A recent book release by French Economist Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has set the political blogosphere buzzing like an angry hornet’s nest. The book, which is a best seller but which is also trending to be amongst the least-read books of recent times (one of those books that people buy with great intent and never get around to) purportedly makes the case that income and wealth inequality are even worse than everyone thought (well, at least everyone who thinks that such measures matter and need addressing). It’s being waved around as a great validation of liberals’ eternal warnings against rapacious, unfettered capitalism and as a clarion call for action, including changing how economies work and redistributing wealth that has concentrated in the hands of a few (obviously unjustly).
There’s been a healthy heaping of criticism of the contents, methodologies and conclusions in the book from various sources. The Wall Street Journal noted a glaring omission in the economic data that, the editorial claims, renders the conclusions worthless. Doubtless, confirmation bias will do it usual business, and those who are prone to wanting to believe that the evil, greedy rich are ruining the world will dismiss criticisms while others will dismiss it as simply another piece of statist propaganda. I haven’t read the book, nor do I intend to, and I have no comment on its actual contents or conclusions. They’re not germane to this essay.
The real takeaway from the brouhaha over the book isn’t in what the book actually says, but rather what people on the political Left think it says. A scan of synopses and reviews shows a range of interpretations of the conclusions, including many who feel we need more redistribution and a few who believe it’s a call for a return to Adam Smith-type laissez-faire, but those don’t matter. What matters is how people are using the mere existence of the book and what they’re told it says as a validation of their preconceived beliefs. If wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, and that concentration has been growing greater over the decades, that must be a Bad Thing. Since capitalism is about individuals and socialism about the masses, then capitalism must be the reason for that Bad Thing coming about. Since that Bad Thing is a Bad Thing, something must be done about it. A book full of numbers, charts and statistical analyses must be at least somewhat correct.
Through my business, I’ve come to know the owner of a neon sign manufacturing and repair company. He once related to me a story of a job he was given, to make a sign that consisted of four block letters on a background. No other guidance, no further input. He made it, shipped it, and found out some time later that the job was ordered by a world-renowned modern artist who attached his name to the piece and sold it for six figures. The neon company owner made all the creative decisions for the job, there was no proof, no feedback. Yet someone was willing to pay a crazy amount of money for the piece because the artist, who had the appropriate name recognition and pedigree, put his name on it. Similarly, one can write 5000 pages of indecipherable gobbledygook and, if there’s a proper pedigree attached to his name, have that gobbledygook held up as unassailable wisdom by those whose beliefs it validates.
Why?
Over the decades in my business, I’ve come to know many people, either as customers or employees, who don’t eat pork because their religion prohibits it. Those religions that have strictures against pork also prohibit or warn against all sorts of other behaviors, but my pork-averse acquaintances have generally demonstrated far less fidelity to those prohibitions than to their eschewing of bacon. The pork thing is a strong taboo, one I’ve seen in their faces – a revulsion at the mere thought of a ham sandwich. The pork stricture’s roots are probably rooted in health concerns going back two or more millennia – health concerns that are meaningless nowadays, yet the stricture remains. Once, as a goof, I mentioned to one such fellow, as he was drinking coffee to which he had just added milk, that milk in this country was processed with pork fat. He laughed, but then asked me if I was kidding. I laughed as well, and said “don’t be ridiculous.” Three weeks later, he asked me again, “you were kidding, right?” The abhorrence for pork ran that strong in him.
Thus it seems to be for some people with capitalism. Raised on a steady diet of “capitalism is bad, greed is bad, the rich got rich by being evil and selfish and abusing the masses,” their dislike of capitalism goes beyond anything logical. There’s a visceral hatred therein. Try saying “Koch Brothers” to someone from that world and prepare to shield your face from flying spittle. Despite giant heaps of evidence that capitalism has created the vast majority of the good in our lives, despite a century’s worth of failures of statism (200+ million dead, billions impoverished, liberties trampled, and a very few made fabulously wealthy), people who have been raised to despise capitalism will continue to do so no matter what evidence is presented to defend and support it.
The real value of Piketty’s book to those who abhor capitalism is that, in an era where the promises of statism have failed to pan out, where governments are getting bigger but things are not getting better, it is a prop and a validation. They can hold it up high and say “Aha! We’re right!” and dismiss counterarguments by waving it around. It’s the equivalent of a book that declares bacon as the root of all cancers and other diseases. It confirms beliefs that border on the religious. It is an anchor against the waves that are beating against their deep-seated beliefs.
The magician, libertarian and atheist Penn Jillette does a weekly podcast. On one such podcast, he shared a story of an orthodox jew he knew who became an atheist. The newly-converted man related the story of the first time he tried bacon. One of his initial reactions was “why did my parents keep this from me?” Certainly, taking that first bite was a very big deal, requiring him to overcome a lifetime’s worth of teaching and conditioning. That can’t be easy for anyone. The difficulty of that first step, of breaking with orthodoxy, is what makes stories of conversion so compelling. The playwright and director David Mamet wrote of his conversion from liberal to conservative in his book The Secret Knowledge. It’s an insightful and compelling read, and it’s also a book that earned him enormous backlash from the liberal community for his apostasy. Both the man who now eats bacon and David Mamet present as very happy and satisfied with their conversions, so much so that they represent good examples for those whose guts turn when they hear the word “capitalism.” To them, I say, give it a try. As Vincent Vega observed, “Bacon tastes good.”
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