the mystery of capitalism: why capitalism triumphs in the west and fails everywhere else by hernando de soto can very nearly be summed up in two words: property rights. more specifically, the formal recognition of property rights that allows property to take on value above and beyond its physical manifestation.

one question it brought to mind for me is whether it is possible that our current copyright system, with no registration necessary, is really stifling the value of so-called intellectual property. what is something like the broken record by twink, if not something built in an extralegal framework? (assuming that they haven’t really tracked down the copyright holders of the “hundreds of vintage children’s records.”)