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Episode 39: Property Rights in the Philippines
Drawing from John Nye’s talk on elites and reform,
Noel Maurer, associate professor of Harvard Business
School, talks about a time in our history when dominant
interests found it beneficial to allow reforms in the
country.
In the early 20th century, conservative elites wanted
to keep the Philippines after defeating Spain but ran
into strong popular opposition. Maurer explains how
the elites changed the public’s opinion by convincing
them that American rule would be beneficial to Filipinos.
He talks about the different reforms that William Taft
and other American policy makers passed in relation
to property rights. It was believed that this would
radically improve the material conditions of Filipinos.
Unfortunately this largely failed.
Maurer discusses the reasons for this failure and concludes
that there is no magic bullet. It is not as simple as
fixing one thing. There were other problems that might
have been wrong with the Philippine economy that might
have needed to be addressed concurrently. Thus simply
giving formal property rights did not resolve the bigger
issues
The music is provided by Dieter
Bachmann.
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