Liberals consider Piketty’s book a must-read, but only, Eric Falkenstein says, because, like Marx’s Capital, it’s a great safety blanket for Liberal prejudices:
The end-game is exactly what progressive conventional wisdom (e.g., the common New York Times or Harvard professor view) has been preaching for over 50 years: enlarge the state. The key point is a highly credentialed academic wrote a long book proving that some abstruse mathematical inequality (r>g) implies we need to raise taxes on the rich and regulate wealth more democratically. It’s really the debating tactic called ‘spreading’, which is top put forth so many arguments, none sufficient or necessary, that you can always claim victory. For example I could question his many empirical assertions, such as how could German inflation have averaged only 14% from 1913-1950 (p. 545) given inflation was 10^10 in 1923, or how depreciation affects his r/g=C/I steady state equilibrium, but that would leave another 20 assertions unstained, and so those who want to euthanize renteirs can retain faith in their big picture.
Piketty is a modern progressive, best defined as someone who thinks intellectuals should run everything as the vanguard of the people, which is why academics, journalists, and writers are predominantly progressive. Hayek noted that scribes have always been egalitarian, probably always lamenting the fact that the idiots in power don’t write nearly as well as them, and thus, are objectively less qualified but via some tragic flaw in the universe, end up in power. It forms the common reverse dominance hierarchy so common today, where obsequious, hypocritical yet articulate and confident leaders pander to the masses and rule via democracy, focusing their envious eyes on those who aren’t interested in that game, such as those concerned with business, religion, or their own family. As Piketty notes, “if we are to regain control of capitalism we must bet everything on democracy” (p. 573), he says from his inegalitarian and very undemocratic position at the Paris School of Economics.
It never occurs to them that the main problem with subjecting markets to democratic control is that those who end up wielding power will be incompetent or tyrannical, and that ‘the people’ have never ruled directly, only their various proxies. Every totalitarian government of the 20th century has rested on at least the perception of massive popular support, which is why they have all ruled in the name of The People. An unchecked democracy becomes mob rule, which becomes tyrannical and highly illiberal, why the Founding Fathers, so familiar with Greek history, were careful to put checks and balances in the US constitution and emphasize the republican nature of government.