Special Report
Do It for the World’s Poor
A sobering report on the state of property rights protections worldwide.
(Page 2 of 2)
The broad correlations are clear. Western industrialized states and newly industrializing Asian countries do the best. Developing nations and former communist states do the worst. Obviously, property rights protection is not a perfect indicator for economic growth, but most countries that have poor property rights records have had difficulty achieving self-sustained economic growth. The Index finds a strong correlation between IPRI scores and per capita GDP. The average per capita GDP per IPRI quintile goes from $39,991 at the top to $4,341 at the bottom.
Yet, while the practical benefits of a strong property rights regime are obvious, many countries have been retrogressing. Most of the top thirty, including America, improved their rating this past year, though a few of them, such as Germany, remain below their 2007 levels. But beyond the best performers retreats outnumber advances. Most of the bottom twenty got worse. Lowest-ranking Bangladesh improved in 2008 but has since fallen back below its level of 2007. And the news there keeps getting worse: a mutiny by units of the border guards has created renewed political instability.
Of course, as Bangladesh tragically demonstrates, the lack of property rights protections makes other liberties less secure. Many of the countries which fare badly on the IPRI also rank poorly when it comes to political and civil liberties. There’s Zimbabwe, a nation in almost total collapse. Venezuela, with Hugo Chavez attempting to create a legal dictatorship. Bosnia is a fake country that exists only in the eyes of European social engineers. Azerbaijan is one of the authoritarian remnants of the old Soviet Union. Nigeria is Africa’s oil-fueled kleptocracy. And so on.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton entered office promising even more foreign aid on top of the trillions of dollars wasted over the last half century. The International Property Rights Index demonstrates that we all would be better off if Americans concentrated on helping poor countries create the right legal and policy frameworks for economic growth. That includes protecting property rights, among the most fundamental of human rights. Taking more of Americans’ good money to toss after bad is no answer, especially in the midst of an economic crisis and massive deficits as far as the eye can see.
About the Author
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author and editor of several books, including The Politics of Plunder: Misgovernment in Washington (Transaction).
Letter to the Editor View all comments (27) | Leave a comment
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David Mathews | 3.26.09 @ 7:11AM
Doug Bandow is mistaken when he claims ...
* "The question of property ownership goes far back into human history. Individual sovereignty over land was alien to hunter-gatherer societies, but they died out because they were "unsustainable," in current parlance. "
The Hunter-Gatherers did not die out because they were unsustainable. Hunter-Gatherer civilizations have survived for up to 40,000 years.
What happened to the Hunter-Gatherers? They were driven extinct via genocide. See, for example, the fate of the Native Americans of North America.
Who committed genocide against the Hunter-Gatherers? the property owners, the capitalists and the Christians. In North America, for example, the desire to own property and exploit resources provoked Americans to drive the bison nearly extinct, drive the Native Americans to reservations, deprive Native Americans of their human rights, destroy and despoil the environment.
Without the genocide of the Americans, the Native American Hunter-Gatherer civilizations could very easily have survived for another 10,000 - 20,000 years (perhaps even longer).
What then of the property-owning civilization? Given the poor state of health of our nation and the poor state of health of our planet, I think it safe to say that the United States of America will suffer a Soviet style collapse into nonexistence within several decades.
And what of our unsustainable civilization? Technological civilization will not survive beyond the 22nd century.
And what of the fate of the Homo sapiens? A horrendous population crash will occur in the 21st century. Humankind's population will reach 8 billion and then an apocalypse shall occur and at least 90% of humankind will die in the worst possible manner.
That's the price humankind will pay for property ownership and also for excess, greed, gluttony and treating the planet like a sewer.
Ryan| 3.26.09 @ 8:37AM
David,
A couple things about hunter-gatherers. True, there was a great amount of injustice done to the Native Americans, but a large portion of them weren't hunter-gatherers.
