Property rights are not a silver bullet. In some countries, their formalisation simply creates a rentier class. And China experienced an explosion of enterprise after 1978 without ever giving its people truly secure property rights. But it did allow people to start businesses with relatively little bureaucratic fuss, so another of De Soto’s recommendations is to free up the rules governing business. Whereas it takes a handful of steps to set up a company in America or Europe, De Soto’s assistants found that to do the same in Tanzania would take 379 days and cost $5,506. Worse, to have a normal
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