Senior lecturer of economic history, University of Gothenburg
Society’s fatal dependence on artificial fertiliser has its roots in the industrial revolution and the western world’s search for food security. Today we are on the brink of another breakthrough in human nutrition: but as history shows, new food technologies have unforeseen consequences.
In a critique of Hernando de Soto’s bestselling The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, Staffan Granér finds de Soto’s methods unreliable and his theories over-simplified. De Soto claims that if “dead capital” were legalized, it would elevate the poor out of poverty. In reality, de Soto’s formalization of the economy aims to protect rights of ownership and ease the way for free market transactions, not to create regulations and a social safety net. “By maintaining that poverty can be solved simply by giving all of the poor formal rights of ownership”, says Granér, “de Soto pulls a mystifying veil over what are in fact real social discrepancies.”
