It’s tragic that Nelson Mandela‘s legacy is so strong that the ANC can‘t lose an election; even if they underperform in almost every task of government.
Serpentza, a YouTuber from South Africa, did a video on this recently. The money that should have been spent on infrastructure was squandered and the possibility of the electric grid collapsing is real. He posted a screenshot from an app that his parents deal with; it was 12 hours of blackouts, 12 hours of power. Plus the currency is worthless and 50% unemployment leads to very high crime levels.
I recently read a book review that discussed South Africa today. One of the many points it made about the dire state of things is that the air force planes that flew overhead during Mandela's inauguration were, a decade later, completely inoperable.
And unlike weather forecasting, communism ending in failure is a 100% certainty. Yet communists somehow are able to take the moral high ground. We have advanced well beyond the middle ages where it was reasonable to hold intellectual and political elites to moral standards.
China kicked out invaders and redistributed their ill gotten lands. Fast forward and they are doing well. The only reason westerners dont like this model is their monopolies and many corrupt entities get destroyed in the process.
Meh, SA has supposedly been on the "brink of chaos" ever since Apartheid ended, and yet it never happens. I'm getting tired of this narrative.
I've visited once. Yes, many things seem to have gone south, but those are growing pains every country goes through to achieve a proper political and economic system.
Of course it is easy to avoid "chaos" when the majority of the people are brutally suppressed. Actually crafting a proper political and economic system is not as easy as it seems. Europe for instance had to go through horrible wars for centuries before its nations learned to live in relative peace.
Using HDI [0] you can see that ZA was middle of the pack developmentally in the 90s, but platueaed until 2007, when the commodity boom and BRICS fervor saw ZA's development skyrocket. Yet by 2013 onwards, that development began to plateau again.
Furthermore, ZA is a country that is traditionally compared to other rising economies like China, Brazil, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand, etc. In the 2000s, ZA was far ahead of China developmentally and comparable to Mexico and Brazil, yet all 3 countries have overtaken ZA.
Heck, in 1990 Malaysia, Thailand, and South Africa were all comparable developmentally yet Malaysia and Thailand in 2023 have hit the precipice of becoming a developed country (HDI at 0.8 and above) while South Africa is still stuck.
Even Vietnam, a country that in 1990 was one of the poorest countries in the world has now in 2023 caught up to South Africa developmentally.
This absolutely constitutes a collapse. Mind you it's not as bad as Venezuela's (China in 2023 has only just hit developmental indicators that Venezuela had in the late 2000s and early 2010s, yet Venezuela had regressed to the same level as China in the early 2000s), but it is absolutely a massive regression.
It's an uncomfortable title, but it's a truth that must be confronted. How have once downtrodden countries like Korea, China, and large swaths of Eastern Europe been able to turn rags into riches while most of Africa has so far failed to?
GDP is not everything of course. But even on measures of safety, why is Africa so much more violent than equally poor Laos or Cambodia?
South America shares some of Africa's woes, so perhaps it's not a uniquely African problem. But it seems less bad, and the region has produced success stories.
I've heard it said that Africa has yet to have its naissance. Maybe, hopefully, that's it and things will get better over time. But with the current corrupt institutions and leadership that looks to be a gargantuan task.
> How have once downtrodden countries like Korea, China, and large swaths of Eastern Europe been able to turn rags into riches while most of Africa has so far failed to?
At least for Eastern Europe, the answer is very clear: the European Union imposing a serious baseline regarding democracy, rule of law and corruption. While Poland and especially Hungary are testing how far the patience of the EU can stretch, in general it's still holding up. On top of that, Eastern European nations/their populations wanted to join the EU desperately, wishing to never experience authoritarian realsozialismus again.
China had an immense amount of young, trainable people and a lack of environmental and worker regulations, which the West was all too keen on exploiting, and established trade routes from UK empire times. That's how they got big.
