Key Points:
- The reason capitalism has triumphed in the West while sputtering in the rest of the world, is because most of the assets in Western nations have been integrated into a formal representational system.
- The value of savings of the poorest 80% of a developing country is immense – many times all the foreign aid and investment received since 1945. The world’s poor and lower middle classes have accumulated all the assets needed for successful capital.
- So, why are these people so underdeveloped? The answer is simple: to be useful in an expanded market, capital must first be represented in a property document where it can then be assigned a status that allows it to produce additional value.
- In the West, all land and buildings, equipment and inventories, are represented in a property document that is the visible sign of a vast hidden process that connects all these assets to the rest of the economy.
- Thanks to this representational process, assets can lead an invisible, parallel life alongside their material existence. Third world and former communist nations have been unable to give the overwhelming majority of their citizens access to this representational process.
Photo credit: Max Pixel
