Globalization Connects Products, Not People: Why Capitalism Still Feels Like a Private Club

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There’s an irony in globalization that I’ve witnessed both as a professional in South Asia’s manufacturing sector and now as a student in New York. On paper, globalization connects the world, ideas, goods, and capital move faster than ever. But in practice, globalization connects products, not people. It allows the West to consume the world’s labor without truly seeing it. Hernando de Soto’s argument in The Mystery of Capital, that capitalism thrives only when people have the legal and institutional means to participate, feels painfully real when you’ve worked with factory-floor workers in Bangladesh or artisans in India who produce for billion-dollar brands yet remain invisible in the global economic narrative.

De Soto calls this “dead capital”, the wealth that exists but cannot grow because it lacks legal recognition. In many developing economies, people own homes, land, or workshops, but without proper documentation, these assets can’t be used as collateral to access credit or build enterprises. This creates a structural paradox: the poor are rich in effort, skill, and often even property, but the system doesn’t see their ownership. Their capital stays dormant, not because they lack ambition, but because capitalism, as we know it, was designed to recognize only those who are already inside its gates.

When I think of capitalism as a private club, I don’t think of champagne galas or Wall Street boardrooms. I think of paperwork. The kind of documents that decide who gets a loan, who can register a business, who can protect their idea. Capitalism’s true barrier isn’t cultural, it’s bureaucratic. De Soto is right to argue that prosperity isn’t born out of “Western values” but out of institutions that translate ownership into opportunity. What separates Silicon Valley from Dhaka’s jute markets or Delhi’s craft clusters isn’t talent or work ethic, it’s the infrastructure that allows ideas to become assets.

The global economy thrives on the illusion of inclusion. Workers in developing countries are told they’re part of globalization because they produce for global markets. But their participation ends where ownership begins. They can stitch a garment, but they can’t trademark their design. They can build a house, but they can’t mortgage it. They can contribute to GDP growth, but they can’t convert their contribution into generational wealth. Globalization, in that sense, democratized consumption but not creation.

Marx predicted that capitalism would eventually collapse under its own inequality. De Soto, more optimistic, argues that exclusion weakens capitalism from within. Both perspectives resonate today. Economic reforms in many developing countries- privatization, debt control, and free-market liberalization, were often executed without inclusion. Property rights remained inaccessible to ordinary citizens, while elites benefited from systems that were supposedly built for “growth.” This isn’t failure by accident; it’s by design. Capitalism claims to reward innovation and risk, but in much of the world, it rewards connection and legitimacy.

The 2008 financial crisis revealed that even in the most advanced economies, capitalism’s moral compass had tilted. Governments bailed out banks instead of homeowners, a decision that exposed where loyalty truly lay. It wasn’t a crisis of liquidity; it was a crisis of trust. People began to see that wealth, in its modern form, is invisible- represented by credit, contracts, and data, and that this invisibility benefits those who already understand the system. For the rest, it breeds distrust. In developing economies, that distrust manifests as skepticism toward formal banking, digital finance, or property documentation. People fear what they can’t see, and yet, it’s this invisible infrastructure that drives the modern economy.

So, how do we make capitalism more inclusive? De Soto’s six points provide a map: recognize what the poor already own, build systems that convert assets into capital, and trust that the poor are the solution, not the problem. These aren’t just economic ideas, they’re acts of recognition. They require governments to see their people not as beneficiaries of aid, but as potential investors in their own future.

From my own experience, I’ve seen glimpses of what inclusion can look like. In rural Bangladesh, small cooperatives of women artisans have thrived when given digital payment systems and formal recognition of their work. Suddenly, embroidery wasn’t just a domestic skill, it was an economic identity. Once their earnings were traceable, they gained access to microcredit. Their craft transformed from labor to capital. De Soto’s theory played out in real time: when the invisible became visible, wealth began to grow.

But the responsibility doesn’t end with governments. The global fashion industry, the one I’ve worked in must confront its role in perpetuating the illusion of globalization. When we say “Made in Bangladesh” or “Handcrafted in India,” we rarely think about who gets to claim the value of that product. The global supply chain is a mirror of global capitalism: value travels upward, while risk stays at the bottom. For capitalism to be a true engine of opportunity, it must redistribute not only profit but also power, the power to own, to register, to be seen.

At its best, capitalism isn’t about exclusion but about imagination, the ability to turn an idea into value. But that imagination fails when entire populations remain locked out of the system. Globalization promised to connect the world, but connection without equity is just extraction. If capitalism is to survive its own contradictions, it must evolve from a club of the few into a network of the many.

De Soto ends with hope: “When capital is a success story everywhere, we can use our minds to soar into the future.” That line strikes me deeply because it implies that inclusion isn’t charity; it’s evolution. Capitalism doesn’t need to die,  it needs to democratize. And perhaps that’s the real challenge of our generation: not to dismantle the system, but to rebuild its doors.