A New Dark Ages!?? | 69 comments (69 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: A New Dark Ages!?? (4.00 / 7)

The essential attribute of wealth is "appropriability," to create which "the rights of property must be recognized and enforced Whoever makes, interprets, or enforces law produces wealth"

So "wealth" is created by not-sharing, or Enclosure?

Or in other words, property is theft? :-)

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Sat Apr 4th, 2009 at 01:45:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: A New Dark Ages!?? (none / 1)

I believe you are a fan of Hernando de Soto?

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Apr 4th, 2009 at 03:58:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Well (none / 0)

I think I am - as far as I can understand what he writes... Came across him when reading "The Shackled Continent" where he's introduced rather favourably.

by Nomad (Bjinse) on Sun Apr 5th, 2009 at 05:20:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Well (none / 0)

I think I was snarking... De mentioned her less than favourable reaction to a book claiming that the way out of 3rd world poverty was for poor people who own their houses to get mortgages on them. I suspect the book in question is The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else but I am not sure.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Apr 6th, 2009 at 07:44:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Well (none / 0)

Most poor people in Africa don't own their house...

by Nomad (Bjinse) on Mon Apr 6th, 2009 at 09:24:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Well (none / 0)

The argument, roughly, is this

Indeed, if one adds up the estimated value of real estate held by "the poor" in these countries, the total value comes to something in the neighborhood of $9.3 billion. The only problem is that most of this wealth is not in the form of legal titles to property; instead, these are "informal" ownerships not recognized or enforced by the political authorities in these parts of the world.
...
The heart of de Soto's argument is that under this informal system, a vast amount of private wealth exists as "dead capital." Without legal title to real property -- residential homes, retail businesses, factories, apartment buildings -- the informal owners are unable to tap into either the national or global financial markets. Normal loans or lines of credit with real property as the collateral are difficult to acquire.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Apr 6th, 2009 at 09:28:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Yup (4.00 / 2)

So we can bitch and moan about the inequalities and pitfalls of the current (debt-based) financial system or try to make it more fair, most poor people don't even have access to neither the system nor to mortgages despite informal wealth.

Hence the argument (brough up in De's comment in the diary you linked to) doesn't hold whatsoever (and I have my doubt that it is De Soto's). Many poor people don't own their homes at all. There are no available property rights to the "informal wealth" that enable people taking mortgages. We don't know if people would like to take mortgages - they generally can't.

by Nomad (Bjinse) on Mon Apr 6th, 2009 at 10:31:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Well (none / 0)

While a home held by traditional tenure and not recognized by more recent legal systems might be considered "dead capital" it still provides shelter and the likelihood that it will continue to do so is higher if it remains "dead" than if the owner is granted a legal title AND THEN obtains a mortgage. Granting everyone titles to a former commons interspersed with cottages has usually been a prelude to the great majority of those titles falling into the hands of a few individuals who then enclose that commons to the detriment of the previous occupants.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Apr 8th, 2009 at 01:23:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: A New Dark Ages!?? (none / 1)

Seems to me that he throws over all "social contract" theories and bases Neo-Classical Economics squarely on "Might Makes Right." Given the size, political organization, (including unrestricted immigration), and wealth of the USA, even in 1888, at least his choice of founding principle was feasible for at least 100 years. Mason Gaffney, one of whose professional specialties is land use and land taxation, notes that Clark is still the foundation for US tax policy on land.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat Apr 4th, 2009 at 11:28:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: A New Dark Ages!?? (4.00 / 3)

ARGeezer:

Seems to me that he throws over all "social contract" theories and bases Neo-Classical Economics squarely on "Might Makes Right."

I.e. Theft is property.

Is anyone really surprised that this is what NCE boils down to?

We're already in a Mad Max scenario. It's not the roving bands of big-haired people in leather we should be frightened of - the academic economists and think tanks are far more dangerous, and far less sane.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Apr 7th, 2009 at 06:05:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: A New Dark Ages!?? (4.00 / 4)

The amusing thing is that when you sync this up with the thread Nomad and Migeru are having you get the clarity that some people have realised (De Soto?) you can't have a market economics when most people have nothing.

Thus, one guy's proposal is that the first step for development in the 3rd world is to go around defining property ownership, so some people have something.

Then the NCE game can start, the purpose of which is to go from this starting state (where we distributed things to people to get things moving) to funnelling all the wealth back to a small minority. i.e. Essentially back to the point where we were before we distributed some property rights around.

by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Tue Apr 7th, 2009 at 06:47:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: A New Dark Ages!?? (4.00 / 4)

Except that the people who had rights no longer have them, and the people who used to be outsiders now have the rights - over the informal property, as-was, and also over the people, through debt slavery.

So it's all very neat, efficient and economically praise-worthy.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Apr 7th, 2009 at 07:37:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: A New Dark Ages!?? (none / 1)

Many of the various tribes, or nations, occupying the pre-Colombian Americas had established governing councils, an area of land over which they claimed exclusive rights, defended from others and sometimes sought to expand and generally fulfilled the definition of "nation" as applied to the German peoples by the Romans, if not the later definition of "nation-state." They had two serious deficiencies with respect to the Europeans: a late stone age level of technology and immune systems that were relatively much more vulnerable to infectious agents largely arising from domestication of animals.

Europeans arrived, imposed their version of written law, dismissed preexisting law and custom, though often retaining place names, and proceeded to delegitimate native American society and appropriate
their land, either forcing cultural assimilation and effective slavery on their victims or exterminating them and expropriating their land. It was might makes right, cultural and religious arrogance or both.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Tue Apr 7th, 2009 at 10:32:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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