Sunday, June 3, 2018

Sounds vaguely familiar.....................



    The concepts of left wing and right wing in Peru sometimes confuse things rather than clarify them.  We think that, more than the rhetoric which distinguishes them, what is important is the fact that both sides reward those who use their talent to obtain favors instead of encouraging those who create wealth and well-being.  The conflict between mercantilism and a market economy helps to explain the apparent paradox whereby a large portion of our middle class are pro-state and often socialist-leaning, while the popular sectors advocate private enterprise and cooperate in free, decentralized organizations.  We are sure that if the right and left wings in developed countries were to evaluate the evidence correctly, both would condemn our system.  The former might condemn its inefficiency, and the latter its injustice.
      One of our rulers' most pernicious mistakes has been to concern themselves with the cost of production and not with those of transaction.  We are convinced that they should devote their greatest efforts to the latter and use their lawmaking power to eliminate obstacles and provide more facilitative elements so that everyone, and not just an elite, can prosper.  They should also leave the cost of production to individuals and give them the legal institutions to use competition and the market of reduce them.

-Hernando de Soto, from his 1989 book, The Other Path:  The Invisible Revolution In The Third World

P.S.  For the purpose of his book "... 'mercantilsim' means a bureaucratized and law-ridden state that regards redistribution of nation wealth as more important than the production of wealth."

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