Professor Shiller is indeed quite right about Piketty's work being strong on analysis of the problem, but weak on solution. For according to the general economic factors it talks too, it is impossible to find solution. Similarly, guaranteed, Prof. Shiller's erudite solution will prove similarly of no real value--and in fact, if orthogonal to the real problem, the result will be further drift from the goal of equality--an inevitable drunkard's walk away from target.



We are marionettes trying to figure the complex of strings with no note given to the puppeteer, egoism. Inequality will exist in any system that imagines it will rule over ego with a gun, or imagine that if the reigns get some laisez-faire loosening, the horse will be happy with providing hey for the whole stable as long as it gets the most handsome portion. The true powers that be behind the party leadership and the great financial houses laugh their heads off at both Communism and Capitalism--for they will find the means for the most clever and aggressive to rule the whole under any -ism. This, with or without the "People's" or "Republic" or "Democracy" label on the title as so many $99.99 price tags saving us from spending our hundred dollar bill on an overpriced competitor's product.



And a tell-tale sign of human ego beyond its insidious cleverness, and subconscious manipulative intrigue, is that if uneducated it does want what is “good” for it in healthy measure—it wants anything that anyone conceives of as good, it wants it all, and it judges how much it’s got, by how much others have. In short, the most powerful dimension of its “enjoyment” is that others don’t have—unless those others are identified with the self —this point is crucial.



For the problem was never with communism or laisez-faire, it was with their exclusivity, and most particularly exclusion of the ego’s partnership. This opens up a particular new opportunity, now approaching the 1/6th point of the 21st century.



Why this period is different can be expressed in one word—globalization, or perhaps by the Yin to this Yang, interdependence—the former is the boundary condition, the latter is the differential equation, and this will force the rise of a resultant new economics already discovered—behavioral economics.



Mutually responsible relationship has become the key. The fact that our fates are irrevocably intertwined means that there is at last something to teach the ego that it needs to, and will want to learn. This is integral education—not competition and temporary us-vs.-them collaboration for what the individual ego gets out of it. No, rather learn that entwined fates are permanent, we are one, and therefore let all egos recognize themselves as one permanent whole—the new common enemy being death, nonexistence.



This is not communism, it is not capitalism – it is family, common sense, common agreed, voluntary, unified FAMILY. It is communist in concern that all get what they need and provide all that they can. It is laissez-faire because with ego unified, it can trust to the individual to go full steam ahead for the sake of the common good, allow creativity and brilliance full authority to move ahead per its natural capabilities, to do what it love for All that it loves.

Sound like paradise, a dream? Paradise yes, a dream—no, cold hard necessity.



Its time for the ego to grow up and go to school. All it has had till now is a pre-school of untutored free play, attempts at useless moralizing save some temporary corralling value—fear plus a sense of the powerful ego of self-image. These work for a baby, not a rowdy teen growing up fast.



Its sink or swim. But let’s have some faith in the human spirit when truly educated and directed—it will swim!

