[nsomaru]

Sure, it isn’t stealing if you’ve built the labour and market system to cater to labour exploitation and wealth extraction.

Most here live a very simple life in rural africa and would probably be content to do so if it wasn’t for taxation and labour demand.

Sure we have our issues. Billions of rands poor out of this country, extracted by modern multinational neo-imperialists. If we blink the wrong way, the spectre of “loss of foreign investment” is always held above us. If we blink the other way, the rand is punished and ratings agencies come knocking.

I love my country and it’s people. I think we have enough to feed and house everyone. It often feels like other people are pulling the strings.

[lelanthran]

> I love my country and it’s people. I think we have enough to feed and house everyone. It often feels like other people are pulling the strings.

Well, stop for voting the people pulling the strings...

A quick example: The largest owner of land is the South African Government, and yet laws are pushed through to allow land to be confiscated from people of a particular race and "redistributed" to other people of a selected race[1].

As long as the majority allows things like that they will remain poor and impoverished.

It's been over 25 years that South Africa has had State-mandated and State-enforced affirmative action to benefit the 90% majority at the expense of the 10% minority, and yet the 90% majority is still clamouring for more.

[1] It makes more sense for the South African Government to give out land that they actually own, not land that is held by someone else.

[fennecfoxen]

More broadly, as a pragmatic issue utterly divorced from the goal of “justice”, few nations achieve prosperity when confiscation is the norm, as prosperity usually involves planning and investments with multi year returns. If a nation wishes to repair inequalities through transfers, the less disruptive way to do it is through taxation. Seizing specific properties outright is an arbitrary and capricious distribution of the burdens, and a lingering political culture of expropriation will likely deter investment for a generation or longer.

It is also remarkable the extent to which these land confiscation programs focus on the nation’s farms, as if the leaders’ vision of a prosperous future was simply subsistence agriculture: two acres and a cow for every family. The proceeds of a program of taxation can be invested in health and education and infrastructure, the foundations of future prosperity. It’s hard to do that with seized land; few will be fool enough to buy it off of you.

On the other hand, a campaign of land seizures, fêting ethnic resentment, is much more effective at feeding the ruling party’s political power, so, there’s your tragedy.

[pythonic_hell]

I don’t agree with the policies around land without compensation but the economic prosperity that the people of the USSR and PRC experienced after instating those policies can not be denied.

[fennecfoxen]

You mean the prosperity of China, which is about one-third the prosperity of, say, South Korea, which started out in about the same place? Ah! I regret that it only seems impressive because the nation is very large.

Oh! But perhaps you mean those heady years of growth during the Great Leap Forward itself, where the nation became so prosperous that ~45 million people starved to death.

[FredPret]

Economic prosperity?! They had massive famines. Tens of millions died.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932–1933

[cycomanic]

I think painting this as such a clear "black&white" issue you make it much too easy for yourself. This goes particular for South Africa, where much of the wealth disparity is because of the economic divisions that were created during colonization and apartheid live on.

On a more general this is similar to the arguments with libertarians who hold property rights up the highest, ... but only from now, ignoring the blatant disregard for property rights in history which cemented todays economic structures.

I don't have good answers how to deal with wrongs of the past, but it's clearly not simple.

[zohch]

> I don't have good answers how to deal with wrongs of the past, but it's clearly not simple.

But definitely voting for less shitty politicians won't fix it right ... I mean god forbid someone puts a stop to the uninhibited looting from your political class who are elected time and time again with legislative majorities or super-majorities. Definitely xenophobia is a much better solution ... lynched any Americans lately, maybe that will solve it, or is that something South Africans reserve for other Africans and Pakistanis?

[zohch]

> Sure, it isn’t stealing if you’ve built the labour and market system to cater to labour exploitation and wealth extraction.

It is not stealing if it is by definition not stealing, but at least you can say that you never voted for the singular political party that has enjoyed an legislative majority (and sometimes supermajority) for almost 30 years ... right? I mean it is better than chance you did, as the majority of South Africans who can vote have at least once in their lives voted for said party, but not you for sure, and definitely not your parents, that would be ludicrous to suggest.

> Most here live a very simple life in rural africa and would probably be content to do so if it wasn’t for taxation and labour demand.

And you definitely never voted for the political party that set the tax regulations.

> It often feels like other people are pulling the strings.

Must be, can't be the voters, obviously the majority of the voters who voted for singular political party that has enjoyed an legislative majority (and sometimes supermajority) for almost 30 years have no say in how the country is governed, that would just be fucking stupid to suggest.