Saturday, April 21, 2007

"Migration is, of course, the key factor in urban growth in most developing and former communist nations... Commentators in each country offer various explanations: a war, an agrarian reform program, the lack of agrarian reform, a foreign embargo on international trade, the opening of international trade, terrorism and guerrillas, moral decay, failed capitalism, failed socialism, even bad taste (It is so much prettier in the countryside, why don't they just stay there?)."

"In 1992, Reuters News Service reported that Libyan leader Mu'ammar Gadhafi had incinerated Libya's land titles. "All records and documents in the old land register, which showed that a land belonged to this or that tribe, have been burned," Colonel Gadhafi reportedly informed a meeting of his justice ministry. "They were burned because they were based on exploitation, forgery and looting.""

- Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital