ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the interrelation between the evolution of individual property rights and the decentralized and contestable common law legal system. It explains the nature of the state, which is about the balance between the individual states and the federal state, between localized power in the states responsible for much local infrastructure and administration, but with centralized power of the federal state strong in regard to 'foreign' policy, namely expansion across the North American continent during the 19th century. The chapter outlines the regional and racial segregation of ownership of assets at the end of the 18th century, based on slavery and large plantations in the southern states and on smallholdings in the northern states, from Piketty's data and argues that these legacies have shaped US capitalism. It focuses on importance of mass shareholding in corporations that formed the basis in both countries of the type of shareholder capitalism that distinguishes the liberal market economy from the coordinated one.
