Isn't it a bit of motte and bailey? It's a good argument that the program failed (in the sense that it didn't manage to take off), but it sounds like you're trying say that it failed (in the sense that land ownership programs don't work). If you want the second meaning, you should at least take a look at those 700 that did manage to move through the program and see their outcomes 10 or 20 years later. Though I admit it would be a weak evidence - on one hand, they've been heavily selected simply by being able to go through it, and also the whole point isn't that free land makes people better off, but that if more people own land, it starts all sorts of positive feedback loops that makes things better overall. Maybe communities with the largest percentage of new land owners doing much better than average would be good evidence.
No more than any intent-to-treat estimate is a motte-and-bailey. De Soto's claim is not that, in some cow-in-spherical-vacuum fantasy world where everything always goes right, land reform would work, but that it would work when implemented in this world and in this Haiti; but it didn't. A program which can't be implemented successfully is a program which doesn't work. (And those who get through the program are biased estimates for exactly the reasons you identify, and more - why were they *permitted* to go through the program?)
Being born in an ex-communist countries I'm a bit paranoid about generalizing this kind of thing. In Romania we've had 30 years of Reform, and sooo much of it failed because it was sabotaged or badly implemented. By this standard, you could have easily concluded that a bunch of things like privatization, independent justice, free market or even democracy aren't such bright ideas. It took us 30+ years to get to some degree of success.
My take here, having lived most of my life in this process, is simply that it's a lot more difficult when you're missing the norms and institutions that facilitate "doing things right".
For those that are determined not to know about HBD, the world remains forever mysteriously unpredictable.
Isn't it a bit of motte and bailey? It's a good argument that the program failed (in the sense that it didn't manage to take off), but it sounds like you're trying say that it failed (in the sense that land ownership programs don't work). If you want the second meaning, you should at least take a look at those 700 that did manage to move through the program and see their outcomes 10 or 20 years later. Though I admit it would be a weak evidence - on one hand, they've been heavily selected simply by being able to go through it, and also the whole point isn't that free land makes people better off, but that if more people own land, it starts all sorts of positive feedback loops that makes things better overall. Maybe communities with the largest percentage of new land owners doing much better than average would be good evidence.
No more than any intent-to-treat estimate is a motte-and-bailey. De Soto's claim is not that, in some cow-in-spherical-vacuum fantasy world where everything always goes right, land reform would work, but that it would work when implemented in this world and in this Haiti; but it didn't. A program which can't be implemented successfully is a program which doesn't work. (And those who get through the program are biased estimates for exactly the reasons you identify, and more - why were they *permitted* to go through the program?)
Being born in an ex-communist countries I'm a bit paranoid about generalizing this kind of thing. In Romania we've had 30 years of Reform, and sooo much of it failed because it was sabotaged or badly implemented. By this standard, you could have easily concluded that a bunch of things like privatization, independent justice, free market or even democracy aren't such bright ideas. It took us 30+ years to get to some degree of success.
My take here, having lived most of my life in this process, is simply that it's a lot more difficult when you're missing the norms and institutions that facilitate "doing things right".