What Is the Key to Capitalism?

This is the mystery of capital. Solving it requires an understanding of why Westerners, by representing assets with titles, [my emphasis] are able to see and draw out capital from them. One of the greatest challenges to the human mind is to comprehend and to gain access to those things we know exist but cannot see. Not everything that is real and useful is tangible and visible....Throughout history, human beings have invented representational systems- writing, musical notation, double-entry bookkeeping- to grasp with the mind what human hands could never touch. In the same way, the great practitioners of capitalism, from the creation of integrated title systems and corporate stock to Michael Milken, were able to reveal and extract capital where others saw only junk by devising new ways to represent the invisible potential that is locked up in the assets we accumulate. -Hernando de Soto. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. Basic Books. (2000). p. 7