Capital's cream rises, and here's just how it does

This is a book of just a sort and focus I've long been waiting for. It gets right to the crux of the nuts and bolts of wealth and power, the maps and charters, if you will, lifting these layers to a deep level which digs beyond the PR mythos and justifications offered by the rich and powerful, for their station in life. I might not be perfectly politically in sync with (where I think) this author is, but for me, having lived at the crossroads of law and business and the intellectual and philosophical examination of same (now finally as a professor), her chosen focus is right where mine is. The roots of power and control can be obscured by various opaque concepts and documents, and it is all laid bare here, concept by concept, piece by piece. I appreciate her digging through some history and delivering some takes I hadn't seen or imagined yet. We must travel back some to see what congealed into our present system. The author explores the different paths and ways of life that were shunted aside, along the way, whose ideas might yet be useful for us, in the search for a future political economy, land use, and planetary footprint that is survivable and good.

The book gets better and better. We get a grand tour of the state of play in today's globalized corporate law world. Then, the corporate lawyer-coders are matched against the digital coders with such tools as smart contracts.

Some other books here which touch on similar themes, but from different angles, include Property by Raymond Frey (going back into great thinkers on property's underlying concepts), and White Shoe, by Jon Oller (on the elite lawyer-history side). I found both of those more backward-looking but informative works excellent in their own ways, and reviewed them here.

Once this book gets past the basics, about an hour or so in, some things show up I appreciate, I have not seen much of elsewhere (in audio), giving heaps of context and background, for example:
- A neat map of the financial and corporate structure of latter-day Lehman Brothers, and a sketch of some of its post-bankruptcy experiences (especially rare in the literature). This is a shell game and sleight-of-hand at its best!
- A deeper dive into the parts and operators of a pretty typical collateralized mortgage structure, pre-2008, and its place in mortgage finance (going beyond the simplicities that popular books have stuck with), and
- A journey back into the origins of financial instruments, since about the 1450s, and the evolution of innovations in that area. From that, the listener can follow the bread crumbs right to where we are.
These are relatively unusual things to find at a good price in any form. Each, for me, is worth the price of admission here.

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10 people found this helpful

Another Marxist Diatribe

This is another bashing of capitalism by a liberal elite professor who has never had a job in business in her life. Capitalism is not perfect but it has advanced society farther and faster than any other economic structure in history. Look at the achievements in medicine, technology, and science in the past few hundred years. Much of this has happened because people have been incented by reward if they do something great. Capitalism can't run amok but it shouldn't be abolished as Pistor lays out. She does indeed capture how law is used to help preserve somebody's work. Somebody has worked hard to achieve something; they should be rewarded for it and have it protected. I'm not sure Pistor has ever really worked in a business. It is competitive. There a people all over the world trying to put you out of business. You have to work hard to be successful. You also have to treat your customers well. I think this is something Marxists typically overlook. You just can't treat people like crap because if you do, they will just purchase from somebody else. I often think these types of books are written by people who have been looked at as being the "smartest" all their lives and they are jealous of people who may not be as "smart" as them, but do better than them in the business world.

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A peek behind the curtain...

Most unsettling is the notion that what I (most lay-people) considered as essentially universal regarding ‘the law’ is anything but. In short it seems to be far more subjective, dynamic, customized, and private than it is standard. What I will take away most from this book is that individual contracts and the terms thereof are far more binding and discretionary than the laws of any particular jurisdiction. Through this text I want (NEED) to know a whole lot more about the relationship between legal coding and capital. I only wish my eyes had been opened much earlier. Highly recommended.

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Heavy but hearty read for capital market participants

Professor Pistor cycles the points of her premise that the legal system codes capital with privileges that ensure its viability for owners in the first several chapters. She could do more to make the text attractive to the layperson, but overall The Code of Capital hits its mark. The ending in particular finishes with pith by outlining potential remedies and the big picture.

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Very Telling

This is the script for the body politic of all countries to take their countries, economies, and destinies back into their own hands.

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Must for law students and social justice advocates

Please listen to this even if it’s difficult. The big picture makes sense eventually. The larger struggle from corporate control needs more books like this and people like you to understand the real depth of inequality.

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Groundbreaking

This book provides a powerful new way of thinking about the relationship between the creation of wealth and the law. The emphasis, however, is heavy on wealth and not the “inequality” aspect of the title. There is little treatment of the role in law of increasing inequality. It appears that the assumption is that growing wealth and valuable assets leads to others having less wealth, but the problem isn’t so simple. There is also some avoidance of the role of race, like the law’s role of allowing slaves, people, to become sources of wealth.

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opened a whole new world for me

very insightful. sometimes difficult to follow the financial jargon but in a highly complex subject it would be hard to make it more digestible without losing substance. have me a new appreciation for and understanding of the maneuvering of capital

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A very interesting book marred by horrible narration.

It speaks to the high interest of this book and my lack of reading time that I slogged through this audio version. I assume a capitalist chose the narrator.

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insightful

The book was well written, and gave a view into capital rarely given, thank you.

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