Just read another good book on this. Simply put, capitalism requires the confidence of investors in the rule of law and also in the inherent fairness of individuals.
Christianities maxim of treating others as you would be treated was no small part of making capitalism work.
Does this guy think Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are the west?
Well you can sure tell that this was written in Y2K.
Since Dubya took office in 2001, Foreign Direct Investment in the U.S. has drasticly plummeted by 80%.
I think there are two factors. One is the rule of law and the sanctity of contracts.
The other is Christianity or, where it has sufficient numbers, Judaism. Christianity and Judaism instill the ideas of freedom, fundamental equality, justice, private ownership, and decent consideration for others.
Some of these principles are found in other cultures. The Chinese, for instance, have traditionally been businessmen. But they have always had to cope with the whims of emperors or warlords. They have no traditional sense of inalienable rights or inalienable freedom.
Japanese, Chinese, and others from different backgrounds than ours have proved their ability to make capitalism work to a degree, but its not yet clear whether they will be able to establish societies that will not, in the end, crush the entrepreneurial spirit of innovation or confiscate the goods that capitalists have earned.
I require this book for my western civ class at the U.
Suggested chapter Hernando: "The Mystery of Why in the Hell Latin American Countries Remains So Damn Corrupt and Why that Encourages Black Market Economics."
ping as the DOW falls
Although I haven't read De Soto's book, it seems they have similar themes.
One of the sub-themes of Fukuyama's book is that Asian entrepeneurs tend to keep the business in the family. So a hardworking father hands over his shipping company to his spoiled, drug-addled son and a once thriving company goes down the drain.
In the West, we tend to have larger spheres of trust due to contract law, etc. and so businesses are passed on to people based on their business acumen rather than on family or neighborhood connections.
It could be that Christianity, by being a univeral religion, got people to trust others outside their family or neighborhood groups so long as they shared the same religious beliefs.
So it might not be so much the morality taught by Christ, as the universality he taught that ultimately led to the success of Capital formation in the West.
After all, the Confuscianism of the East is not a bad set of prinicples to guide one's life by, but there is a strong undergirding of "family comes first" and "blood is thicker than water".