~Efficient Happiness: Babble-On

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Hernando de Soto is a Peruvian economist known for his work on the informal economy, or economic activity that is neither taxed nor monitored by a government. De Soto argues that an important characteristic of capitalism is the functioning state protection of property rights in a formal property system where ownership and transactions are clearly recorded.

Interview with Hernando de Soto:

“. . . Capitalism is essentially the economic system of poor people. That's what allowed the people that came from humble origins of the world to have economic rights the way only nobility and the high bourgeoisie had it before. So capitalism is essentially a tool for poor people to prosper. . . The constituency of capitalism has always been poor people that are outside the system. That's the way it worked in the United States. That was the basis of the libertarian or liberal democratic revolution that occurred in Western Europe. I don't know why it is that everybody expects that when you go and you talk to rich people throughout Latin America or Asia or the Middle East you are in touch with people who have the same libertarian principles that you do. You don't. The real constituency is below, and until the people who consider themselves real capitalists realize that they're not real capitalists, they're talking about the systems of privilege that existed way before popular capitalism was in place. . . .”

~Efficient Happiness

June 7, 2007

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