Thomas Piketty: belief

Transcript context

…You’ve been awarded a Legion of Honor. You turned that down, if I understand correctly, on the grounds that you don’t trust, or don’t want, government handing out status. If you do not entirely trust governments to hand out status, why trust them so much to redistribute all this wealth? What’s the political economy constraint on that wealth redistribution process where you say, “Look, this isn’t going to go the way I want it to go”? No, I believe in anonymous rules. It’s not a belief; it’s not a religious belief or religious faith. I study history, and I see that governments, under certain conditions, have been able to develop a public education system, public health system, tax administration, following anonymous rules, which have been working pretty well and which we can improve — we should improve. Whereas deciding on an individual basis who is honorable, who is not honorable — it’s a very different business. And I think, indeed, that governments are not elected to do these kinds of things. This is not what — How do you keep the anonymous rules anonymous? There’s slippage. It’s not something you can easily write into a constitution.…

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