Capitalism can't work without property rights, which 4.5 billion lack!

[BurtWorm]

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050922/beyond_bullets_but_within_reach.php

...

Hernando De Soto is the director of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Peru, which is now expanding operations into 30 developing countries. That growth is due to de Soto's remarkable, yet simple, thesis: Capitalism is failing the developing world because the people there are excluded from the formal system of property rights, business organization and identity that the modern economy requires. For those of you who want to read more, his book, The Mystery Of Capital , has been out for a few years now....

De Soto estimates that only one billion people live in countries with fully functional property rights systems. Of the five billion people outside that "global economy," somewhere around 500 million are elites whose families enjoy property rights and have structured or supported the system to exclude the other 4.5 billion people.

And it's that 4.5 billion people who, with no chance for ever improving their lot, become the audience for extremist messages, whether from Osama bin Laden or the Shining Path.

I'll write more later. But think about this: If 4.5 billion people do not have a legal address, title to their home, or the ability to set up a company, how can development spending result in progress? Clearly, free trade will only serve the interests of those 500 million elites and increase inequality. Macroeconomic restructuring is meaningless.

...


--Patrick Doherty | Thursday 11:19 AM

[BurtWorm]

1. kick

[rinsd]

2. Shhhhhhhhh....

You may wake up those who don't see the connection between property rights for all as a hallmark of freedom in society.

[tx_dem41]

3. Yeah....a lot of people on this board don't believe

in property rights. I've been lectured on their "evils" incessantly.

No wonder this one is slipping down the hole.

[BurtWorm]

5. They're only an evil when they're inequitably distributed.

And they're clearly inequitably distributed when less than one fifth of the world has them and the rest don't.

[tx_dem41]

6. I'm not arguing with that BW.

I basically agree. But, I have been lectured incessantly on the evils of ANY property rights, equitable or inequitable.

[BurtWorm]

7. I have to admit to being ambivalent about property rights myself.

I tend to agree with the anarchists that, fundamentally, property is theft from the common wealth. Capitalists always argue that property, and the promise of being able to acquire more, makes innovation possible. Maybe so. But there is a large price humanity as a whole pays for this "gift," as the massive disparity cited in the first post suggests.

[rman]

8. The people who implement capitalism in 3rd world nations, to "help"

these developing nations, DO believe in property rights.

Obviously it's quite convenient to them that in those nations property rights do in fact apply to them (ie Western a corporation gets to own and exploit the water supply), but not to the local populations who are supposed to be helped economically, by means of so-called Free Trade Agreements.

There's no wonder about property rights for indigenous people being forgotten; it's entirely predictable. Who benefits? The same guys who make the rules, same guys who implement the rules.

[phusion]

4. Excellent..

Thanks for that link. I'm going to check out that book...