Firstly, even if we assume that his conclusions are correct regarding the acceleration of inequality, his proposed solution is guaranteed not to work.
Charitably assuming omnipotence, handing more power to political authority over free markets necessarily increases the already enormous returns on lobbying activities and makes the ability to raise barriers to entry a more valuable commodity for political authority holders to trade in. Why compete on merit when you can buy competitive power straight from the political apparatus?
Meanwhile back in reality, omnipotence is not an assumption you can make. Cryptocurrencies stand a good chance of removing power over the free movement of capital from political authorities. Even forgetting technology advancements that may allow people to entirely circumvent capital controls, there is the tried and true method of employing hordes of lawyers and accountants to tailor schemes to achieve the same ends through political channels.
Putting all of this aside though, the fundamental r > g observation is conditional. If the return on capital is greater than overall economic growth, inequality increases. However, real growth is a function of the increase in the wealth of an economy, if capital cannot find opportunities to increase growth by investment then capital returns as well as growth will fall. Less growth, less return on capital.
Unless of course you can manage to subvert the entire monetary system through political channels and provide direct taps to the investment class so that even if they're not productively investing in anything and seeing real returns linked to growth they still see returns from quantitative easing and early access to new money. But who causes this effect? The same political authority the author proposes to fix the problem.
Charitably assuming omnipotence, handing more power to political authority over free markets necessarily increases the already enormous returns on lobbying activities and makes the ability to raise barriers to entry a more valuable commodity for political authority holders to trade in. Why compete on merit when you can buy competitive power straight from the political apparatus?
Meanwhile back in reality, omnipotence is not an assumption you can make. Cryptocurrencies stand a good chance of removing power over the free movement of capital from political authorities. Even forgetting technology advancements that may allow people to entirely circumvent capital controls, there is the tried and true method of employing hordes of lawyers and accountants to tailor schemes to achieve the same ends through political channels.
Putting all of this aside though, the fundamental r > g observation is conditional. If the return on capital is greater than overall economic growth, inequality increases. However, real growth is a function of the increase in the wealth of an economy, if capital cannot find opportunities to increase growth by investment then capital returns as well as growth will fall. Less growth, less return on capital.
Unless of course you can manage to subvert the entire monetary system through political channels and provide direct taps to the investment class so that even if they're not productively investing in anything and seeing real returns linked to growth they still see returns from quantitative easing and early access to new money. But who causes this effect? The same political authority the author proposes to fix the problem.