Lockdown is losing the support of South Africans

Gordon_R

Gordon_R

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Lupus said:
Don't forget Maos Great Leap forward that ended up killing millions
en.wikipedia.org

Great Leap Forward - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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The list is endless, I was merely quoting the most recent example, and relevant to books and intellectuals.

Lots of fascinating history, from quarantines, to Hitler, Stalin, and the atomic bomb. Humans are the smartest, but also most self-destructive creatures on earth.
 
Lupus

Lupus

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Gordon_R said:
The list is endless, I was merely quoting the most recent example, and relevant to books and intellectuals.

Lots of fascinating history, from quarantines, to Hitler, Stalin, and the atomic bomb. Humans are the smartest, but also most self-destructive creatures on earth.
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This is true, in our wisdom there is a lot of stupidity.
 
Brian_G

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Gordon_R said:
I have been reading a lot of history books (coincidentally taken out of the library before the lockdown). It is eerie how many of the stupid government actions in SA have precedents in the past. Pol Pot the dictator in Kampuchea (Cambodia) decided that the country did not need intellectuals, factory workers, or even urban dwellers, only farmers!?

Seems like the same mentality here, all in the name of a bizarre fixation to control everything. Its a form of madness..
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Yet there are a few parallels involved that suggest the gov. is just following the associated world leaders' (WHO, IMF, CDC etc.) herd mentality, so I think they're actually reaching and stretching based on that rather than just inventing the shyte.

Does that make it better? IMO probably not, but maybe less severe, at this stage.
 
Gordon_R

Gordon_R

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Brian_G said:
Yet there are a few parallels involved that suggest the gov. is just following the associated world leaders' (WHO, IMF, CDC etc.) herd mentality, so I think they're actually reaching and stretching based on that rather than just inventing the shyte.

Does that make it better? IMO probably not, but maybe less severe, at this stage.
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Off topic, but that reminds me of a rare and weird phenomenon in the South Pacific Islands after WW2. The residents had seen US forces build airstrips, and planes land with supplies for the war effort. After the war the islanders kept maintaining the airstrips in the false belief that their actions would produce the desired outcome. It took several years for the disappointment to wear off, and reality to set in.

A pessimist would make a similar prediction for the SA government.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
 
M

MrGray

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Brian_G said:
Yet there are a few parallels involved that suggest the gov. is just following the associated world leaders' (WHO, IMF, CDC etc.) herd mentality, so I think they're actually reaching and stretching based on that rather than just inventing the shyte.

Does that make it better? IMO probably not, but maybe less severe, at this stage.
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This is true - I've seen a number of very familiar stories coming from a number of countries about banned cigarette and alcohol sales, etc - India has banned tobacco production I believe, so all the shops have run out, Thailand has banned booze, there are states in the US where "non-essential" goods are cordoned off in the supermarkets. Everybody is clearly singing from the same WHO hymn book. Gives you pause for thought when you hear people ranting about a new world order, etc. Countries don't come to their own conclusions and draw up their own laws, they just "follow the herd" as you say.
 
Brian_G

Brian_G

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garp said:
Everybody is clearly singing from the same WHO hymn book.
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I've also heard that popular social media platforms are preventing anything that criticises the WHO, but don't know the details so no idea how accurate that is.
 
SlowInternet

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People are not going to wait much longer before going back to their usual daytime activities. Most have little or no money and food and others are just tired of being confined to their houses.

My gardener phoned me this morning to ask if he can come and clean on Monday because he was told by someone that they all can start working next week. He needs to get out of his house and get some extra cash. We did buy him food before the lockdown and gave him some cash as well.

Son told me he saw at least 2 houses in the neighbourhood where people's gardens were cleaned by their regular gardeners. My parents neighbour had a visit from her child and grandchildren.
 
Gordon_R

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SlowInternet said:
People are not going to wait much longer before going back to their usual daytime activities. Most have little or no money and food and others are just tired of being confined to their houses.

My gardener phoned me this morning to ask if he can come and clean on Monday because he was told by someone that they all can start working next week. He needs to get out of his house and get some extra cash. We did buy him food before the lockdown and gave him some cash as well.

Son told me he saw at least 2 houses in the neighbourhood where people's gardens were cleaned by their regular gardeners. My parents neighbour had a visit from her child and grandchildren.
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Precisely. The subtleties of Level 4 restrictions, and the reasons for indefinite extensions of the lockdown, will be completely lost of many of the poor and desperate.

Realistically the only way to stop people working is to clamp down on public transport. Anyone who can walk the distance will try their luck...
 
