Background
Hernando de Soto was born on 27 January in 1500 in Extremadura to parents who were both hidalgos, nobility of modest means.
( In this, his classic book on the informal economy of Pe...)
In this, his classic book on the informal economy of Peru and the reasons why poverty can be a breeding ground for terrorists, Hernando De Soto describes the forces that keep people dependent on underground economies: the bureaucratic barriers to legal property ownership and the lack of legal structures that recognize and encourage ownership of assets. It is exactly these forces, de Soto argues, that prevent houses, land, and machines from functioning as capital does in the West--as assets that can be leveraged to create more capital. Under the Fujimori government, de Soto's Institute for Liberty and Democracy wrote dozens of laws to promote property rights and bring people out of the informal economy and into the legitimate one. The result was not only an economic boon for Peru but also the defeat of the Shining Path, the terrorist movement and black-market force that was then threatening to take over the Peruvian government. In a new preface, de Soto relates his work to the present moment, making the connection between the Shining Path in the 1980's and the Taliban today.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465016103/?tag=2022091-20
( "The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph," writes Her...)
"The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph," writes Hernando de Soto, "is, in the eyes of four-fifths of humanity, its hour of crisis." In The Mystery of Capital, the world-famous Peruvian economist takes up the question that, more than any other, is central to one of the most crucial problems the world faces today: Why do some countries succeed at capitalism while others fail?In strong opposition to the popular view that success is determined by cultural differences, de Soto finds that it actually has everything to do with the legal structure of property and property rights. Every developed nation in the world at one time went through the transformation from predominantly informal, extralegal ownership to a formal, unified legal property system. In the West we've forgotten that creating this system is also what allowed people everywhere to leverage property into wealth. This persuasive book will revolutionize our understanding of capital and point the way to a major transformation of the world economy.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465016154/?tag=2022091-20
Hernando de Soto was born on 27 January in 1500 in Extremadura to parents who were both hidalgos, nobility of modest means.
Hernando was indebted to the favor of Pedrarias d'Avila for the means of pursuing his studies at the university.
In 1519 Hernando accompanied d'Avila on his second expedition to Darien. In 1528 he explored the coast of Guatemala and Yucatan, and in 1532 he led 300 volunteers to reinforce Pizarro in Peru. He played a prominent part in the conquest of the Incas' kingdom (helping to seize and guard the person of Atahualpa, discovering a pass through the mountains to Cuzco, etc. ), and returned to Spain with a fortune of 180, 000 ducats, which enabled him to marry the daughter of his old patron d'Avila, and to maintain the state of a nobleman. Excited by the reports of Alvaro Nunez (Cabeza de Vaca) and others as to the wealth of Florida (a term then commonly used in a much wider extension than subsequently), he sold great part of his property, gathered a force of 620 foot and 123 horse, armed four ships, and obtained from Charles V a commission as "adelantado of the Lands of Florida" and governor of Cuba. Sailing from San Lucar in April 1538, he first went to Havana, his advanced base of operations; starting thence on the 12th of May 1539 he landed in the same month in Espiritu Santo Bay, on the west coast of the present state of Florida. For nearly four years he led his men in fruitless search of gold hither and thither over the south-east of the North American continent. His exact route is often doubtful; but it seems to have passed north into Georgia as far as 35'N., then south to the neighborhood of Mobile, and finally north-west towards the Mississippi. This river was reached early in 1541, and the following winter was spent on the Ouachita, in modern Arkansas and Louisiana, west of the Mississippi. As they were returning in 1542 along the Mississippi, De Soto died (either in May or June; the 25th of June is perhaps the true date), and his body was sunk in its waters. Failing in an attempt to push westwards again, De Soto's men, under Luis Moscoso de Alvarado, descended the Mississippi to the sea in nineteen days from a point close to the junction of Arkansas with the great river, and thence coasted along the Gulf of Mexico to Panuco.
