The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

At the other pole are holistic, multifaceted explanations, taking into account history, culture, economics, religion--the whole nine yards. Such accounts may be more intellectually satisfying, but often lead to frustration by convincing us that the problems are too complicated, too resistant to quick fixes, for practical solutions.

The Mystery of Capital falls for the most part in the first camp. It's author, Hernando de Soto, is one of the 3rd World's most dedicated and intelligent reformers. He wants desperately to do something to help the poor, and has been heroically influential--and successful--in arguing against the failed statist solutions long in vogue in Latin America. Now he wants to move beyond criticism to a positive agenda for change. De Soto's impeccably pro-capitalist credentials make his initial criticism especially convincing: actual capitalism in most of the world is restricted to a small elite, while most remain on the outside looking in.

The question is whether de Soto's solution is equally convincing. He does not believe poverty is due to the evil intentions of capitalists or capitalist countries (though he acknowledges that powerful interests in developing countries do not want to make the system more inclusive--a subject which could use more discussion). Nor is it because of culture or any inherent faults in the poor, or in poor countries. No, the real problem lies in a kind of intellectual or historical blindness, which has kept everyone from seeing what the real source of wealth is: real property, or more exactly well-defined and socially accepted property rights. Once a society has this, it has the secret of capital, since these assets can then be used to generate loans, credit, insurance, liabilities and the whole apparatus of capitalism.

It is hard to argue, looking at the real experience of the undeveloped or maldeveloped world, that the lack of property rights is not a huge impediment to economic growth. De Soto and his team have done tremendous work in documenting exactly how this holds back and frustrates the poor and disenfranchised.

But it is equally hard to believe that this is the key or only reason. More accurately, it seems--from de Soto's own account of what is required--that having property rights is a sort of 'meta-cause'. It depends on such a host of other developments in the economy, in society, in the political system (where access historically often depended on property, limited to a few), in the legal system, in the informal norms and mores, that it is hardly practical to point to it as 'the solution' to 3rd world poverty. For this reason, it seems unlikely that simply pointing out that developed countries have complex systems of property rights, though useful, will be enough to allow for the development of similar systems in the developing world.

If de Soto is right, why is China developing so fast, without anything like the formal, all-encompassing property system he thinks is essential? Why did European economic development begin to outpace the rest of the world centuries before the property systems which, he points out, in most Western countries were only arrived at within the last 100 years?

As a recipe for action, The Mystery of Capital is excellent in pointing to a dimension of development that has been neglected, and for its path-breaking research on the ground, discovering what it takes to bring the newly urbanized poor into the modern economy. But as a satisfying account of what ultimately causes poverty and why some countries are rich and others are not, it falls short. For this, one should go to books like David Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, or Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.

He and his team are convinced that the problem is the lack of well defined property rights. He notes that the poor in under-developed countries have assets, but that their real property is often owned informally, and thus cannot be used to generate capital. As a result, the crucial role of real property is simply absent in under-developed countries.

He proposes the obvious solution --- formalization of informal property rights and notes that acquisition of property through informal means (squatting) has a storied history in the United States and other developed nations. DeSoto understands that formalization will be politically difficult, but points out that both rich and poor will benefit economically. One might call it "trickle up economics."

Finally, formal property rights are under attack in developed nations, through overly intrusive land use and environmental regulations. It is well to reflect upon the potential for slipping toward a system that allows virtual squatters to seize or nullify property rights through regulation, threatening a principal source of national income.

Wendell Cox

According to De Soto, the problem outside the West is that while the poor have plenty of assets (land, homes, businesses), these assets lie overwhelmingly in the extralegal, informal realm. De Soto's on the ground research reveals that this is the result of an accelerated process of urbanization and population growth, coupled with the inability of legal systems to adapt to the reality of how people live. What has happened is that throughout the Third World, the costs of making assets legal (obtaining proper title to a house, registering a business, etc.), are so prohibitive both in terms of time and money, that the assets end up being what de Soto calls"dead capital." In the West, a web of financial and legal networks enable people to use their assets to create further wealth, through such tools as mortgages, publicly traded stocks, and the like. Outside the West, most people live and work outside the kind of invisible asset management infrastructure that we take for granted, and thus are unable to use their assets for the "representational purposes" we are able to. Thus the full set of capitalist tools are not available to them and it becomes incredibly hard to realize any kind of upward mobility.

One of the key sections of the book is "The Missing Lessons of U.S. History", in which de Soto demonstrates how the US faced the exact same challenge several hundred years ago. The difference is that the legal system was flexible enough over a century and a half to realign itself with the reality being created on the ground by an energetic citizenry. However, it occurred over the long-term and long ago, and has thus been forgotten by history. What de Soto says needs to be understood is that the less developed nations of today are trying to accomplish the same thing over a much shorter time and with much greater populations, and without a clear understanding of how the West managed to do it. The ultimate challenge is raising the social awareness and political backing necessary to implement major legal change in the face of resistance from an entrenched bureaucracy and elites who benefit from the status quo. This is a daunting and provocative challenge-but not impossible.

Of course, all of the above is greatly simplified, so anyone interested in the state of the world should read it for themselves. De Soto's writing is remarkably clear (especially for an economist), and no background in economics or law is needed to follow his argument. There is a little repetition here and there, but always in the service of making sure the reader doesn't miss the big picture. In the end, whether you agree with his thesis or not, I guarantee it'll challenge your preconceived notions about global capitalism.