Also, hunter-gatherer populations tend to be VERY small by nature, without much population growth. Unlike developed societies, children are a net decrease on the resources (another mouth to feed) rather than a benefit (early in life for agrarian, later in life for a higher technological society - something few people realize).
Native Americans are also by no means merely victims - and their insistence on their victim status (and being kept there by the left) has also contributed to their own issues. People do NOT succeed by playing the victim and blaming others.
Your 90% prediction is WAY off, and will probably only happen due to a combination of disease, meteor strike, and nuclear war. Maybe.
Of course, one wonders if you believe in the myth of the "noble savage..."
PatriotRX| 3.26.09 @ 8:49AM
David,
Thank you for demonstrating what is horribly wrong with the public education system. You, are a beacon of fail, shining like a persistent and painful zit just begging to be set free of your fate.
Big Leo| 3.26.09 @ 11:17AM
Does anyone else find the prospect of Dave being turned out of his mother's cellar to gather roots and berries as entertaining as I do?
Big Leo| 3.26.09 @ 11:38AM
As DM puts it, the liberal-progressive who worships science and reason is against agriculture. The hunter-gatherer is the true inheritor of the earth, and the plight of the poor is nicely solved by killing them all. Medical coverage is no problem, since in a hunter-gatherer society most people die before they hit forty. And education is limited to this root good, this root bad.
"Oh brave new world that has such creatures in it."
bluecollarbytes | 3.26.09 @ 1:20PM
From the founding of Jamestown to todays' clamor for 'free' downloads, 'free' broadband internet, 'free' health care and guaranteed livings, human nature is stubborn when it comes to property rights. After all, it's not Their property being confiscated.
Taking private property through eminent domain actions, often for no other reason than to give politicians more play money, doesn't tend to bring much in the way of opposition.
Property rights are being replaced by 'the greater good' of a Leftist agenda. A large swath of the American public is already primed for the Change.
stewpified| 3.26.09 @ 1:26PM
DM you are wrong. When you use the term "genocide" it manages to fit your anti-capitalist, anti-growth worldview. In the Americas, the Indians populations were wiped out due to the Europeans UNWITTING transmission of diseases on their initial trips to the continent.
Upon return to the continent 100 years later, the Europeans saw very little remnants of civilization (i.e. development/agrarian) and thus the liberal "Europenas came here and wiped out the natives" myth took hold.
In fact, much of North America was developed, there were millions of citizens as societies organized around working "their" land. Now land ownership as we know it may not have existed, but it wasn't nomadic tribes that flourished, it was native populations that understood creating food surpluses lead to easier existances.
Read "1491" to learn about what archeologists have discovered instead of playing the same old hand that happens to fit your uninformed misguided worldview. Dumb lib.
Big Leo| 3.26.09 @ 2:18PM
What is often ignored in the encounter between the Indians and the European settlers, is that a large proportion of the Indian population intermarried with the whites, especially in the East. Even more, the Indians adopted European methods of agriculture, building, and clothing. This means that they is us, regardless of what side of the racial divide you fall on.
By the way, I use the term Indian because the Indians on the enormous reservation I lived next to were polled as to what they wished to be called. The largest vote was for Indian. Don't argue with me, go argue with them.
Steven| 3.26.09 @ 2:44PM
Property, freedom and money
Most people take for granted their comprehension about man's abstract concept of property. I use to think I knew what is really was until I've read this article entitled “ Do you own yourself” by Butler Shaffer who teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law.
http://www.lawfulpath.com/ref/ownyourself.shtml
Property and freedom are related in the sense that they are mutually exclusive concepts in their application since as soon as one legitimately claims property right in something it automatically excludes same claims from others. So my freedom stops where somebody else's starts.
This brings two other related concepts that suffer from the same very limited knowledge from the masses: money and politics.
For those who know it this next statement is a simple truth, but for the masses it is a joke since they never took the time to really study it: "money does NOT exist". I can virtually here people laughing, see how predictable people are?
