The Mystery of Capital

Abstract

At long last, Hernando de Soto has provided us with a sequel to his unparalleled tour-deforce The Other Path, which in merciless detail described and with cool judgment analyzed the astounding situation facing the poor in the Third World, who in fact have to fight an uphill battle against their own governments, with the only help they get from the West being trickle-down handouts. For, De Soto revealed, it was not the lack of energy or entrepreneurial capacity nor an invincible popular stupidity that produced the poverty in the Third World but governments, both national and foreign, that refused to recognize in their own citizens the spirit of entrepreneurship, their efforts to better themselves, their savings, their accumulated property, but rather wrote them off as shantytown riff-raff whose only hope was birth control. De Soto tore the lid off of this world and forever changed how we look at the poor in the Third World. And now he has published the further development of that book, purporting to provide a philosophical foundation for the phenomenon of capital, telling us again why it is the poor's last best hope, on the material plane, for the future.