The Wall Street Journal-20080213-Private Property And Law to Help the Poor

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Private Property And Law to Help the Poor

Full Text (390  words)

Bill Gates and William Easterly both neglect to note what has made Microsoft so dominant and the foreign aid establishment so ineffective ("Why Bill Gates Hates My Book," op-ed, Feb. 7). Private property rights and the enforcement of the rule of law allowed Mr. Gates to become a billionaire and thousands of stockholders millionaires. The absence of private property and its protection keeps the third world in squalor. Mr. Gates's foundation could do even more for developing countries if he championed private property and urged the socialist foreign aid establishment to do the same.

Greg Pilcher

Boring, Ore.

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Neither Mr. Gates in his Davos, Switzerland, speech, nor Prof. Easterly recognize that with or without foreign aid, the real problem is how to get the local bureaucrat and the politician responsible for some jurisdiction in India or Africa to focus on the resources that they have at their disposal to alleviate poverty. Until the people in poor and developing countries start caring for those around them through some notion of the common good, and have appropriate incentives to do so, neither the business leaders nor the economists will get it right.

Shekhar Patil

Boulder, Colo.

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What better proof that capitalism is the solution to poverty, than the U.S. and all other First World countries.

In the U.S., poor means an income of $17,000 for a family of three, while the "affluent" poor in underdeveloped countries survive on less than $2 per day. In the U.S. a poor family may "only" have one TV, while in poor countries there is no electricity. In the U.S. a poor person may not own their own home, while in poor countries, a cardboard roof is a luxury.

There is no amount of charity in this world that is going to pull a poor country out of poverty. As a Third World immigrant, I can attest that corruption, not lack of charity, is the main impediment to progress.

Oscar Ancira

San Diego

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I respectfully suggest that Bill Gates's and other philanthropists' efforts should include providing a daily copy of the Journal to every literate person (especially leaders) of every Third World and poverty- stricken country in the world. And for the illiterate, teach them to read, and then give them a copy of the Journal every day as well.

Scott Alderman

Valdosta, Ga.