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I don't need to watch a video to know why poor countries are poor. If I go to your house and I steal all your stuff and you are not covered by insurance, how much stuff are you going to have afterwards?
There is a far-right fringe of political thought that will quickly scream Property Rights as the cause of all the ills that plague mankind, and a number of conspiracy blogs that they have memorized to quote from. To the exclusion of any other historical factors, of which they are blissfully ignorant. Most of them have an arsenal of guns and ammo in their houses to defend their imagined property rights, and all of them have gotten rich by exploiting people in countries that have no property rights.
This guy deSoto is so full of BS, it doesn't even stay funny long enough to watch to the end. He thinks that as soon as India has property rights, a billion workers in India will suddenly start making ten dollars an hour at Burger King and living in penthouses overlooking the green pristine Ganges. The clue to the objectivity comes in the first few seconds, when you see the US flag and hear the words Liberty and Democracy, and it flows down the sewer from there, enabled by a shill from the Fox Talkshow wing of the Republican Party, which, state by red state, is shamelessly abrogating Liberty and Democracy.
DeSoto himself, a Peruvian, claims responsibility for hundreds of property reform laws in Peru, and it has now been 20 years since those were enacted, and the country remains among the poorest outside Africa, still with only half the per capita GDP of Mexico. Which is not exactly a ringing endorsement of his seminal philosophy. DeSoto was raised in Switzerland in an aristocratic Peruvian family who no doubt had plenty of property rights before they were deposed by a coup. He appears to have written his own Wikipedia article.
DeSoto himself, a Peruvian, claims responsibility for hundreds of property reform laws in Peru, and it has now been 20 years since those were enacted, and the country remains among the poorest outside Africa, still with only half the per capita GDP of Mexico. Which is not exactly a ringing endorsement of his seminal philosophy.
In the PBS video I posted on Peru's economy it pointed out that Peru's economic turnaround came with Alberto Fujimori getting elected. Hernando De Soto was an advisor to Alberto Fujimori so De Soto's influence was a part of what shaped Fujimori's policies to some degree.
In the PBS video I posted on Peru's economy it pointed out that Peru's economic turnaround came with Alberto Fujimori getting elected. Hernando De Soto was an advisor to Alberto Fujimori so De Soto's influence was a part of what shaped Fujimori's policies to some degree.
Influenced to some degree, maybe, but that is not saying (as your first post did) that the only thing any nation has to do in order to start wallowing in the milk and honey is sort out their property rights, and everything will automatically fall into place.
Your other link went on and on at great length, comprehensively reviewing the many things Peru did and is doing to oomph up its economy, without making a single passing reference to the miracle of property rights. How did something of such crucial import go unnoticed?
Furthermore, not all economists agree with deSoto:
"Specifically, we analyze the impact of government land titling in rural Peru. Our findings suggest that land titling does not achieve the positive benefits associated with secure property, such as access to credit. We also find that individuals prefer private enforcement methods of securing property to public means. This suggests that government land titling is not always a channel through which countries can achieve secure property rights institutions."
What deSoto says is little more than an extreme fringe right-wing theory, and at best he can cite some anecdotal examples of how certain elements of property rights have appeared alongside some development in one country. What ne neglects to explain is now a person suddenly endowed with property rights, magically finds a sound education, a marketable skill, access to untapped natural resources, and a suddenly bountiful national economy from which to extract an entrepreneurial share, in order to pay rent to the landlord who now also has an enforceable property right.
This whole Property Rights agenda is a made-up talking point of the far right. Even the Wikipedia article on Property Rights is written by and based on the propaganda of Liberty Fund, Inc., which is in the orbit of the libertarians and Aynrandites. (Never trust an organization that has the word 'Liberty' in their title.)
Well De Soto's emphases on the importance of property rights does play a significant role in helping a country to develop. De Soto's influence on Alberto Fujimori was probably a little broader than just property rights. De Soto may have influnced Fujimori to go in a more market based direction with the economy in general.
Quote:
He(Fujimori) implemented a radical programme of free-market reforms, removing subsidies, privatising state-owned companies and reducing the role of the state in almost all spheres of the economy.
Though this shock therapy brought great hardship for ordinary Peruvians, it ended rampant hyperinflation and paved the way for sustained economic growth in the second half of the 1990s.
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