to Piketty the garish events of midcentury last century are a shock that briefly undoes an almost inexorable dynamic of growing hierarchy. 1/

(his actual politics are not so fatalistic, but he explains continuing concentration of wealth in such deterministic terms. ironically, shocks of fascism and war creates space for a kind of respite!) 2/

i think it’s better to treat say a Piketty-ish approach and a Polanyi-ish approach as complementary. the events Piketty takes as shocks are the events Polanyi/Keynes/Arendt etc want to explain. 3/

i don’t think Piketty means to suggest no explanation is worthwhile. i think it is just not his thing as a modeler of the dynamics of wealth to explain them. 4/

so while he models those dynamics, he treats these events — which even in his tale are the most startling events in all if history! — like a comet. economists don’t model comets, but that doesn’t mean astronomers shouldn’t. /fin