In our offices, we continue to receive questions concerning Mises Institute commentary on Hernando de Soto’s book, The Mystery of Capital (NY: Basic Books, 2000). Two contrasting views.
- A critique by Gabriel Calzada Alvarez in the JLS: “it becomes puzzling how an institution whose main feature consists in being the legal monopoly of the use of violence against aggressors and non-aggressors, as well as being the ultimate judge of all disputes, can be the guarantor of formal recognition of property. Instead of recognizing this problem and calling for a halt to government aggression in this field, de Soto relies on a change in the way politicians use political means and legal violence (p. 205). His proposed solution seems to rely on a state takeover of the competing extralegal organizations that currently administer formal property access.”
- Praise from William Anderson: “I must admit that as I read this book, it seemed that the scales fell from my own eyes, as he demolished one Third-World myth after another. How could people who are supposed to know these things—even those who have lived in the Third World—have been so wrong?”
