Since posting my first alert about this book, I have had some requests about
how to find it and whether or not the author could be available for some form of
interaction with COG. Following information is gleaned from do Soto’s
"acknowledgments", the dust jacket, and from several published reviews
sent to me by one of the reviewers. (These are printed from Dow Jones
Interactive and therefore available to readers like yourselves by Internet
search.)
It was published first in Great Britain, in September, and was due for
release in the States on October 15. I am half way through my second or third
reading, and find that I agree fully with Kirkus Reviews that it is
"stunningly conceived, compellingly argued and impressively written".
Most of the reviews I have are from British journals, including the Times of
London, The Daily Telegraph, Literary Review (the most cautious review, by Niall
Ferguson), The Independent and The Financial Times. The latter is couched in a
biographical essay about the author, and I recommend it to those who want to
know more about the man and his international reputation. Although mine is a
hard copy, it has been printed from the Financial Times web site. I
haven’t yet tried it, but the Internet address seems to be
FT.com/PEOPLE/SEARCH & ARCHIVE/
According to these sources, then....
- de Soto’s most revered teacher was Father Gustavo Gutierrez, one of
the founders of liberation theology;
- his father was chief of staff to the (socialist) president of Peru when de
Soto was born;
- he had en elite education, mostly in Switzerland, and at age 30 became
president of a big engineering consultancy in Switzerland;
- at age 39 he went to Peru and began thinking about the poor;
- he studied poverty by methods copied from anthropologists–by living
among them and observing their behavior;
- he founded the Institute of Liberty and Democracy in 1980, which was
described a decade later by The Economist as second only to the Hoover
Institution in its influence and originality.
- This was due mainly to de Soto’s previous book, The Other Path,
published in 1986. The book was a best seller throughout Latin America, and
earned de Soto the murderous enmity of the Maoist "Shining Path".
- Its ideas underlay much of the economic policy of presidents Alan Garcia
and Alberto Fujimoto. (He was economic policy advisor to Fujimoto until the
latter took his authoritarian turn in 1993);
- his ideas have been embraced by Philippines president Joseph Estrada and he
is an advisor to recently elected president of Mexico, Vicente Fox;
- the new book has been endorsed by Wm. F. Buckley, Margaret Thatcher and
Francis Fukuyama, in addition to Milton Friedman and Ronald Coase.
- he claims Stephan Schmidheiny (author of foreword to Jeff Gates’
Ownership Solution) as a long-time partner and dear friend;
- For Canadian readers, if any there be, he acknowledges David Frum for
editorial assistance;
- de Soto continues to be active with top levels of government in Egypt and
Haiti as well as other countries named above.
In other words, he is a busy man. But his message is also fully consistent
with what I perceive to be the objectives of participants in COG–to
achieve socialist goals through capitalist means.
I think this is sufficient to make the point that The Mystery of Capital is
unavoidable for COG. In a later posting I will add further comments on how de
Soto’s thesis bears on the Economics of Ownership arguments.