Africa, in contrast, had and widely still has nothing. No coalition/federation that pushed applicants to improve, no/barely any external interest in the countries, no major trade routes, no one who gave a flying fuck about the entire region. The US largely don't care as long as there is no bad actor threatening their interests (such as ISIS, al-Quaeda and its offshoots), Europe doesn't care about anything but getting rid of migrants no matter what, the Arabs don't care, and there aren't natural resources worth the trouble of extracting them without violating supply chain concerns. The only ones at least caring a bit about Africa as a continent are the Chinese, but they don't care about politics as long as they get a supply of workers and a potential market for cheap crap now that Europe and the US are saturated - we're seeing first signs of that by Chinese fast fashion taking over clothing from Western "second hand" (mitumba) stuff.
IMO the main problem is the arbitrary way borders were drawn in Africa by colonialists. Too many ethnicities that didn't get along very well suddenly shared a common state, while others were split between many countries. When even much richer and educated areas have problems with multiculturalism of much smaller scale (the Balkans, Spain, Belgium for example), it's not surprising that countries like DR Congo with over 200 languages spoken are basically ungovernable through democratic means. The border situation isn't anywhere near as bad in South America and most of Asia - and even there countries which lack common national identity tend to be less stable than others.
Peaceful coexistence of many cultures within the same society is a nice idea, but in reality it's very hard to do right due to the tribal nature of our specie. Highly successful multicultural countries appear to be an exception, rather than a norm.
> Highly successful multicultural countries appear to be an exception, rather than a norm.
Them why is this "ideal" of multiculturalism so heavily pushed in media and government action?
I personally speak four languages conversationally and from my familiarity, I cannot imagine even these similar cultures agreeing on enough basic values to form a stable society. How could dozens of cultures with different values and worldviews ever form a body of law that respects each tribe's values, customs, and interests?
By the popular conception of "diversity," these arbitrary dividing lines should certainly be a strength and not a weakness. It's telling that "mixing different cultures together" becomes a reason in hindsight that an African country fails , but looking to the future is supposed to be a reason a Western country (or company, etc.) will succeed. It's difficult to see how these claims can both be true.
Plenty of European countries have more than one language, only recently got 1 unified language.
You have countries like India that manage to make a cohesive country out of disparate peoples.
That's not to say these aren't contributing factors.
My current 'theory' / observation is that sub Saharan Africa never really had large scale civilisations, I wonder if that colours their conception of what a nation state is.
Eg, if you think in terms of tribes. Perhaps that hinders scaling up to something bigger.
If these peoples have been living and fighting and reproducing successfully for millennia, why do Europeans and Americans think it necessary to get group them into states and force them to form large-scale heterogeneous bodies of law? Does that just make it easier to remove the mineral wealth from the continent?
Or do they need to develop their own concept of the state, or at the risk of sounding imperialistic, do they need to learn the concept of the nation state?
Broadly speaking I would say having structures larger than a tribe is a net benefit. Whatever form that may take.
>Or do they need to develop their own concept of the state, or at the risk of sounding imperialistic, do they need to learn the concept of the nation state?
Western governments need to stop assassinating leaders and toppling democratically elected governments every few years for that to happen. That hasnt stopped and it has a chilling effect, which is the purpose.
>It's an uncomfortable title, but it's a truth that must be confronted. How have once downtrodden countries like Korea, China, and large swaths of Eastern Europe been able to turn rags into riches while most of Africa has so far failed to?
It's all of Africa. I was flabbergasted to learn that, contrary to what I'd heard for years about how Africa was poor but rapidly growing, the truth is that Africa is poor and not growing at all. <https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/6krxpv/world_map_of...>
> GDP is not everything of course. But even on measures of safety, why is Africa so much more violent than equally poor Laos or Cambodia?
Can you point to some statistics to back this up? I've lived in Africa for most of my life, and I struggle to see the truth of this. Apart from some countries at war, where is tis extreme violence going on? For what it's worth, I felt far more unsafe when I lived in the US.
Compare how many people were killed in wars in the 20th century, by continent. Africa has been by far more peaceful compared to Europe and Asia; it's not even close.
Why? I really do not care anymore. How much have been poured in? How many marshall plans in $? While Germany rose from a bombed out nation in 1945 to the EU's strongest economy?
South Korea too is even more impressive, from an illiterate peasant nation to now with Samsung and all that.