Of this unfortunate expedition, three very different narratives are extant, of seemingly independent origin. The first was published in 1557 at Evora, and professes to be the work of a Portuguese gentleman of Elvas, who had accompanied the expedition: Relacam verdadeira dos trabalhos g ho gouernador dõ Fernando d'Souto Fs' certos fidalgos portugueses passarom no d'scobrimeto da Provincia da Florida. Agora nouamete feita per hu fidalgo Deluas. An English translation was published by Hakluyt in 1609 (reprinted from the 1611 edition by the Hakluyt Society (London, 1851), and another by an anonymous translator in 1686, the latter being based on a French version by Citri de la Guette (Paris, 1685). The second narrative is the famous history of Florida by the Inca, Garcilasso de la Vega, who obtained his information from a Spanish cavalier engaged in the enterprise; it was completed in 1591, first appeared at Lisbon in 1605 under the title of La Florida del Ynca, and has since passed through many editions in various languages. The third is a report presented to Charles V. of Spain in his Council of the Indies in 1544, by Luis Hernandez de Biedma, who had accompanied De Soto as His Majesty's factor. It is to be found in Ternaux-Compans' "Recueil de pieces sur la Floride" in the Historical Collections of Louisiana (Philadelphia, 1850) and in W. B. Rye's reprint for the Hakluyt Society of Hakluyt's translation of the Portuguese narrative (The Discovery and Conquest of Terra Florida, London, 1851).
He led the first European expedition of the interior of Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Oklahoma and may also have penetrated Missouri and Louisiana.
Many parks, towns, counties, and institutions have been named after Hernando de Soto, to include:
De Soto National Forest, in Mississippi;
De Soto National Memorial, near Bradenton, Florida, marks the possible location of Espiritu Santo, the point of disembarkation for the expedition;
DeSoto State Park, Alabama;
DeSoto Caverns, Alabama;
DeSoto County, Florida;
Hernando County, Florida;
Fort De Soto Park in Pinellas County, Florida, named in turn for the 19th-century coastal fortifications at the site;
DeSoto Falls in Lumpkin County, Georgia;
De Soto County, Mississippi, and its county seat, Hernando;
DeSoto, Missouri;
Hernando de Soto Bridge, which carries Interstate 40 across the Mississippi River at Memphis (opened in 1973);
DeSoto automobile line developed by the Chrysler Corporation;
DeSoto Hilton Hotel, Savannah, Georgia;
The De Soto School, a private school in Helena, Arkansas;
De Soto, Kansas;
PS 130, Hernando Desoto, a public school in New York City.
( In this, his classic book on the informal economy of Pe...)
( "The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph," writes Her...)
Quotations:
“In Haiti, untitled rural and urban real estate holdings are together worth some 5. 2 billion. To put that sum in context, it is four times the total of all the assets of all the legally operating companies in Haiti, nine times the value of all assets owned by the government, and 158 times the value of all foreign direct investment in Haiti's recorded history to 1995. ”
― Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
“The past is many nations' present. ”
― Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
“If there are costs to becoming legal, there are also bound to be costs to remaining outside the law. We found that operating outside the world of legal work and business was surprisingly expensive. In Peru, for example, the cost of operating a business extralegally includes paying 10 to 15 per cent of its annual income in bribes and commissions to authorities. Add to such payoffs the costs of avoiding penalties, making transfers outside legal channels and operating from dispersed locations and without credit, and the life of the extralegal entrepreneur turns out to be far more costly and full of daily hassles than that of the legal businessman. Perhaps the most significant cost was caused by the absence of institutions that create incentives for people to seize economic and social opportunities to specialize within the market place. We found that people who could not operate within the law also could not hold property efficiently or enforce contracts through the courts; nor could they reduce uncertainty through limited liability systems and insurance policies, or create stock companies to attract additional capital and share risk. Being unable to raise money for investment, they could not achieve economies of scale or protect their innovations through royalties and patents. ”
― Hernando de Soto, The Mystery Of Capital
“The way law stays alive is by remaining in touch with social contracts pieced together among real people on the ground. ”
― Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
Hernando married to Isabel de Bobadilla, daughter of Pedrarias Dávila and a relative of a confidante of Queen Isabella.
