How would you fix South Africa?

[Swordsmyth]

So where do your personal facts lead you to believe?

I have not researched the history of SA, but I would believe the original historians from the old days, a lot easier than revisionist and liberal historians.

[helmuth_hubener]

Y...meddling... ...grab... ...for decades... ...Get the West outta there!

I know reality is moot for rabid ideologues,
Poor souls whose brains've been hijacked by a viral superbug,
But still, let's look: what hast this "meddling" wrought? Let's catalogue:
Pop. hundred mil. and flat. Came Euros: ag, and mech, and drug,
The wheel, which blacks not only failed invent but to adopt!
Brilliant breakthroughs like not drinking the same place where you excrete,
All this "oppressive" "meddling," now one billion has been topped,
Soon to be 5! then 10! Flooding the world -- isn't that neat?

Ninety percent of blacks owe the White Man their very lives,
But, perk thine ears: dost thou hear "thank you"s? Any gratitude at all?
Warm smiles? Welcome reciprocation? Hands full of flowers? Nay: just knives.
So sure, let's leave, and take our tech. Hundred mil's plenty. Let them fall.

[Ender]

Because revisionist and liberal historians are so trustworthy?

The history you trust was written by the winners.

[Ender]

I know reality is moot for rabid ideologues,
Poor souls whose brains've been hijacked by a viral superbug,
But still, let's look: what hast this "meddling" wrought? Let's catalogue:
Pop. hundred mil. and flat. Came Euros: ag, and mech, and drug,
The wheel, which blacks not only failed invent but to adopt!
Brilliant breakthroughs like not drinking the same place where one excretes,
All this "oppressive" "meddling," now one billion has been topped,
Soon to be 5! then 10! Flooding the world -- isn't that neat?

Ninety percent of blacks owe the White Man their very lives,
But, perk thine ears: dost thou hear "thank you"s? Any gratitude at all?
Warm smiles? Welcome reciprocation? Hands full of flowers? Nay: just knives.
So sure, let's leave, and take our tech. Hundred mil's plenty. Let them fall.

Uh.....that's the biggest bunch of garbage I've seen in a while. That's like saying everyone here should worship our gov for keeping us slaves to The Machine. Not only was their land taken, blacks were heavily killed off by whiteman diseases- like smallpox- sorta like the American Indians.

And BTW- many indigenous peoples had the wheel- Africa had no horses, so the wheel was not looked at as useful except for pottery.

Try looking from the African's POV

http://www.gov.za/about-sa/history

[Swordsmyth]

The history you trust was written by the winners.

And yours was written by subversive liars.

[Madison320]

False history.

The Myth of the empty land had become a central tenet of both British and Afrikaner identity in nineteenth century South Africa and had been used as a justification for the capture and settlement of Bantu land. The Apartheid Government had transformed the myth to serve its own ends. They used it to support the Homelands Act and to confine the Bantu people to particularly localities, arguing that the rest of the country had been ‘empty’ and therefore could not form part of their Homelands. Since the 1980s however, evidence has shown that the myth of the empty land simply cannot be sustained. Rather than being historical fact, it is a convenient fiction that has served as a political tool.

From what I've read that's true, the Boers displaced the Bushmen. But the current blacks displaced the Bushmen as well. So neither has a "right" to steal from the other.

Do you think only native people have a right to own land in a given region?

Suppose people of Mexican descent became the majority in the US and they decided that whites should have to surrender their property and move back to Europe, since whites took the land from the Indians. Isn't that similar to whites in SA having to surrender their property?

What if you stopped thinking in terms of groups and focused on individual rights instead?

[Madison320]

Uh.....that's the biggest bunch of garbage I've seen in a while. That's like saying everyone here should worship our gov for keeping us slaves to The Machine. Not only was their land taken, blacks were heavily killed off by whiteman diseases- like smallpox- sorta like the American Indians.

And BTW- many indigenous peoples had the wheel- Africa had no horses, so the wheel was not looked at as useful except for pottery.

Try looking from the African's POV

http://www.gov.za/about-sa/history

If most of the problems in Africa are caused by Europeans why are the standards of living higher in the places settled by Europeans?

[PierzStyx]

Responses in black

**WRONG**

Blacks in the apartheid state had more wealth then today - cuz they had more food and infrastructure that actually fkin worked.

Yeah. Just GREAT infrastructure.





No, they didn't. Whites held most of the wealth. Blacks were almost entirely isolated to poor ghettos and bantustans.

