De Soto's Indigenous Property Rights

Hernando de Soto on property rights for indigenous Peruvians.

(Video from ILD's web site).

I wonder, though, why property rights don't translate into capital for the poor in the developing world? Or do they? Could they?

The bright side of impending doom

Humankind is converging upon its collective annihilation. This is, unlike so many other things, an objective reality. As we come closer to realizing this reality, the intensity of it's felt heat may yet serve as a catalyst for effective pushback against its arrival.

People are fond of saying we are more conscious and enlightened now than ever before. I'm not sure I agree. But if there is one thing that sets us apart from historical humankind it is that we are being forced to organize collectively in the face of pressures we've never faced before, a process that is being facilitated by technologies that are equally unprecedented. Population pressure has forced us into uncomfortably close proximity - culturally, socially, nationally - and into increasing competition for increasingly scarce resources. To contend with this we are organizing collectively on an unprecedented scale, a scale that includes the whole of humankind.

I am not saying we should do this, only that we are. Even people that would rather have nothing to do with each other are being forced to come to the table. Globalization is a reality. The market has made us interdependent, while transportation and communication technologies have made our societies increasingly interpenetrating. These technologies are also serving to facilitate our collective organization.

With this convergence of pressure and means, we may yet be able to avoid final catastrophe. What we are in the midst of is a massive reorganization of our social realms toward a body capable of working as one in the face of certain necessities. I do not think there is any avoiding this. Things will be lost, cultures will be partially absorbed, but dominance will also be forever compromised. In order to organize collectively, we will NEED to respect difference while identifying the real non-negotiables and achieving real solutions. This is a promising predicament. As promising as it is frightening.

At Burning Man I was once at the center of 30,000 people converging around a quarter-acre bonfire. We in the innermost circle were so close to the fire that each one of us could be exposed for only a couple seconds before needing to weave back into the whirling mass or be burned. Despite the inward pressure of 30,000 people, none of whom could know how close we at the center were to imminent doom, we weren't driven into the fire. I believe it was the seriousness of our predicament that resulted in pushback sufficient to keep the crowd from pushing us in. Between pressure and pushback, an equilibrium was established. This was not engineered. It happened spontaneously in response to real pressures.

But it didn't happen until it had to. It held right there at the cusp, at the very limit of feasability before the people at the center burned.

Drayage blues

The cycle in which port truck drivers are stuck:

Costs are externalized from the shipping industry onto port truck drivers and the state. The drivers earn very little income, and, as independent contractors, have very little bargaining power and no health insurance. To compete for business, they reduce their costs by whatever means possible, generally running very old, dirty trucks. The surrounding communities bear the brunt of the pollution from these trucks. The surrounding communities are, of course, low-income communities. It goes without saying that the greater metropolitan area (and ultimately the atmosphere of our planet) suffer for the pollution, as well.

The port - charged with the responsibility of being an economic engine for Washington state - fears losing business to other, cheaper, west coast ports if the cost of shipping goes up as a result of increased driver wages and/or truck regulation. Their proposed solution is to use public money to subsidize a clean trucks program that will be only marginally effective, at best, rather than put the costs on the international shippers via fees at the port terminals. So, WalMart (for example) doesn't pay the real costs of shipping, and continues to use its profits to expand its own business, making it that more capable of out-competing its competitors as well as its own labor.

Moreover, the argument that WalMart is creating jobs is a fallacy. They are edging out smaller stores and replacing those jobs with their jobs. Their full-time employees earn on average under $20,000/year and must spend 20% of that income on health care before their insurance kicks in. It is clear that their incomes and their jobs are not doing much for the dynamism of our economy. The GDP grows, but so does inequality. The power and the resources accumulate at the top.

Thoughts on this?