"The hour of capitalism''s greatest triumph," writes Hernando
de Soto, "is, in the eyes of four-fifths of humanity, its hour of
crisis." In The Mystery of Capital, the world-famous Peruvian
economist takes up the question that, more than any other, is
central to one of the most crucial problems the world faces today:
Why do some countries succeed at capitalism while others fail?In
strong opposition to the popular view that success is determined by
cultural differences, de Soto finds that it actually has everything
to do with the legal structure of property and property rights.
Every developed nation in the world at one time went through the
transformation from predominantly informal, extralegal ownership to
a formal, unified legal property system. In the West we''ve
forgotten that creating this system is also what allowed people
everywhere to leverage property into wealth. This persuasive book
will revolutionize our understanding of capital and point the way
to a major transformation of the world economy.
關於作者：
Hernando de Soto is the founder and President of the Institute
of Liberty and Democracy ILD in Lima, Peru, regarded by The
Economist as the second most important think-tank in the world. He
has also been an economist for GATT now WTO, CEO of one of
Europe''s largest engineering firms, and as a governor of Peru''s
Central Reserve Bank. As President Alberto Fujimori''s Personal
Representative and Principal Advisor, he initiated Peru''s economic
reforms and played a leading role in modernizing its economic and
political system. In 1993 de Soto drew up and negotiated the
strategic plan that reversed Fujimori''s coup d''etat and returned
the country to electoral democracy. He and ILD are currently
working in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America on the
practical implementation of the measures for bringing the poor into
the economic mainstream introduced in The Mystery of Capital. He
was recently listed by Time magazine as one of the five leading
Latin American innovators of the twentieth century. His previous
book, The Other Path, was published in more than ten languages and
was a number one bestseller throughout Latin America. --This text
refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
內容試閱：
The Mystery of Capital Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and
Fails Everywhere Else By Hernando de Soto Basic Books Copyright ?
2003 Hernando de Soto All right reserved. ISBN: 9780465016150
Chapter One The Five Mysteries of Capital 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? —Fernand Braudel, The Wheels
of Commerce The hour of capitalism''s greatest triumph is its hour
of crisis. The fall of the Berlin Wall ended more than a century of
political competition between capitalism and communism. Capitalism
stands alone as the only feasible way to rationally organize a
modern economy. At this moment in history, no responsible nation
has a choice. As a result, with varying degrees of enthusiasm,
Third World and former communist nations have balanced their
budgets, cut subsidies, welcomed foreign investment, and dropped
their tariff barriers. ??? Their efforts have been repaid
withbitter disappointment. From Russia to Venezuela, the past
half-decade has been a time of economic suffering, tumbling
incomes, anxiety, and resentment; of "starving, rioting, and
looting," in the stinging words of Malaysian prime minister
Mahathir Mohamad. In a recent editorial the New York Times said,
"For much of the world, the marketplace extolled by the West in the
afterglow of victory in the Cold War has been supplanted by the
cruelty of markets, wariness toward capitalism, and dangers of
instability." The triumph of capitalism only in the West could be a
recipe for economic and political disaster. ??? For Americans
enjoying both peace and prosperity, it has been all too easy to
ignore the turmoil elsewhere. How can capitalism be in trouble when
the Dow Jones Industrial average is climbing higher than Sir Edmund
Hillary? Americans look at other nations and see progress, even if
it is slow and uneven. Can''t you eat a Big Mac in Moscow, rent a
video from Blockbuster in Shanghai, and reach the Internet in
Caracas? ??? Even in the United States, however, the foreboding
cannot be completely stifled. Americans see Colombia poised on the
brink of a major civil war between drug-trafficking guerrillas and
repressive militias, an intractable insurgency in the south of
Mexico, and an important part of Asia''s force-fed economic growth
draining away into corruption and chaos. In Latin America, sympathy
for free markets is dwindling: Support for privatization has
dropped from 46 percent of the population to 36 percent in May
2000. Most ominously of all, in the former communist nations
capitalism has been found wanting, and men associated with old
regimes stand poised to resume power. Some Americans sense too that
one reason for their decade-long boom is that the more precarious
the rest of the world looks, the more attractive American stocks
and bonds become as a haven for international money. ??? In the
business community of the West, there is a growing concern that the
failure of most of the rest of the world to implement capitalism
will eventually drive the rich economies into recession. As
millions of investors have painfully learned from the evaporation
of their emerging market funds, globalization is a two-way street:
If the Third World and former communist nations cannot escape the
influence of the West, neither can the West disentangle itself from
them. Adverse reactions to capitalism have also been growing
stronger within rich countries themselves. The rioting in Seattle
at the meeting of the World Trade Organization in December 1999 and
a few months later at the IMFWorld Bank meeting in Washington,
D.C., regardless of the diversity of the grievances, highlighted
the anger that spreading capitalism inspires. Many have begun
recalling the economic historian Karl Polanyi''s warnings that free
markets can collide with society
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