DeSoto is a popularizer and propagandist of the law and economics school ideology that the solution to the world's problems is to establish complete markets where their are "property rights" in everything of any value of potential value, thus allowing people to trade and produce Pareto Optimality! Of course, as a close analysis of the California energy crisis proves, owners of property rights are as threatened by the expansion of value as they are enriched by it. Thus, there was actually massive disinvestment by the utilities and collusion among the independent power producers at the heart of this crisis.
