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From: "John Hall" <johnhall@evergo.net>
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Subject: Property rights in the 3rd World (De Soto's Mystery of Capital)
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Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 13:02:45 -0700



> From: fork-admin@xent.com [mailto:fork-admin@xent.com] On Behalf Of
Dave
> Long
> Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 11:12 AM
> To: fork@example.com
> Subject: RE: The Curse of India's Socialism
> 
> 
> 
> When I'd read that "getting legal title
> can take 20 years", when I believe that
> 1 year ought to be more than sufficient,
> (and helped by the Cairo reference) I'd
> assumed that we were talking about the
> urban poor.
> 
> If I see people living in mansions, or
> even in suburban subdivisions, I assume
> they didn't have too much trouble with
> their titles.

Pg 177:
In another country, a local newspaper, intrigued by our evidence of
extralegal real estate holdings, checked to see if the head of state's
official residence had a recorded title.  It did not.

Pg 92:
The value of land in the formal sector of Lima averages US$50 per square
meter, whereas in the area of Gamarra, where a great deal of Peru's
informal manufacturing sector resides, the value per square meter can go
as high as US$3,000.

==========

I'd have made the same assumption you did.  De Soto says that isn't
correct.  You can find mansions that don't have title.  A lot of them,
in fact.  But they can't be used for collateral for a loan, or otherwise
participate as 'capital' because of their extra-legal status.

 
> > Mr. Long, I think you'd particularly enjoy the De Soto work.
> 
> On the "to find" list.  Any chance of
> an explanation of that "Bell Jar" in
> the meantime?

French historian Fernand Braudel (so Braudel's Bell Jar, not De Soto's)

==>

The key problem is to find out why that sector of society of the past,
which I would not hesitate to call capitalist, should have lived as if
in a bell jar, cut off from the rest; why was it not able to expand and
conquer the whole of society? ... [Why was it that] a significant rate
of capital formation was possible only in certain sectors and not in the
whole market economy of the time? ... It would perhaps be teasingly
paradoxial to say that whatever was in short supply, money certainly was
not ... so this was an age where poor land was bought up and magnificent
country residents built ... [How do we] resolve the contradiction ...
between the depressed economic climate and the splendors of Florence
under Lorenzo the Magnificent?
 

--------------

De Soto's theory is that the Bell Jar is formed when you segregate those
who have *practical* access to legal property rights and those who do
not.  The poor[1] have property -- lots and lots of property.  What they
don't have is access to the systems where we turn property into capital
and allow it to start growing.  Their property can only be exchanged
with a small section of people who know them personally.

[1] Actual poor people, not 'poor' Americans with a living standard that
is the envy of most of the world.


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