Entrepreneurial Capitalism - Can it Rescue the Middle East?
Law and Order
In her essay in Der Spiegel, Christiane Hoffmann offers a controversial take on the ‘Order vs. Disorder’ debate:
She observes:
Hernando De Soto, the noted Peruvian economist, emphasizes
the need for entrepreneurial capitalism:
He observes:
“All too often, the
way that Westerners think about the world’s poor closes their eyes to reality
on the ground. In the Middle East and North Africa, it turns out, legions of
aspiring entrepreneurs are doing everything they can, against long odds, to
claw their way into the middle class. And that is true across all of the
world’s regions, peoples and faiths. Economic aspirations trump the overhyped
“cultural gaps” so often invoked to rationalize inaction.
As countries from
China to Peru to Botswana have proved in recent years, poor people can adapt
quickly when given a framework of modern rules for property and capital. The
trick is to start. We must remember that, throughout history, capitalism has
been created by those who were once poor.”Law and Order
In her essay in Der Spiegel, Christiane Hoffmann offers a controversial take on the ‘Order vs. Disorder’ debate:
“Rule is order. For
Thomas Hobbes, the father of modern political science, the intrinsic function
of the state was to impose legal order in order to subdue the "state of
nature." In "Leviathan," which he wrote in the 17th century
under the shadow of the English Civil War, he argued that the state's monopoly
on violence was legitimate when used to protect the lives and possessions of
the state's citizens. When the state was no longer able to guarantee order, the
threat of "war of every man against every man" loomed. The latter was
the state of nature that the state, symbolized by the Leviathan, was tasked
with taming.”