Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tekboy who wrote (25868)	4/18/2002 5:30:43 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I doubt much would come of it. It is so encouraging to have you back. I was sure you had come up with a solution while you were away. I just watched part three of the PBS special, "Commanding Heights." It is well done, for what it is. The interesting part to me was the time spent with economist Hernando de Soto, author of "The Other Path" and "The Mystery of Capital", which have been major best sellers in South America. These books go after the reason the poor in developing countries have not been more successful in having the bottom level poor make money. He says the west has been successful "because the West has a property rights system, and property rights systems seem to be about ownership. What we're discovering more and more is that it's really the system that undergirds the system of values called capitalism. In other words, you have property rights in the West. In developing nations we do, too, but they're not legal. Once you legalize them and you have recordkeeping systems and you have tracking systems and you've got contracts and you're able to get all the information about somebody's ownership over an asset, all of a sudden you obtain enormous amounts of data that you do not have in developing nations." I really think that he is on the right track. We have been most successful here because we have had more individual freedom and the rule of law from the start of our society.