Comments on: Xenophobia and economics

By: Bert

Bert — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:06:00 +0000

Yaj – It’s good to know that there are still some sane people out there; most of the time I do not believe that there are sufficient numbers of us to prevent the ecological disaster towards which humans are, as Leonard Shlain puts it, ‘shuffling like sleepwalkers’. What astonishes me, is the fact that most of those who comment on posts which are critical of mainstream capitalism, claim that capitalism has made society ‘wealthier’ than it was before, without stopping to think what ‘wealthier’ means. ‘Wealthier’ in what sense, and who is wealthier? A small percentage of the world’s people are ‘materially’ and financially wealthy, but the price paid by the others, as well as (especially) by natural ecosystems, is such that the net result is a ‘poorer’ world, not a wealthier one.

By: Yaj

Yaj — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 09:10:37 +0000

I must also agree with you on the values that are being promoted by ads.
The media and the marketing industry all play a role in aggravating the sense of deprivation .However they are unwitting actors within the system, driven by competition for ever-diminishing profits.

We need a paradigm shift in economic thinking. We need monetary reform to an interest debt-free system that promotes co-operation, social capital, community building, sufficiency and sustainability.

What(financial system) we have now is one which creates scarcity, fosters competition, exponential growth, environmental destruction. It brings out the worst in human nature through fear (of scarcity), greed, resource wars and incalculable social evils.

Yaj Chetty.
SA New Economics
http://www.sane.org.za

By: Yaj

Yaj — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 08:43:51 +0000

Brilliant article

It is the glortification of material wealth amidst a sea of deprivation which is the primary cause of the rage that has recently manifested itself in the barbaric xenophobic violence.

It is the level of inequality and the wealth gap within a country which is the main contributor to high levels of violent crime rather than the absolute level of poverty.

So long as we continue with the current economic paradigm , the situation will only deteriorate as the effects of peak oil and other resource depletion hits.

Unfortunately we have a financial system that concentrates wealth and siphons it up from the working masses including the duped and debt-ridden middle classes into the hands of a powerful financial elite through the system of compound interest and fractional reserve banking.

Yaj Chetty
SA New Economics
http://www.sane.org.za

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:54:29 +0000

I can go one better that the Cadillac ad you mention. Several months ago one of the French car manufacturers ran an ad with the tag line: “Cars for a Better Life”.

Pretty pathetic to have come up with that one, but even more pathetic to buy into it.

By: Lee Vaghi

Lee Vaghi — Tue, 27 May 2008 07:07:19 +0000

I find a lot of the anger also comes in when many South Africans feel that the foreigners take the jobs that they feel they were supposed to get, and many of these immmigrants are willing to work for much less than what they are willing. In a sense, I could understand their anger from that point of view. But this still does not give them the right to commit this violence. This seems to be the new apartheid.

By: ohwell

ohwell — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:46:44 +0000

MidaFo, your obsession with middle class whites is irritating and warped. Stop grinding away at the same old axe and sing us another song please.

By: Oldfox

Oldfox — Sat, 24 May 2008 20:27:32 +0000

MidaFo,

>Mbeki has made it his job to tackle the problem of poverty and has done rather well.

SA had around 50% of population living below poverty line in 1994, and around 50% below poverty line today. For black South Africans, its about 60% living below poverty level.

By my way of reckoning, thats 0% improvement in 14 years.
To get an idea of REAL progress in poverty reduction, look at Indonesia, Malaysia, China and Vietnam. Each of these countries reduced poverty, as percentage of total population, by 35% over 25-30 years. Indonesia was a LOW INCOME developing country, and still managed to reduce poverty from 60% of pop to 15% of pop.

>In the end the only people who can solve the problem of poverty are the ones who have been making the profits; those with money.

The SA government is not poor. Just two projects, “Arms Deal” and Gautrain, will cost a total of around R100 Bn, that is one hundred thousand million Rand. That is truly an astronomical figure.

Less than 1% of this amount, would have enabled the government to raze hostels (which are unfit for humans) to the ground, and build modern human centered apartments.
Many of the the Xenophobia attacks were launched from hostels.

By: Bert

Bert — Sat, 24 May 2008 10:31:12 +0000

JR – you did not understand my argument – read it again, and you’ll see that relevant work in psychoanalysis suggests that the resentment felt by the masses who see the unbridgeable gap between themselves and the iconic guy in the car ‘project’ this resentment on to the ‘foreigners’ who run shops, etc. And you cannot compare the US (where I have lived for years), with South Africa, where the material level of existence is very different from that in the USA for the large majority of people. And so far, China’s deeply rooted collectivist (public) mindset has prevented the same thing from happening there.
Mundundu – Thanks for sparing me the trouble of pointing out to Perry that he is actually confirming my argument, instead of opposing it.
Midafo – The reversion, on your part, to apartheid (in the historical sense) yet again as being somehow causally connected with this scenario, is rather lame, as is your generalization about whites being wealthy – there are by now MANY wealthy blacks in this country, too, as well as, proportionally speaking, MANY poor whites. Besides, why do you and others overlook the fact that many whites – including myself – opposed apartheid and fought it in many ways (I, and many of my white colleagues like Johan Degenaar and Andre du Toit, wrote against it and taught against it in our philosophy lectures). Don’t you think it is high time the old lines of separation were abandoned? We are supposed to live in a non-racial democracy (constitutionally), but factually social life here is more race-orientated than ever (one of the many areas where the ANC government has failed South Africans). The sooner we all judge people as people – members of the same species – and not as somehow irreducibly different kinds of beings, the better.
Siobhan – Thank you, once again, for amplifying what I have written in such an intelligent and informed manner. I especially like your elaboration on a different kind of materialism – the kind connected to power. The two types are intimately connected, of course, and the chronic blindness to the lot of other human beings (the less privileged) induced by power is unforgivable, especially in those who ‘claim’ to be public representatives. They have forgotten that true leaders are those who SERVE their constituencies selflessly.
Anton – Thank you for pointing out to MidaFo that many, if not most white South Africans would love to see the problem of poverty being addressed efficiently in SA – I fully agree that one would willingly pay taxes if one knew that some of it would go towards alleviating the plight of the poor. Far too little attention has been given to the creation of work projects with money from taxes – it is a myth that economies can only be stimulated by manipulating interest rates. To inject some of the large amounts in state (as opposed to governing party) coffers into the economy in an efficient, job-creating manner has always been a boost to the economy. I know people (white South Africans, ironically) who work with NGOs that struggle to get even those funds (millions, in some cases, earmarked for black community projects) out of the relevant government department, though.

By: anton kleinschmidt

anton kleinschmidt — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:54:52 +0000

@ MidaFo……you say

“The wealthy in SA have always generated and continue to generate masses of poor people that they blame on the birth rate or the ANC or even gleefully both.”

I am trying to understand your argument but this pivotal sentence confuses me. Please enlighten me

I think that you might be surprised to learn that many of us (whites) would be very pleased to see the conditions of the poor being improved. What angers us is the manner in which the ANC wastes state resources when these funds could be used to help the poor. We do not need expensive arms deals, huge soccer stadiums, gautrains. We do need infrastructure for the poor such as clinics, schools, houses, transport, etc. Please consider that the taxes we pay are substantial and the so-called wealthy contribute as much as 35% of their income as direct taxes. Much of this money is being wasted.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:33:02 +0000

Yep, spot on. The problem is one of scarcity and its set to continue. Using the X word indiscriminately may not be such a good idea either, because we might be creating something that doesn’t exist to the extent that some believe it does.