Bear with me for a minute. I was watching John Stossels show last week Tragedy of the Commons. foxbusiness/on-air/stossel/blog/2013/11/28/tragedy-commons-9pm-et-fbn (The full video should appear soon) One of his guests was Hernando de Soto, a Peruvian economist, who explained that property rights are essential if capitalism and free markets are to allow us to prosper. He says property rights are the missing ingredient in the parts of the world where poverty is the rule, and has worked to fix the problem. Here is de Sotos assessment of the Middle East situation from his perspective: ild.org.pe/index.php/es/articles/item/106-article-1 There are several good articles at this website. Then, on Sunday I picked up my local newspaper and read a long article about the oil and gas boom here in the U.S. It had this to say about the way property rights in the U.S. contribute to the boom: The United States isn’t the only country with oil and natural gas locked in shale rock, but it’s the only one in a position to take advantage of it, analysts say. In Europe, the environmental opposition to fracking is deep and wide. Elsewhere, most countries simply don’t have the technology or the infrastructure to exploit deposits that require fracking. America is even helped by its property laws, which allow most landowners to retain subsoil mineral rights, giving them hopes of cashing in. In many other countries, oil and gas activity just means problems without rewards. “This is unique to the United States and North America,” Deutsche Bank energy analyst Paul Sankey said at a recent Bipartisan Policy Center energy forum in Washington. “In my view, this revolution will not occur globally except possibly in the next decade and soonest in China.” I find it fascinating that something so obvious as clear property rights could have such a vast impact on our lives.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 21:20:27 +0000
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