Japan got hit with the most destructive man made weapon, twice. Granted, they were an Asian powerhouse up to WW2.
I think the key is education and "making your own shit". Have any African nations made weapons, planes, tanks, communications equipment, trains, cars, and now computers and phones in the same ilk?
Being Swedish, we are 10milion only and have made planes, submarines, ericsson + vast mining and forest operations with assorted companies. :)
Nothing. Do you actually think vast sums have been poured into Africa, with the objective of helping its development? If so, I'd like to disabuse you of that notion.
Actually, development aid to Africa (a drop in the ocean compared to what the US sends to Israel, or spent on the Iraq/Afghan war each week, for instance) is intended to hinder its development, by propping up the donor countries industries at the expense of local industry, or by supporting rulers who tow the western line.
I cannot go into all the reasons why/how this is the case, but all the information is out there if you search for it.
Those three nations were heavily invested in by the US after WW2 and Korean war as bulwarks against communism, perhaps not the best examples of pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.
Are we not counting Haiti or Jamaica? If we’re counting “black” as “African”, then yeah. But then “There are no successful African countries” seems a lot less difficult to prove/refute.
Jamaica, and especially Haiti, are in no way "successes". The Dominican Republic is not exactly a rich country, but the contrast between it and Haiti are so stark as to beggar the imagination.
When people vote for politicians based on moral appeals instead of practical qualifications, corruption is much more likely; politicians don't have to do a good job, they just have to appear to be on the "good" side.
People vote for the ANC in SA because there isn't an alternative party at the national level. Once you vote for the party, the party then decides who will lead.
Even the article notes that the first 15 years of ANC rule saw significant development, as does HDI data [0].
The issue was that Jacob Zuma essentially destroyed RSA thanks to his corruption. And the only reason he became President was because he headed the ANC's intelligence department from the 70s to the 90s, and as such had dirt on everyone.
The significant development after the end of apartheid was more due to a very favorable international economic environment and the elimination of sanctions that restricted south africa's ability to export resources. Additionally, the end of apartheid was in itself a massive economic boon as it created new sources of labor.
The performance of the ANC has always been poor in South Africa. The party engaged in widespread AIDS denialism and dramatically cut investment as it attempted to help poor black africans through a variety of mostly poorly run schemes. Corruption was always present and connections with the ANC became essential in south africa. Today's troubles are the result of decisions made years ago.
South Africa's HDI skyrocketed from 2007-2013, which can be attributed to a mix of FDI as well was investments in human development in the 90s and early 2000s. Before then, South Africa largely plataued developmentally.
No "blockade" caused the Great Chinese Famine, except that carried out by the Communist government itself (starving the people of the country to death).
You seem to be ignoring history for the sake of defending a false western narrative.
The reality is it's just one of 100s of centrally created false western narratives you may have fallen for.
If you are in the US, I cant completely blame you. There are too many drug dealing and human trafficking family fortunes in the US ruling class for the truth about one of their largest crime spree victims to easily emerge. African history is another victim of similar fraud.
See also many cases in West when politicians are voted in based on gender.
E.g. here in Lithuania we had a presidential candidate who is a women. I heard too many people advocating for her based on her gender. I heard some people going as far as saying that all women shall vote for her. Should all men vote for another candidate who happened to be man? Never got an answer :/
Eventually the lady lost. Some people cried that she lost because she is woman. Sexism and all that jazz. But we had woman president for previous 2 periods. Once elected in 1st round with 50%+ vote right off the bat. And we had first woman PM in early 90s. But yeah, it’s just sexism and not coming from a very polarizing party. With a baggage of being finance minister during 08 crisis.
Tribalism is often encouraged by invaders and colonizers. Divide and Conquer is a classic tactic. See Tutsi Vs Hutu for one notable example in Africa. And this was a known strategy in apartheid South Africa.
Is this really blamed on Apartheid? Whenever I have talked with South African Blacks about the various tribal affiliations of the country, they claim that each community did not much like each other (and everyone hated the Zulus) since long before white people arrived. Indeed, it was white oppression that gave an impetus to pan-Africanism where, for a time in the ANC, people might have united across tribal affiliations.
