The Middle East Needs Capitalism!

The Centre for Policy Studies’ CapX, a news
service “for popular capitalism,” has a piece up by Guy Sorman
making the case that as a religion, Islam is a far more
“pro-business faith” than Christianity (having been founded by a
trader and lacking a so-called “idealization of poverty”), and that
only popular capitalism can save the Arab world. Sorman rightly
identifies the root of the “Arab Spring” protests
of 2011:

[The Arab Spring’s] true origins should never be forgotten: the
economic frustration of the people. The hero  of the
uprising was a young Tunisian student by the name of Mohamed
Bouazizi who tried to start a modest business by selling fruits and
vegetables on a street cart. After he was arrested by police for
not showing the right bureaucratic authorisation, Bouazizi
committed suicide by setting himself on fire.

Spontaneously identifying themselves with Bouazizi, young Arabs
by the millions took to the streets all over the Arab world. The
revolt was most acute in Egypt where, not by coincidence, popular
capitalism happened to be the most severely repressed under Hosni
Mubarak. A survey by the noted Peruvian economist Hernando de
Soto, before the Arab Spring,  revealed how opening a modest
bakery in Cairo required two and a half years in order to obtain
all the necessary legal documents, most of them delivered by petty
and corrupt state bureaucrats. The creation of a larger
business which might have a chance of competing with a state
monopoly proved to be forbidden in Egypt. With
varying degrees, this remains the prevalent situation in all
Arab countries.

Sorman argues, correctly, that there can be no peace in the
Middle East so long as the governments in the region repress
people’s economic ambitions.

The whole thing is worth
a read here and provides an interesting perspective on what
kind of relationship with the U.S. would most benefit the region
(peaceful trade, hardly a component of “isolationism“).

Via the Twitter feed
of Daniel Hannan, a Conservative member of the European
parliament who represents a portion of England.