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When I found out that Sandel and Piketty had written a book together, I was immediately curious. After all, they come from different normative traditions: Sandel from communitarianism and Piketty from socialism. Yet they share a common goal—greater equality. However, their approaches to achieving it differ a bit.

Sandel focuses on restoring a sense of community within nations. He argues that part of the issue of dignity inequality stems from the elite looking down on the less educated. He suggests that if we pay more attention to the common good, inequality in other areas—such as access to basic services and political equality—will naturally decrease as well. A key part of his vision is ensuring that everyone, including those with lower education levels, has a greater say in politics and that public services improve, so that the wealthy and the poor once again interact in daily life. His thoughts on meritocracy are also impressive and highlight a possible contributing factor to populism.

Piketty, on the other hand, believes that tackling economic inequality should be the first step. As long as wealth gaps remain vast, the rich will continue to buy power and look down on others. To counter this, he proposes radical economic reforms, such as income and wealth taxes of up to 90% on the highest earners, a globally distributed corporate tax (as a form of compensation for colonial exploitation and environmental damage caused by wealthy nations), and giving employees at least 50% voting rights in companies. Sounds extreme? It is. But Piketty argues that even more drastic changes have happened before. He points out that in the early 20th century, average tax rates were around 10%, whereas later they increased to about 50%. In his view, the most socialist periods were actually the most successful—until left-wing parties let the free market take over and abandoned their working-class base. Now, they seem more like elite parties rather than true representatives of labor.

One of Piketty’s proposals that I find interesting was his idea of an international treaty for a minimum corporate tax rate. Right now, countries struggle to raise corporate taxes because companies can always threaten to move to a tax haven (made me thinkt of ASML’s recent threats). But if all countries set a minimum rate, that argument loses its power, and governments would have more control over big corporations. This would also help create more political equality. Because, as Piketty himself acknowledges, the money needed for equality cannot just come from “ordinary� people—voters simply won’t agree to that. “Take it from the big corporations� is the more common saying.

Okay, that was my content-focused brain dump. Now, about the book itself: it’s basically a written transcript of a conversation between Sandel and Piketty. Literally that. They gave a lecture in Paris on inequality, and this book is just a typed-out version of that discussion. And honestly, that does a disservice to their ideas. I’ve read previous works from both authors, so I was able to follow the discussion easily, but I also knew how much was missing. Such a complex topic, analyzed from different normative perspectives, squeezed into just over 100 pages? It doesn’t do justice to the depth of their thinking and research.

I suspect the book is meant to convince people of the need for new policies to promote equality—it’s currently ranked #2 at Bruna in Maastricht, so it’s clearly attracting attention. But does it actually succeed in making that case? I have my doubts. For me, it was an interesting summary of their ideas, and it was cool to see them engage together. But truly persuasive? And comprehensive? I don’t know