Uncovering the Secrets of Capitalism: Examining Why Capitalism Thrives in the West and Struggles Everywhere Else

Jean-Paul Azam: Ce livre est un classique de la "non-gouvernementalité" avant la lettre. de Soto y montre comment le secteur informel où l'Etat ne livre pas beaucoup de biens publics est capable de produire de beaux succès économiques portés par des entrepreneurs informels. En termes simples, ces études de cas montrent que le développement économique est le résultat normal quand l'Etat n'interfère pas trop de façon contre productive. Un classique, qui mérite encore d'être lu.

France on Sep 10, 2023

148newport: Engaging from start to finish

United Kingdom on Jul 01, 2023

Kindle Customer: Man proposes God disposes was an old proverb; the modern proverb is man proposes; money disposes!!!

India on Jun 19, 2023

Jamiel CotmanJamiel Cotman: It’s like he’s taking apart a race car, piece by piece, and putting it back together, better, and with improved parts! Capitalism can seem difficult to grasp, but De Soto, who has actually built capitalist economies in developing countries, breaks it down into six parts

1) Document the economic potential of all assets

“Capital is born by representing in writing-in a title, a security, a contract, and in other such records- the most economically and socially useful qualities about the asset as opposed to the visually more striking aspects of the asset. The moment you focus your attention on the title of the house, for example, and not the house itself, you have automatically stepped from the material world into the conceptual world where capital lives”

2) Integrate Asset Documentation into one System that Anyone Can Access

“The reason capitalism triumphed in the West and sputtered in the rest of the world is because most of the assets in Western nations have been integrated into one formal representational system. Developing and former communist nations have not done this. In all countries I have studied, I have never found just one legal...

United States on Jan 26, 2021

187411: I love it when a book states what its about on the first few pages and then spends the next 200 pages elaborating it in a laid back style. The book has, however, several shortcomings which one would do well to consider. The economic literature points out the following:

- de Soto confuses stocks and flows - i.e. owning land is not the same as a steady stream of saved income. The latter is the one which creates credit, the former isn't. Empirically, little effect on credit availability came through titling projects.

- established formal property rights need overall stability and several other types of institutions - which most likely are underdeveloped in the countries de Soto writes about. (watch out for sarcasm:)

"Instead of the messy and difficult business of thinking about resources, industry, business, legal frameworks, what institutions to establish, good governance and democracy, appointing, training and educating public servants, and so on, a development agency can simply recommend that property rights be better established. In particular the vexed problems of land and income redistribution can perhaps be ignored (Borras, 2006). To establish the property...

Germany on Jun 09, 2016

O. Halabieh: This book, unveils the basis of why capitalism was successful as an econo-socio-political system in the West, but continues to struggle in the developing world. The central premise as best summarized by the author: "That past is many nations' present. The Western nations have so successfully integrated their poor into their economies that they have lost even the memory of how it was done, how it was done, how the creation of capital began back when, as the American historian Gordon Wood has written, "something momentous was happening in the society and culture that released the aspirations and energies of common-people as never before in American history." The "something momentous" was that Americans and Europeans were on the verge of establishing widespread formal property law and inventing the conversion process in that law that allowed them to create capital. This was the moment when the West crossed the demarcation line that left to successful capitalism - when it ceased being a private club and became a popular culture, when George Washington's dreaded "banditti" were transformed into the beloved pioneers that American culture now venerates."

Numerous books have been...

United States on Jan 26, 2013

San Patch: We all know that free markets, which deliver the latest Harry Potter novel within three days to any location in the world, only work in the West. What's more, popular culture tells us that the reason why the free market does not work in benighted places like Uganda is due to a number of simplistic explanations: Culture - the people are lazy, while we in the West have a Christian ethic of hard work; Religion - Third Worlders are still stuck with mysterious religions right out of Conrad's heart of darkness and finally; Third Worlders are `content' with their lot in life. Thankfully, Hernando de Soto's Mystery of Capital presents a more plausible reason for the failure of capitalism outside the West: the lack of property rights in the Third World.

De Soto's premise is that widely accessible legal property systems are the foundation of the West's prosperity and that the absence of such systems in Third World countries is the principal reason why all attempts at macroeconomic reform in the Third World- however good-intentioned - are doomed to failure. By presenting results of original grass-roots research that he conducted in five countries (Haiti, Peru, Brazil, Egypt and The...

United Kingdom on Apr 29, 2009