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Alejandro Chafuen of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation notes The UN discovers property rights. It has created a High Level Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor.
What keeps this from being another ho-hum bureaucracy is that a co-chair is Peruvian Economist Hernando De Soto, who has written volumes on the importance of property rights in promoting development. See The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism (1989) and The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (2000). (The other co-chair is Madeleine Albright.)
The founding documents are pure De Soto.
The need for property rights:
While most of the world’s poor possess assets of some kind, they lack a formal way to document these possessions through such legally acceptable tools such as deeds, contracts and permits. These individuals live and work in a type of “informal sector” that exists outside a set of widely-recognized and enforceable rules. From houses with no title to unincorporated businesses, the absence of legal representation means that the property of the poor cannot be protected or leveraged to create opportunities and growth. The stultifying bureaucracies:
Another barrier to economic growth is the overly burdensome and dysfunctional bureaucracies that have evolved in some countries. A confusing patchwork of overlapping and conflicting rules and regulations among a variety of government offices can make access to the formal system impractical if not impossible for many poor people. In these areas, it is the system itself, rather than a lack of one, that hinders economic activity and forces many of the poorest individuals to seek their own informal arrangements outside the legal system. And the long-term hope:
Broadening the rule of law to include the “informal sector” in practical ways is the first step to involving the poor in an economic and legal system. Ensuring users’ and property rights for the poor and marginalized populations leads to economic and social empowerment. By creating protections for the assets that the poor control, these individuals will gain tangible benefits that go beyond property and ownership. They will become participants in a system of laws and commerce that can leverage capital and create investment, and with it, such real rewards as clean water, medical care, schools and economic growth. I see no indication that IP is within the scope of interest of the enterprise, but it should be. The underdeveloped world needs to protect its citizens' creative capital as well as their physical assets.
posted by James DeLong @ 3:42 PM | Physical Property
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