BBS Book Discussion Thingie Book II: Reading "Capital in the 21st Century"

[Donald_Petersen]

Howdy!

And welcome to the BoingBoing BBS Book Club, Season Two! Our selection this time is Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty. Currently, we plan to read one chapter a week (starting today with the Introduction rather than Chapter 1 because hey, it’s practically Tuesday already), discussing said chapter beginning on the Friday following. So if you’re reading with us, you can start the Introduction now, and we’ll begin discussing the Introduction this Friday, 22 May. After that point, we suggest you read Chapter One in time to begin discussion on Chapter One on Friday, 29 May. And so on.

Some people read ahead (since they can’t help themselves), but we’ll limit each week’s discussion to the chapter(s) read that week or earlier, so even though you’re perfectly welcome to be a speed-reader and swallow the whole book in one sitting if that’s your preference, please wait and go with the crowd when it comes to discussion.

The only other rules are the usual ones: be smart and civil and have as much fun as the Dismal Science permits! We’ll start the Introduction’s discussion thread this Friday, but feel free to post preliminary thoughts, predictions, hopes, fears, (dry) dreams, misgivings, and prognostications here until then.

I’m gonna hazard a guess that the butler didn’t do it.

Cheers!

[Kimmo]

Already read it, it’s compulsory.

Milton fucking Friedman and Ayn fucking Rand did it. Fucking Reagan and fucking Thatcher came across the body some years later, went halves eating it then shat it out, and repeated the drill a couple more times.

[anon67050589]

SPOILERS!!!

[anon61221983]

You should join in our discussion then! Skim it and join us on Friday, please!

[aeon]

It’s Friday evening in NZ, so I guess I get the first comment.

Piketty appears to have analysed an enormous amount of historical data for his “Capital” and I enjoyed his criticism of the Dismal Science’s practitioners as obsessed with “petty mathematical problems of interest only to themselves”. But the rather depressing (dismally Malthusian, even) take home message from the Introduction appears to be, that we may need to have another really big war to usher in a period of wealth equality such as the one that occurred after World War II.

[ChuckV]

“Everybody has one or two great thoughts and mine was simple–we’re all doomed.”

Dr. Guillermo Infermo

[Donald_Petersen]

I just started the Discussion Thread for Week 1 and quoted the two above comments there. We’ll have a new discussion thread every week to keep organized.