Rouxenator

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My wife's work got classified at essential services so they've been working the whole time. She has 4 ladies that work for her, 3 of them from Khayelitsha and the other from Kayamandi. The company arranged a deal with the boyfriend of the Kayamandi lady to drive them on the commute. He worked as an Uber driver so this was a win-win situation.

They all have permits stating the nature of their work and their travel arrangement. Yesterday evening on the way back from Khayelitsha, about 1km before Kayamandi in George Blake road the driver got pulled over and fined R2500. Those familiar with Stellenbosch will know that road mostly gets used to access Kayamandi. The driver told my wife that the (old white) officer did not believe their paperwork and said it could have been forged.

Lekker neëntien tagtig apartheid vibes, another good ANC story to tell.
 
konfab

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Gordon_R said:
The list is endless, I was merely quoting the most recent example, and relevant to books and intellectuals.

Lots of fascinating history, from quarantines, to Hitler, Stalin, and the atomic bomb. Humans are the smartest, but also most self-destructive creatures on earth.
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The most relevant one is the New Deal in the US, you know the ones that leftists in the US worship. The one that prolonged the great depression.


FDR's tripling of taxes, his regulation of business, and his relentless anti-business propaganda also contributed to a worsening of the Great Depression, but his labor policies were probably the most harmful to the employment prospects of American workers. In this regard the most disappointing thing about the Cole-Ohanian article is that they do not even cite the pioneering work of Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway—Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth Century America—first published in 1993.

Indeed, it is somewhat scandalous that they do not cite this well-known work while making essentially the same arguments that Vedder and Gallaway do. They recite many of the same facts about labor policy: The NIRA codes established minimum wages for less-skilled and higher-skilled workers alike; employers were told that they must bargain collectively with unions, which were given myriad legislated advantages in the bargaining process, all enforced by the newly-created National Labor Relations Board. All of these policies made labor more expensive. Consequently, as the economic law of demand informs us, the inevitable result had to be less employment.

Strike activity doubled from 14 million strike days in 1936 to 28 million a year later, and wages rose by about 15 percent in 1937 alone. The union/nonunion wage differential increased from 5 percent in 1933 to 23 percent by 1940. Newly-enacted Social Security payroll and unemployment insurance taxes made employment even more expensive. What all of this means is that during a period of weak or declining derived demand for labor, government policy pushed up the price of labor very significantly, causing employers to purchase less and less of it.
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This last conclusion—that the abandonment of FDR's policies "coincided" with the recovery of the 1940s is very well documented by another author who is also ignored by Cole and Ohanian, Robert Higgs. In "Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed after the War" (Independent Review, Spring 1997), Higgs showed that it was the relative neutering of New Deal policies, along with a reduction (in absolute dollars) of the federal budget from $98.4 billion in 1945 to $33 billion in 1948, that brought forth the economic recovery. Private-sector production increased by almost one-third in 1946 alone, as private capital investment increased for the first time in eighteen years.

In short, it was capitalism that finally ended the Great Depression, not FDR's hair-brained cartel, wage-increasing, unionizing, and welfare state expanding policies. It's good to see that the Journal of Political Economy, the University of Chicago, and UCLA are finally beginning to catch up to the libertarian scholarship of Richard Vedder, Lowell Gallaway, Robert Higgs, Jim Powell (author of FDR's Folly) and such predecessors of theirs as Henry Hazlitt, John T. Flynn, Murray Rothbard, F.A. Hayek, William H. Hutt, Benjamin Anderson, and others associated with the Austrian School.
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https://mises.org/library/new-deal-debunked-again
 
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Rhein

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Rhein said:
I forecast that there will be much more disobedience should there be restrictions placed on over sixty year old citizens.
Many of this age group are just gatvol of the restrictions and will even more so, should they excluded from any relaxations relating to exercise and confined to their residence instead of going for walks etc.

I'm not of that age group but know quite a few from golf, hiking and parkruns.
Many of them now walk to the shops instead of going by car and then, still walk to a store, that is much further away than their normal shopping venue. From Tamboerskloof to the Garden Centre and even to Greenpoint.
They do this to keep fit and healthy. ....And, more importantly for mental health because they are bored stiff.
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In support of my post:
www.dailymaverick.co.za

Editorial: To the SA government: Exercising outside is the best Level Four solution

Our government needs to, once and for all, consider what’s better for the people of South Africa and not take the easy route of pushing the rules that are more convenient to the authorities.
www.dailymaverick.co.za www.dailymaverick.co.za
 
Gordon_R

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ToxicBunny

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Oi! Leave me out of this...
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