Also, blacks did control any political power, whites did. Saying blacks had wealth when the majority of it both liquid and in physical assets, private and public, was controlled by whites is the most stupidly socialist thing I have ever heard. Everyone is wealthy when the State is wealthy, right?

That's what happens when you go from a segregated state to one where the majority who don't know what the hell they are doing takes the land from the productive and explicitly says they must die for the color of their skin.

Idiot fearmongering. Know how I know? Because the major race in South Africa is 75% black and only 9% white. If majority wanted to commit genocide there would already be nothing but dead white corpses in South Africa.

And it isn't hard to be "productive" when you can seize the wealth of people through the power of the state and force them to work in your service as whites did in apartheid. Indeed, the "freefall" people talk about in South Africa, the reality is that not much has changed, the reality is just better reported now than it was under a racist apartheid state who had a vested interest in making the nation appear to work to the outside world.

Segregation (while not a good thing) is NOT the same as GENOCIDE.

**EDIT** my response was to your whole statement not just what showed up in the quote. Modern black/communist controlled SA is NOT the same as the apartheid state (as incredibly flawed as it was).

Great think no one is committing genocide.

[PierzStyx]

If most of the problems in Africa are caused by Europeans why are the standards of living higher in the places settled by Europeans?

There isn't. Most of Africa was once "settled" -and in reality instead of some idiot fantasy settled here means invaded, dominated, and exploited by brute military force- by Europeans. And teh standard of living varies widely from nation to nation in Africa.

[PierzStyx]

I have not researched the history of SA, but I would believe the original historians from the old days, a lot easier than revisionist and liberal historians.

Yes, because people trying to just invading, slaughter, brutally dominating, and exploiting people are unbiased sources. Don't be stupid. You're eating crap as if it were candy.

[Swordsmyth]

Responses in black



Great think no one is committing genocide.

I'm sure people like you said the same thing about Zimbabwe, It's never Genocide until it is.
We can read the signs of the times, you don't want to because "Little Brown Brother" is perfect and "Whitey" is evil.

[PierzStyx]

Stop and see, libertarian!
Ideology: the mind poison.

Reality's no longer there.
Stop, and gawk, and heed: Beware!

You can always tell those who know you're right but can't bring themselves to admit it. They can only resort to ad hominem fallacies to try and deflect form their failures. Thanks for the example.

[Swordsmyth]

Yes, because people trying to just invading, slaughter, brutally dominating, and exploiting people are unbiased sources. Don't be stupid. You're eating crap as if it were candy.

They were more unbiased than the commie revisionist and liberal historians.

[Madison320]

There isn't. Most of Africa was once "settled" -and in reality instead of some idiot fantasy settled here means invaded, dominated, and exploited by brute military force- by Europeans. And teh standard of living varies widely from nation to nation in Africa.

There's nothing special about Europeans invading Africa. Pretty much the entire planet has had native populations replaced, including black African populations replacing black African populations. It doesn't justify violating the individual rights of the current population.

The whole idea that a particular "group" doesn't "belong" somewhere, and their rights are invalid doesn't seem real libertarian to me.

[helmuth_hubener]

You can always tell those who know you're right

Can you tell those who used to believe just like you,
But then read more and thought more and that view outgrew?

[r3volution 3.0]

How would you fix South Africa?

military coup --> dictatorship --> hereditary monarchy

Of course South Africa was better under Apartheid. Nelson Mandela, besides being a convicted terrorist, was a Castro ally and a Marxist. The country is a disaster because of his election.

The average lifespan during Apartheid was 64 years old. The current life span is 56 years old. South Africa is not just the rape capital of the world, it has 4 times as many rapes per capita as the 4th place country. http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...josh-gelernter The per capita GDP is $5600. That is less than Cuba.

A way that would work would be to have someone like Pinochet takeover, or if possible someone like Lee Kuan Yew. Their current leader is pursuing the same policies as Allende did in Chile. The guy is confiscating land from white farmers (who are being exterminated) without compensation. The guy should ousted. The people of South Africa are too irresponsible for democracy. The results of Lee Kuan Yew and Pinochet speak for themselves. If you had a capitalist strongman takeover South Africa, people would be much wealthier, live longer, and actually have a future worth living.

Well said, with one amendment:

"The people of South Africa are too irresponsible for democracy."

Right, but the US was not supposed to be a democracy but it eventually devolved into one. Even if you have safeguards like not directly senators, if you let everyone vote, you'll always get corrupt politicians promising free stuff that will undo even the best republic. That's the point of using South Africa as an example. It was supposedly set up as a republic but look at how quickly it devolved into a dangerous democracy. I'm convinced restricting the voting pool is the key. That's the root cause of the problem.