This is a bold statement but nonetheless true as by definition any money of exchange (labor, property, gold etc.) is simply an agreement on some type of units to represent the perceived value of the given transaction between the parties where unitary profits should equal zero if the parties benefited equally in the transaction. The profit would therefore be the perception of being better off after than before the transaction. Of course that perception is unique to every man or women.
Therefore, if one can exchange his property for the same, money of exchange is not really necessary for commerce to function.
However, the type of money we have now which is called money of account because money of exchange has been outlawed since 1933 (HJR 192) as it would go against public policy. Any federal reserve note (or any note) is only that: a note which is by definition a promise to pay. It is an irredeemable currency. So in the world now, the magician politicians and theirs accomplices successfully deceived the people to believe that a debt title (which every note is) is a sound money of exchange. This distortion of reality using legal fiction has profound repercussions on the concept of property itself, after all, if debt could be equated with assets, what else can we distort? Is freedom equal to slavery? Is bankruptcy equivalent to prosperity?
As Butler Shaffer eloquently described, all political systems and nations in the world is nothing else than a system of legal plunder (see Bastiat "The Law") where the tools for justice are used to steal people's properties, which means that government is nothing else than a bunch of men and women doing business at the barrel of a gun, so well explained by Marc Steven.
http://astore.amazon.com/theamericansp-20/detail/061512299X
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7238921269249750961
So all the noise made by politicians is only to distract you from going to the roots, property is stolen using force therefore the main value of civilization as we know now is violence as as soon as somebody claims that you ought to obey else they put you in jail and steal all your properties etc., that somebody says nothing less than, you are my slave period. Think about it, is freedom promoted when violence is used to constrain you against you will and against your interests into something you do not agree with or cannot afford or entails a risk you do not want to take (such as forced vaccination)? I do not think so.
Now since all government are corporations (yes, go on Dun $ Bradstreet and search for USA or CANADA or any countries or cities), do we have psychiatrists to evaluate if that "corporate body" is not mentally ill? I don't think so otherwise war would not exist.
We have a long way to go the change society and I believe there would be no savior, so people who have placed all their hopes in the same basket are taking risks that only irresponsible people would make. They are betting.
Freedom and property go hand in hand and only the responsible will spend energy to preserve it, so to get it is simply an act of living it, you do it with your actions and the way you organize your life. People demonstrate that they want services (free lunches) more than freedom as freedom entails responsibilities, they repeat the classic line “there is no free lunch” but act as if they truly believe there is without thinking about the consequences of lying to themselves, so “let the one who want to be deceived be deceived” go hand in hand with the no free lunch truth.
Steven
Real American Patriot Fo' Real| 3.26.09 @ 2:51PM
Who ya' kidding? Republicans don't give a hoot in hell about the poor!!!!
BUAHAHAHAHA! This article is great comic relief, though? Ain't that right, fellow conservatives?!?!
I MEAN, GET A JOB!!!!
EFF THE POOR!!!
BUAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAH!!!
Hey, let's bomb em!!!!!!!!!!
Big Leo| 3.26.09 @ 3:10PM
Reading Unreal Patriot's rant makes me wish the moonbats would get together and decide whether we were rich parasites or trailer trash. This jumping back and forth makes them look stupid, and we wouldn't want that.
Marc Jeric| 3.26.09 @ 4:21PM
Here you go again, David Mathews - as Reagan said 29 years ago. A prime example of the product of teacher union goons schooling. Fortunately, he is condemned to a lifetime of disappointments in spite of his Abu Hussein from Kenya rule; but this desease will be cured in 4 years by a reality check. It took 70 years in the old USSR but however slow the cure did arrive!
Fred Z| 3.26.09 @ 6:23PM
Very strange that this article does not mention the work of Hernando de Soto.
Pingback| 4.25.09 @ 6:31AM
Doug Bandow » Blog Archive » Protecting Property for the World’s Poor links to this page. Here’s an excerpt: