I think there are a lot who read the book. Actually, I’ve watched the film only, although I am a rare person in the modern era who read Das Kapital, 3000 pages in Japanese edition. My friend told me that there came the film of the ‘updated’ version of Das Kapital, so I watched it.
I felt that the first half of the film (or presumably the contents of the book per se) was quite similar to what Karl Marx claimed in a series of his books. Capital has its own nature to eternally/relentlessly increasing itself, as shown in the last few centuries.
What Karl Marx didn’t expect was the advent of welfare states, which turns out to be more successful than the socialist countries. However, due to information innovation, the world is in jeopardy again. Capital has necessitated human labor and thus needed to make some sort of concessions in how it deals with the general public; now it is different. In the era of automation, capital might not need a large number of humans anymore. That is a big risk to humanity. The inequality might be fixed in the next couple of decades.
Throughout human history, nations’ revival was accompanied by tax reforms, and I believe it is crucial for us to work on it now. Inheritance tax is one thing — I personally believe that the tax rate should be very high (60+%). The international coordination to capture most of the rich people who would evade tax payment will be crucial too. It’s also very nice to promote charity and philanthropy of the wealthiest people, as Bill Gates is doing. Corporate/Income tax is also important, but I don’t know how to make it happen (in the worst case, many people might face many double taxations, and which is not fair too).