The essential problem is multiple people sharing power, whether 15 million or 15, as it creates a tragedy of the commons, with the economy as a whole being the over-exploited resource, leading inevitably to socialism. So, yes, the electorate should be reduced - to one, which lone voter you might then rename king. Alternately, if power must be shared, it should be shared among a group small enough to avoid both the need for representation and the possibility of rational ignorance amongst themselves, which means a very small group indeed (perhaps a couple hundred at the most): i.e. oligarchy. Property owners or taxpayers are still far too numerous a class for the job. Nothing much would change (except perhaps the distribution of free$#@!).

You DO know the West has been meddling in Africa to grab their resources for decades- amirite?

Yes, but that's not the cause of their problems.

...which is, rather, the highly unstable, populist governments that took the reins from the Europeans.

[Madison320]

military coup --> dictatorship --> hereditary monarchy

The essential problem is multiple people sharing power, whether 15 million or 15, as it creates a tragedy of the commons, with the economy as a whole being the over-exploited resource, leading inevitably to socialism. So, yes, the electorate should be reduced - to one, which lone voter you might then rename king. Alternately, if power must be shared, it should be shared among a group small enough to avoid both the need for representation and the possibility of rational ignorance amongst themselves, which means a very small group indeed (perhaps a couple hundred at the most): i.e. oligarchy. Property owners or taxpayers are still far too numerous a class for the job. Nothing much would change (except perhaps the distribution of free$#@!).

The US had voting restrictions and it lasted for a pretty long time, I'd say it was a lot better than any dictatorship in history. Property owners wouldn't work over time, it's not self correcting. They can keep voting themselves free stuff and stick the rest of the population with the bill. But taxpayers ARE the ones paying the bill, by definition. In theory they would not vote for bigger government since their OWN taxes will go up.

[r3volution 3.0]

The US had voting restrictions and it lasted for a pretty long time

Rome wasn't built in a day. The road to socialism in the US was laid at the founding (actually a little over a century before, in England, with the supremacy of the Commons). Certain features of the US Constitution, or of the States', may have slowed it more than elsewhere, but it was still baked into the cake.

I'd say it was a lot better than any dictatorship in history.

That's probably true, but dictatorship isn't the solution; it's only an (unfortunately) necessary bridge to the solution (hereditary monarchy). The mature, stable monarchies of the 18th century (what we're aiming for) were as liberal as the US at its best, and lacked the democracies internal tendency toward socialism.

Property owners wouldn't work over time, it's not self correcting. They can keep voting themselves free stuff and stick the rest of the population with the bill. But taxpayers ARE the ones paying the bill, by definition. In theory they would not vote for bigger government since their OWN taxes will go up.

Suppose 51% of taxpayers vote to create a graduated income tax whereby they pay 0.001% of their incomes and the 49% pay 99% of theirs, with all the revenues going to the 51% in the form of welfare spending? That's an extreme example, but the problem is unavoidable - nor can any constitutional provisions prevent this kind of abuse, since, ultimately, it is the majority who elect the people who "interpret" those provisions.

[r3volution 3.0]

Africa had no horses, so the wheel was not looked at as useful except for pottery.

On that subject,

"The Effect of the TseTse Fly on African Development," by Marcella Alsan (full text).

The TseTse fly is unique to the African continent and transmits a parasite harmful to humans and lethal to livestock. This paper tests the hypothesis that the presence of the TseTse reduced the ability of Africans to generate an agricultural surplus historically by limiting the use of domesticated animals and inhibiting the adoption of animal-powered technologies. To identify the effects of the fly, a TseTse suitability index (TSI) is created using insect physiology to model insect population dynamics. African tribes inhabiting TseTse-suitable areas were less likely to use draft animals and the plow, more likely to practice shifting cultivation and indigenous slavery, and had a lower population density in 1700. As a placebo test, the TSI is constructed worldwide and does not have similar explanatory power outside of Africa, where the fly does not exist. Current economic performance is affected by the TseTse through its effect on pre-colonial institutions.

The part about population density is important, since state formation is strongly correlated with population density. It's a lot harder to collect taxes over thinly populated areas, and so those areas form states later or never at all, and so remain in tribal anarchy: which makes for high levels of violence and theft, which retards capital accumulation, and so on. Geography largely explains African underdevelopment prior to the arrival of the Europeans, and to some extent since their departure.

[Ender]

From what I've read that's true, the Boers displaced the Bushmen. But the current blacks displaced the Bushmen as well. So neither has a "right" to steal from the other.