The Tutsi and Hutu split stretches back before colonisation too.
You could make the argument that it was always going to be a problem and the colonizers didn't materially affect the course of history.
What you can't do is argue they didn't intentionally take advantage of this split for their own purposes. Because they did and it's documented history.
edit to add:
Here's a pro-apartheid Quora answer that suggests the separation of the different tribes was necessary to stop communists from stealing South Africa's mineral wealth.
> Apartheid gave these tribes their land back. Apartheid gave each tribe his independence from White Rule. Yes you lived ‘apart’ from the whites. But you lived apart in your own country. You could choose your own leaders and government and destiny.
> Communism was one of the driving forces to push the Black Independence program. The communists were using the blacks to try out vote the whites so that they could get control of of SAs mineral resources. By dividing SA into several smaller countries you effectively defeated the Communist plan.
That odd poster is writing about the (rather abortive) Bantustan effort after 1970. While that effort aimed to separate whites and blacks, it didn’t particularly seek to separate blacks from each other in spite of a claimed titular nationality for each; the projected bantustans were quite tribally mixed. So, it isn’t an example of what you were claiming.
That's inaccurate, the Bantustans were explicitly created on tribal lines:
Transkei & Ciskei: Xhosa
Bophuthatswana: Tswana (it's even in the name!)
Venda: Venda (ditto)
Kwazulu: Zulu (seeing the trend here?)
The Apartheid government was heavily involved in pitting tribes against each other, and especially in trying to co-opt Zulus against the others by allying with the Inkhata Freedom Party and Zulu king and offering them money, power, and other incentives.
don't forget the reason people voted for the nazis in Germany was not because they believed in their values but because they seemed competent to change things to the better, while all established parties seemed to not be able to do so
this (in a roundabout way) then put them in a position where they could size the remaining power by force transition into the power which would later start WW2
And it's not just back then. For example today many "right wing" forces in Europe use that arguments too telling people about how they (supposedly) can fix all the issues if you just stop nitpicking about "enter moral/ethic discussion here" and it just because the other parties blocking them for "insert slang for someone overdoing ethical correctness" reasons. Sure all a lie and most thing they propose tend to fall into the category of "looks like it could work until you understand market dynamics a bit better" and similar but people still get tricked.
Just to be clear in some parts of the world there seems to be an issue with political correctness and over policing(A) opinions but this is not a reason to stop putting ethical reasons into the selection of you vote, because AFIK the moment people stop that thing will get way worse.
(A) Like from outside of the US the US seems to suffer from it, but then when looking at inner US news closer I'm not sure if it's an actual issue or just people highlighting the exceptional case instead of the norm and starkly over exaggerating problems.
Yes, the Nazi have built certain things competently, because their predecessors were colossally incompetent.
But, AFAICT, they also run on a lot of resentment in the society, from the loss in WWI, crippling sanctions, huge inflation, and the truly incompetent Weimar Republic government. The Nazi found a bunch of enemies: predatory Jewish capitalists, the evil Brits, the insidious Communists.
A common enemy always helps solidarity, and some fire sales and confiscations resulting from the flight or arrests of better-off Jewish entrepreneurs helped the bottom line, too. On top of that, Nazi offered grandeur: some ritualistic cultural revival, "ancient roots", racial supremacy over basically everyone, and increasing military might. This was raising the spirits, even if it was not improving the living conditions.
And winning the hearts of the population is utterly important for staying in power, usually more important than filling their bellies.
The Nazi's never won an election, and even that was after a false-flag attack on congress. This would be like a US party receving 37% of the vote, after claiming the other party attacked congress (but really doing it themselves), then having their president appointed after the sitting president first gives up (after the party manages to create enough problems (with constant accusations that they used violence and personal threats to achieve that) that congress puts the president out of power with a vote of no confidence twice in just over a year. But each time the sitting president gets the confidence back from congress after a while.
Then the president essentially challenges the 37% of the vote party to form a government, then dies (ok - THIS one was not the Nazi's doing), and appoints, on his deathbed (against regulations) NOT the vice president, but the leader of the party that managed to vote his government out of office twice. Frankly, he did this out of desperation (well, probably, we don't know).
