As systems go................................

     With its victory over communism, capitalism's old agenda for economic progress is exhausted and requires a new set of commitments.  It makes no sense continuing to call for open economies without facing the fact that the economic reforms underway open the doors only for the small globalized elites and leave out most of humanity.  At present, capitalist globalization is concerned with interconnecting only the elites that live inside the bell jars.  To lift the bell jars and do away with property apartheid will require going beyond the existing borders of both economics and law.
     I am not a die-hard capitalist.  I do not view capitalism as a credo.  Much more important to me are freedom, compassion for the poor, respect for the social contract, and equal opportunity.  But for the moment, to achieve those goals, capitalism is the only game in town.  It is the only system we know that provides us with the tools required to create massive surplus value.

-Hernando de Soto,  The Mystery Of Capital:  Why Capitalism Triumphs In The West And Fails Everywhere Else, published in 2000