What makes the intuition plausible is that it resonates with the work of neoliberal institutional economists like Douglas North and neoliberal theorists of development like Peter Bauer. It assumes that a world without formal property rights is anarchic and that once the proper rules are in place a natural spirit of self-interested endeavor will be set free. It derives its plausibility more from the reader’s familiarity with certain texts of neoliberal economics than from any knowledge of informal communities.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1958