ciroccoj | From "The Mystery of Capital," by Hernando de Soto

Lawyers are the professionals most involved in the day-to-day business of property. They sit on the key government offices where they exert a stranglehold on major decisions. No group - aside from terrorists - is better positioned to sabotage capitalist expansion. And unlike terrorists, the lawyers know how to do it legally.

Using economic data from fifty-two countries from 1960 to 1980, Samar K. Datta and Jeffrey B. Nugent have shown that for every percentage point increase in the number of lawyers in the labour force (from, say 0.5 to 1.5 per cent), economic growth is reduced by 4.76 to 3.68 per cent...