavery was abolished. It was seen as a compensation for this new law that reduced the value of their property: slaves. Of course, slaves themselves were not compensated. Since they were the main beneficiaries of this new law, they actually had to pay for it in some cases. This is actually what happened.&lt;p&gt;In the USA, there were discussions about a similar outcome, but the sheer enormity of the needed compensation made it impossible This was one big reason that lead to the civil war.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></comment>
<story><title>A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”</title><url>http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/marshall-steinbaum-thomas-piketty-takes-ideology-inequality</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>throw0101a</author><text>Paul Krugman&amp;#x27;s review:&lt;p&gt;* &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;books&amp;#x2F;review&amp;#x2F;capital-and-ideology-thomas-piketty.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;books&amp;#x2F;review&amp;#x2F;capital-and-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Krugman liked Piketty&amp;#x27;s previous book (&lt;i&gt;Captail-21C&lt;/i&gt;), but concluded this one needed some more editing:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;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 volume of dubiously related material. In the end, I’m not even sure what the book’s message is. That can’t be a good thing.&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>