So no, Hitler got to power through ... uh ... "agressive political maneuvering" (with a lot of violence and killing on the side). NOT through elections. He was never elected. Never even managed to falsify an election.
sure I did oversimplify things a lot, well too much
they didn't win the 1932 election and only got 36.77%.
but you can't at all compare it with "US party receving 37%" because it was a fundamental different system. And 37% with a turnout of 86.21% ((first round), 83.45% (second round)) is not low, that is percentage of population wise more votes for Hiter then for Trump in 2016 and slightly less then for Biden in 2020...
This might not have given them direct legal power (they still didn't won the presidential elections), but a lot of implicit influence.
At that point in time the congress of the Weimar Republic was already dysfunctional (actually, not just people complaining it is). And a major reason why Paul von Hindenburg did win the presidential election was due to some groups being seriously worried about Hitler winning.
Important is that P. Hindeburg was not part of any party and many hoped that he would find a way to fix the Weimar Republic.
After this failed, he did hand the power to Hiter on his death bad, yes. But that it was "against regulations" kinda wasn't that relevant as the whole political system was collapsing anyway. What mattered a lot was that Hiter had a quite high number of votes in the 1932 election and support for him had only grown since then, so handing the power to anyone else would likely have even further destabilized the political system potentially leading to a very devastating outcome for Germany. He knew Hitler was dangerous through as far as I understood he did expect other forces to be able to constrain Hitler more and Hitler not going anywhere as far as he did in the end.
Anyway I did oversimplify things to a degree where you could say they where not right. BUT the core idea still stands without so many people voting for Hiter in 1932 he likely would never have been able to take over the power and a good reason why he got so many votes wasn't because people celebrated him hating Jews but because the promises for a better future he made.
> He was never elected. Never even managed to falsify an election.
He didn't really need to.
In 1933 the NSDAP (his party) won (in not so democratic elections) the congress elections, they didn't had an absolute majority but by teaming up with the KSWR they still won which removed any remaining barriers for transitioning the Weimar Republic into a dictatorship and in turn removing any need for falsifying elections outside of PR reasons. (KSWR = mixed party union of conservatives, nationalist, emperor-monarchists and more which had quite a big overlap with the NSDAP and was also promised quite a bit of money).
> Yes, the Nazi have built certain things competently, because their predecessors were colossally incompetent.
that wasn't my point, I was speaking about them promising things, not delivering
my point was if you completly remove ethical considerations from your voting process (and many people do so) then sooner or later you have some really bad people in power
I have to disagree based on my experience. In my country (South Korea), many have voted for conservative politicians under the notion that while they might be corrupt, they come with long careers inside the government and hence more "qualified" for the job.
More often than not, it turns out these conservatives aren't only more corrupt but actually less competent than their liberal counterparts. Their "successful" past careers mean little when they are built upon backstage deals and friends taking care of friends.
> In other words, doing a good job with the boring stuff is also good for getting elected.
yes and that is fully unrelated to the question of weather politics is about morals or not
e.g. you explanation also would go hand in hand with not electing anyone with very bad morals because then it's guaranteed that they won't just do "the boring stuff good" but will try to do other stuff; Or if they are corrupt will not do the boring stuff sustainable good because of corruption sneaking in slowly etc.
or in other words voting with ethics/morals in mind _but focusing on candidates with non extream ethics/morals_ is essential for there beeing any chance for good government longterm
Could we not, with the regional slurs here? Chicago has a lot of public corruption cases largely because it's a huge city. Louisiana and DC have the highest per-capita corruption, followed by Tennessee. It's not that the point you're making here is totally invalid --- there's public corruption in Chicago, to be sure! --- but there are other ways to say it. The actual capital of public corruption in the US is, as it turns out, also just the country's capital.
I grew up there & I'll continue to say that. I don't know where you're getting your statistics from, but Chicago has been doing it for a century, so they own it.
It's an unusual year there when a politician does not get indicted.
