But why not listen, instead, to what Hernando de Soto, the Peruvian economist author of The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, has to say. In this article in the Independent last year, de Soto questioned Piketty’s fundamental anti-capitalism premise.
The two super economists Thomas Piketty and Hernando de Soto both agree that the capitalist system is flawed. But where Piketty thinks there is too much capitalism, de Soto thinks there is too little, which is the fundamental reason why millions of migrants right now are banging on the doors of Europe, writes Nils Elmark.
How long will it take the West to remember that democratic capitalism requires strong property rights to set clear boundaries beyond which the state may not go? Like the entropic universe and all open spaces, the global market is a turbulent place with little respect for life. All living systems, whether natural or organised by man, originate and operate only in encapsulated spaces.
For markets to flourish, and as the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has recently argued, private property rights will need to move center stage. Not only are they necessary for economic growth, they are also necessary for long-term political stability in the region. It was, after all, the widespread trampling of the property rights of the “common man” that helped to fuel the Arab Spring.
Der "arabische Frühling" begann als Aufschrei gegen willkürliche Enteignung. Eigentumssicherheit für alle im Nahen Osten und gleichberechtigte Teilnahme am Weltmarkt würden den Terror besiegen helfen.
After all, the Arab Spring began when a poor Tunisian entrepreneur, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire in December 2010 to protest the merciless expropriation of his business. He committed suicide – as his brother Salem told me in an interview recorded for American public television – for “the right of the poor to buy and sell.”
France's prominent magazine Le Point, has featured ILD's Hernando de Soto with a portrait interview in their January 2016 issue. The feature highlights the work of Hernando on the informal economy and takes a special look on his work in the MENA region in regards to the Arab Spring.
End ‘anoikis’ in Middle East to win the war on terror 6 Wednesday, December 30, 2015Hernando de SotoHernando de Soto wonders how long it will take the West to remember that democratic capitalism requires strong property rights to set clear boundaries beyond which the state may not go? Without them, the situation in the Middle East will remain volatile for years to come
People's homes are most often their biggest asset -- something that can be borrowed against to start a business or secure a safe retirement. In the developing world, property titles take on even more meaning. Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, for example, has identified trillions of dollars of "dead capital" in the developing world: people living in the world's poorest slums own their homes, but without formal titles they can't easily sell, appraise, insure or borrow against those assets.
What results when people don’t have firm legal title to their property, protected by the government? Hernando de Soto, a Peruvian economist, told us in his classic The Mystery of Capital: The impoverished Third World is the result.
Hernando de Soto and his 1989 book, “The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World.” It has sparked numerous free-market reforms in his native country and throughout Latin America.
Es hora de considerar que la fuerza de nuestros oponentes deriva, al menos hasta cierto punto, de sentimientos similares a los que animaron la Guerra de Independencia de los Estados Unidos y la Revolución Francesa: de frustración y exclusión respecto del sistema predominante.
FIGAROVOX/TRIBUNE- La paix dans les pays arabes passe par le développement de la libre entreprise et d'une sécurité juridique, plaide l'économiste péruvien Hernando de Soto.
It has been 14 years since US president George W. Bush declared a “global war on terror”. Today, after spending $1.6 trillion on that war and killing 101 terrorist chieftains, from Osama bin Laden to “Jihadi John”, the West remains just as vulnerable, if not more so, to extremists who can recruit fighters and strike any Western capital virtually at will. Now that another president—François Hollande of France—has also declared war on terror (as have other European leaders), are the prospects for victory really any better? I have my doubts.