By Madeleine Albright, Hernando de Soto

Thursday, Jul. 05, 2007

Margaret Atieno Okoth, 49, sells cabbage six days a week from a cramped stall in the teeming Toi market of Nairobi, alongside vendors hawking everything from secondhand shoes to bicycle parts.

One of the things that captured our imagination was the question “Where was life born? Where did organic evolution begin?”

Both Marx and Adam Smith were fascinated by the division of labor. You will remember that Adam Smith begins The Wealth of Nations.....