From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Feb 20 2003 - 20:10:50 MST
What can be more delightful, talking about what other
people should do with their time, and what they should
read? ;-)
> > Lee Corbin suggested to you that you read the book by Hernando de
> > Soto, The Mystery of Capitalism. I suggest you do so also.
>
> I have not had the opportunity to read TMoC. Though I believe I
> think and espouse many of the principles I would hope it promotes.
> My impression of the position that Mez holds seems to *not* be
> significantly different from mine or that I would expect to find
> in TMoC.
>
> So the question of why one would be urging Mez to read TMoC
> remains open.
Of course, if we all had all the time we wanted, then we
could read everything. Surprising as it may seem, those
who never die *do* get to read everything.
Believe me, "The Mystery of Capital" is a find book,
filled with marvelous insights. It's quite inaccurate
for one to think that one "already knows" what would be
in such a book.
Although "The Mystery of Capital" is about Egypt (in
part---DeSoto discusses five or so countries in parallel),
what Mez and the rest of us were talking about is more
directly addressed by an even more precisely relevant
book: "The Elusive Quest for Growth", by William
Easterly.
The author worked for decades at the IMF, and has an
incredible amount of experience looking at what does
and does not work in third-world countries. His
assessments of what goes wrong there are superb.
It's quite funny in places, and the author indulges
in a lot of humorous self-criticism.
Lee
A better question might be why in the hell is
> the U.S. supporting an undemocratic regime Egypt to the tune
> of 3+ billion dollars per year some 20 years after we bribed
> our way into producing a peace settlement.
>
> > I would like to start you down that road, to understanding the US,
> > with this thought -- can you believe we sort of stumbled into our success
> > pattern and even today 98% of our people haven't got the foggiest idea what
> > it was that we did (and are doing) that was right?
>
> Ah, this is a *key* insight. And it is one that de Soto
> or any other economist may not stumble across.
>
> While capitalism and/or libertarianism are key elements that
> I know people on the ExI list will swear up and down are the
> essential components they may neglect another critical component.
>
> By and large the U.S. population was self-selected!
> Any economic/political discussion that leaves out the
> genetic components of the U.S. population I will always
> view as incomplete. The same may be viewed of the
> Australian population (though my understanding of what
> fraction of self-selection may have taken place there
> is much less certain).
>
> It is a fundamental question -- does one sacrifice
> ones current security (limited as it may be) for
> a completely unknown security in a foreign land?
>
> In response to the above point (98% of our people don't
> know what we are doing right) I would like to suggest
> that the ancestors of many/most Americans selected
> to take the risk. Americans are fundamentally a
> "risk taking" population. Those who are descended
> from people who did not immigrate are in the
> "risk opposed" population.
>
> And that may make all the difference with respect
> the economic performance of a country.
>
> It might have little or nothing to do with the
> academic structures that support capitalism and
> might have a lot to do with the people who actually
> implement it.
>
> Robert
>
>
>
>
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