Do you think only native people have a right to own land in a given region?

Suppose people of Mexican descent became the majority in the US and they decided that whites should have to surrender their property and move back to Europe, since whites took the land from the Indians. Isn't that similar to whites in SA having to surrender their property?

What if you stopped thinking in terms of groups and focused on individual rights instead?

I don't think in groups- the OP is about groups.

[Ender]

They were more unbiased than the commie revisionist and liberal historians.

"Revisionist history" is a name TPTB came up with so the ignorant that got their history from public school would think it was all made up.

Get outta the Matrix, dude.

[Swordsmyth]

"Revisionist history" is a name TPTB came up with so the ignorant that got their history from public school would think it was all made up.

Get outta the Matrix, dude.

I took the phrase from YOUR source.

False history.

In the 1980s revisionist and liberal historians and archaeologists began to argue against the theory of an empty land. Using new archaeological evidence they were able to show the presence of Bantu like people in the eastern half of South Africa since around 300 AD. They were also able to show that even though there had indeed been a large Bantu migration into the region at a later date, that date was somewhere around the 12th century AD, rather than in the seventeenth century as had been previously argued. Historians began to unpack the ways in which the myth of the vacant land had come into being and were able to show how its emergence coincided with the increasing clashes for land between the Bantu and the British and Afrikaners.


http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/empty-land-myth

[Ender]

I took the phrase from YOUR source.

So?

And used it in a bad light exactly the way that TPTB like.

[Swordsmyth]

So?

And used it in a bad light exactly the way that TPTB like.

Those who fly the flag of revisionist and liberal by their own choice are stuck with the implications.
I have read enough revisionist and liberal history to know it is garbage in almost every case.

[Ender]

Those who fly the flag of revisionist and liberal by their own choice are stuck with the implications.
I have read enough revisionist and liberal history to know it is garbage in almost every case.

Then you haven't read much.

[helmuth_hubener]

Uh.....that's the biggest bunch of garbage I've seen in a while.

When population increases ten-fold in a short time,
What's up? Material increase, or material decline?
Were Afros better off alone, or after Europe's "meddling" hand?
Fact: jump 100 to 1,000 mil. Math's hard, I know. Don't understand?

And BTW- many indigenous peoples had the wheel- Africa had no horses, so the wheel was not looked at as useful except for pottery.

Many other things were "not looked on as useful": sanitation,
Building, like, two story buildings, metallurgy, crop rotation,
Mathematics, logic, money, reading books -- "not useful," that,
Even to have written language would be a waste of time. Forget that.

But no, oh no, this Genius Race has no genetic limitation,
Has no problems of its own making. It's all from: Colonization!

http://humanprogress.org/blog/how-af...ot-left-behind

[Madison320]

I don't think in groups- the OP is about groups.

How? I suggested limiting the voter pool to taxpayers only to strengthen individual rights. You suggested the West leave. I'd say you're the one with a group fixation.

[Madison320]

That's probably true, but dictatorship isn't the solution; it's only an (unfortunately) necessary bridge to the solution (hereditary monarchy). The mature, stable monarchies of the 18th century (what we're aiming for) were as liberal as the US at its best, and lacked the democracies internal tendency toward socialism.

What incentive do monarchies have to create a small, libertarian government? It's seems random to me, it all depends on who's in charge.

Suppose 51% of taxpayers vote to create a graduated income tax whereby they pay 0.001% of their incomes and the 49% pay 99% of theirs, with all the revenues going to the 51% in the form of welfare spending? That's an extreme example, but the problem is unavoidable - nor can any constitutional provisions prevent this kind of abuse, since, ultimately, it is the majority who elect the people who "interpret" those provisions.

It's self correcting. When I said "taxpayers" I really meant "net taxpayers". Those 51% would lose the right to vote since they'd be getting more benefits than they pay in taxes. The remaining 49% would vote for smaller government and a flatter tax so that they wouldn't be the only ones paying.

[Madison320]

When population increases ten-fold in a short time,
What's up? Material increase, or material decline?
Were Afros better off alone, or after Europe's "meddling" hand?
Fact: jump 100 to 1,000 mil. Math's hard, I know. Don't understand?

I've always thought that emigration was a good, objective measure of a country's relative success. If people are moving into a country it's probably because they like it more than the one they moved out of.

[helmuth_hubener]

I've always thought that emigration was a good, objective measure of a country's relative success. If people are moving into a country it's probably because they like it more than the one they moved out of.

Yes, while this is true, with what has it to do?