Thomas Piketty Is Right Out of Ayn Rands Nightmare – The Wall Street Journal

All creations of wealth in history have issued from a collective process, writes Thomas Piketty in his book A Brief History of Equality (Tunku Varadarajan, Books, April 9). Arguing for aggressive redistribution of the spoils of capitalism, Mr. Piketty writes that this collective process includes the division of labor, the use of global natural resources, and the accumulation of knowledge since the beginnings of humanity.

This recalls Dr. Floyd Ferris in Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged, a dystopian novel. A mans brain is a social product. A sum of influences that hes picked up from those around him, Ferris says. Nobody invents anything, he merely reflects whats floating in the social atmosphere. A genius is an intellectual scavenger and a greedy hoarder of the ideas which rightfully belong to society, from which he stole them. All thought is theft. If we do away with private fortunes, well have a fairer distribution of wealth. If we do away with genius, well have a fairer distribution of ideas.

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Thomas Piketty Is Right Out of Ayn Rands Nightmare - The Wall Street Journal