Hernando de Soto

Cross-posted to Mises.org/blog:

Hernando de Soto to speak at UNC

B.K. Marcus

Hernando de Soto is no Rothbardian.

He writes of social contracts, of voluntary taxation (meaning the coercive kind we have now), and of the indispensable role of the State in defining and securing the private right to property.

But unlike so many development economists, he sees the solution to world poverty as secure property rights for the poor, based on a principle of homesteading.

In his book, The Mystery of Capital, he illustrates the distinction between property-as-possession and property title as the basis for the entrepreneurial generation of wealth. The world's poor have the former; they need the latter.

Austro-libertarians will take issue with much of his writing, including his assertion than only Marxism presents a credible theory of class conflict -- apparently DeSoto doesn't realize that Marx took the structure for his model of conflict (working class versus capitalist class) from classical liberal class theory (productive class versus political class) -- but DeSoto's bottom-up emphasis on the creation of wealth is a breath of fresh air in a field dominated by top-down models of "development".

DeSoto will be speaking at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, next Tuesday, October 26th. The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, visit the web page for this event.