Original sentence: As Russian oligarchs and early foreign direct investors in China discovered, the ability of an enterprise to make money is no guarantee that its profits can be retained.Changes to the legal code should be few and predictable, allowing business planning.Free trade, then, creates an economic incentive for a race to the bottom in regulatory institutions; countries with lax, lenient, nonenforced, or selectively enforced regulatory legal structures will have a competitive advantage in attracting investment to their countries, and not merely in wages.From the capitalist's point of view, an ideal legal environment would have these features:.If so, the "Race to the bottom" may become a "Race to the middle" in legal enforcement, assisted by mobile capital, in order to create the optimum legal conditions for investment (balancing legal protections for labour and capital).Low or uncollected taxes.Some have argued that firms actually encourage (or at least prefer) the rule of law, thinking that, on balance, it is "good for business".Strong legal protection for property rights.The difficulty that modern capital finds in meeting all of these conditions is that (1) and (2) are correlated with an immature legal system, but (3) and (4) are correlated with the division of powers, and long-standing legal institutions.The government should not be likely to override the rule of law, or impose exchange controls.Weak or unenforced labour and environmental protection laws
Edited sentence: Free trade, then, creates an economic incentive for a race to the bottom in regulatory institutions; countries with lax, lenient, nonenforced, or selectively enforced legal structures will have a competitive advantage in attracting investment to their countries, and not merely in wages