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Comment by PM_Tech | Hacker News Reader

I very much doubt anyone can tear Piketty to bits. At all.

Not without a book of comparable size and research time invested.

Try reading his blog then. He's not rebutting it word for word, of course, but he makes it fairly obvious there are some rather large and often fundamental holes in Piketty's arguments:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2014/06/17/book-review-pi...

No I am good thanks. I will just discount it. I don't consider a blog post a suitable way to analyse the magnum opus of an economist of the stature of Piketty.

EDIT : Curiousity got the better of me. I read the review of Capital.

I stopped at this line -

"Here are some ideas, some taken from my 2009 economic recovery plan for the U.S."

The author is a supremely talented electrical engineer. Stick to that instead of whining "No one listened to my economics ideas."

Last time I checked, economists don't post blogs claiming no one is listening to their ideas about microprocessors or front end development.

As an analysis it's a little all over the place.

The first half says "this is why Piketty is (probably) wrong about there being a problem" and the second half saying "and he's wrong about what we should do about it, here's what we should do instead".

Surely if there is no problem, the there is nothing which needs to be done about it?

His tl;dr of it is "Piketty is jealous".

The best tl;dr I have ever read. You are totally accurate. That is exactly what Greenspun is claiming. :-)

As comment goes that sounds suspiciously like an ad-hominem attack rather than an actual criticism of the substance of the argument.

What argument? WTF are you talking about? Who is arguing?

Piketty's argument - the one he puts forward over 700 pages in the book - as distinct from Piketty himself.

Saying Piketty is jealous may or may not be true, but it says nothing about whether what he says in his book is correct or not (and if not in what way he is incorrect).

If someone disagrees with what he says then saying things about Piketty himself is really rather by-the-by as it's his analysis that needs to be critiqued. He may be an idiot speaking truth or a genius speaking nonsense, but the truth or nonsense (rather than the idiot or genius) is the significant matter.

EDIT: I've not read either Piketty (life is too short - at least mine is) or Greenspun's analysis of it (would be rather pointless as I've not read what he's talking about).

I'm only saying that if something can be genuinely summarised as "Piketty is jealous" then that sounds like an attack on the author rather than the work.

Greenspun def attacks Piketty as an individual and has done numerous times it appears.

RSJW is right on the money with his TL;DR

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