The Global Poor Desperately Need a Thing You Can’t Taste or Touch: Property Rights

[mountaineer]

The Global Poor Desperately Need a Thing You Can’t Taste or Touch: Property Rights
 August 31, 2016
by Michael Matheson Miller
Acton Institute
EXCERPTED - Click on link for entire article

A recent AP news story laments that Rio’s poor would be watching the summer Olympics from their rooftops, since they have no ticket in to a celebration reserved for the rich and glamorous. The article is a peek into the hopes and dreams of the hardworking slum dwellers living in the shadow of Rio’s Olympic stadium, but the story misses something important.

Rio’s poor — like the poor throughout the developing world — lack a much more important ticket. They lack a ticket into the game of wealth creation and enterprise.

That game has not been, and should not just be, just for the rich. The market economy is a creative engine that has enabled hundreds of millions of people around the world to lift themselves out of poverty. But to play the game you need property rights, and for all too many around the world, property rights are much harder to get than a ticket to the Olympics.

Why is this a big deal? Here are four reasons why property rights matter — and it is not just economics.
Property Rights Enable Economic Development

In many developing countries, 50 to 60 percent of the land has no clear title. If you don’t know who owns the land, then you have no incentive to improve and develop it, and it can be easily taken away from you — especially if you are a widow or an orphan. Without a clear title, you also can’t use the land as collateral to get a loan for, say, a tractor or to start a small business.

As Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto points out, the existing assets in the developing world are much greater than all the foreign aid over the few last decades. The problem is that the poor cannot access much of the value of their land without clear title. What results is lots of potentially productive land that remains unproductive.  ...

Private property not only enables private businesses to flourish, it also enables stronger layers of civil society or what the 19th century French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville called “intermediary institutions.” These include schools, private associations, synagogues, churches, mutual aid societies and the like, which create a buffer between the individual and the state.

When families, religious communities and civil society are weak or non-existent, there are few layers between the individual and the state, and the state begins to absorb more things to itself — ultimately leading to what Tocqueville called “soft despotism.” Tocqueville writes that there are three things which prevent this descent into soft despotism: local politics, civil society (private voluntary organizations) and religion.

Each of these pulls people out of themselves and gets them engaged in their communities and with others. Yet, without private property, people are not as engaged in their community, and can easily became wards and pawns of the state.   ...

At a time when there is increasing suspicion toward free economies and private property, both from secular and religious sources, it is important for those who value such things to not only make the economic or efficiency case for private property, but also to show how it benefits the poor, promotes human flourishing and protects religious liberty. The right to private property does so because it respects the dignity of the human person — who is made for freedom, made for family and endowed with the intelligence to solve problems and steward God’s creation.

[Cripplecreek]

[goatprairie]

While i'm all for trying to get people to be the best they can be, what many idealists fail to understand is that many people are born to fail. Which is why periodically you read stories of the children of rich parents who couldn't hack it in the real world and got into drugs, crime, or were just losers.
The phrase "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink" applies here. America has been and still is justifiably "the land of opportunity" for many millions or poor immigrants.  There are millions of poor Americans who have been give multiple chances to improve themselves. Millions still fail to do so.
The idea that everyone can be turned into a productive citizen is a nice idea, but you still have those who can't be changed. Unfortunately for Brazil they have a tremendous pct. of their population for whom all efforts to help will fail.
Sorry if that sounds harsh. But I like to live in the real world.