The Laws of Capitalism: Trailer
Introduction to the Laws of Capitalism series at New Economic Thinking (INET).
In this series, Professor Katharina Pistor (@ColumbiaLawSchool1) breaks down the history, process, institutions, and participants involved in the legal coding of capital. She shows us how private actors have harnessed social resources to accumulate wealth, generating not only economic inequality, but inequality in law. Enabling them to opt out of jurisdictions, restrict governmental policy, and erode democracy.
The Value of Law
In this article, Pistor draws attention to law’s pecuniary value. Law is the very stuff from which many wealth generating, or capital, assets are made, foremost among them intangible assets that account for most of the private wealth today. For law to serve as a fountain of wealth, it must be backed by state power, and indeed, sovereign states have been more than willing to offer a helping hand. In short, the most critical source for wealth, that is law, is itself of the state and should be subject to social norms enshrined in our constitutions, not abstract welfarism.
Rule by Data: The End of Markets?
In this paper, Pistor argues that while it may well be the case that law constitutes markets, markets are not the only way in which economic relations may be organized, and law is not the only feasible mode of governing these relations. Central planning under socialism posed an alternative, which proved ultimately non-viable.1 The rise of big tech companies (Big Tech) and their accumulation of vast amounts of data offers yet another possibility: the rule by data.
INET Interview: Legal Evil
From feudal land rights to intellectual property in the modern era, lawyers have been battling over capital for centuries. Typically leveraging social resources to generate and protect private wealth. Katharina Pistor (Columbia University, Center on Global Legal Transformation) explains how this epic struggle has progressed, the rules of the game, and how those rules are manipulated. In her book “The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality,” Pistor lays out all this and more.