SINGER: Okay. The Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Peru, I really think Hernando de Soto should win the Nobel prize for the work he’s done. I hope he does. But he’s going around the world and identified one of the most powerful things to the economy and the creation of wealth. And that is the ownership of property.

FORBES: Which you can then use as collateral. 

SINGER: Which you can use as collateral and when you own it, you will develop it. The best thing you can do for the environment is to own it. Because when you own it, you make sure it’s sustainable for your future family. And that’s powerful. But they don’t have the ability to own it. If you live in a shantytown, you operate outside of the legal economy. It’s not that you want to operate outside of the legal economy, but you have no ownership of any property.

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