The stats come from the DOJ. The reason not to deploy regional slurs is because they beg for unproductive threads challenging and refining the claims. For instance: it is simply not the case that Chicago is meaningfully the "capital of corruption". It has more absolute public corruption cases, but does not lead relative to its population (you see similar things with the "most dangerous city" stuff).
I'm not saying you shouldn't have pointed out public corruption in Chicago. I'm just saying you should be more careful with the words you pick.
(As is probably obvious, I'm a lifelong Chicagoan).
Sorry, but it simply IS the case that Chicago is the "capital of corruption". It's not a "regional slur." You're entitled to your opinion, but so am I: I went to the high school (Fenger) that the real Eliot Ness went to, and so did both of my parents.
So as long as we're clear that you're saying this because of the mythology of Al Capone and I'm saying it because I'm looking at current DOJ per capita corruption statistics, I'm comfortable leaving the thread where it is.
just to amend that: it isn't just Al Capone and Frank Nitti, which was the 20's and 30's. Richard J. Daley and his son Richie continued into the 90's, with a brief interregnum.
Oh, Nitti and Richard M. Daley. Good point. I guess the DOJ stats must be wrong.
It's just a super weird argument is all, like: I can see a variety of ways to make an argument that Chicago is super corrupt, but none of them involve an organized crime empire based on bootlegging Canadian Club.
Second: This is primarily just a list of bad things that have ever happened in one of the 3 largest cities in the country, not a laundry list of public corruption.
Third: Sacco and Venzetti were accused and tried in Massachusetts, not Chicago.
Fourth: You get that the stockyards all closed by 1970, right? Chicago isn't a meatpacking city anymore, and hasn't been for over a half century.
This is what I mean by weird arguments about corruption: you've managed to attribute the entire labor rights movement to Chicago. On behalf of the city of Chicago and county of Cook, I accept the flattery, but: that ain't all us. We may have helped kick things off at Haymarket Square, but the rest of the country was shooting plant strikers well into the 1950s.
Might Chicago at some point in the past been the epicenter of corruption in the US? Absolutely! Is it now? No: we have numbers on this, and you can just go look them up. When you do, remember that Chicago (and the Illinois-Northern Judicial District) is bigger than most other places in the United States, so you have to scale the numbers. The numbers say that Chicago has a bigger corruption problem than NYC, which is a useful observation to make, but they don't say that Chicago is the most corrupt place in the country; the capital of corruption in the US is DC.
You are older than I am, but I'm no spring chicken, sorry to say, so you won't be able to dismiss me that easily.
See how this thread is going? Just find ways to make your point without declaring things "the BAD-THING-X capital of the USA".
That is simply the definition. A definition can't be wrong as long as it's consistent and not entirely superfluous. Slogans are however factually incorrect all the time, including the one you base your opinion on.
Remember that a society is not homogeneous and a single concept of right would require homogeneity. How that is achieved will be up to you, if you gain a measure of power and cleave to this idea. In the past it has led to tragedy and infamy. Have a care....
"held out the promise of an efficient state-led economy that would uplift the downtrodden Black majority. And for a while, it did."
There it is, the perpetually-available deal offered by all politicians: give us power and we will fix problem X (or maybe all problems).
Maybe intentions are good and the power is used to alleviate problem X. But soon those interested in solving X are replaced by those interested in the power.
And then the people are left with at least as many problems as before, but they've already given up the power and won't get it back.
The previous South African regime was somewhat economically liberal, and that was good, But it was very politically oppressing based on race, and that was bad.
Now it has reversed: the current regime is not racially oppressing, which is good, but it's not economically liberal, and the results are sad. Not nearly as bad as in Zimbabwe, but still could be much better.
So far, a properly run free market has been showing the best results of all approaches tried by humanity. Any attempts at controlling economy against its laws ended up in really poor results. The market works best under self-governing regimes, like republics and constitutional monarchies, where the law is equal for everyone, and is enforced. It still performs reasonably well in visibly authoritarian conditions, like (prewar) Russia, Turkey, or Xi's China, where some amount of rule of law remains, and corruption does not run rampant.
But the less efficiently run is the state (and efficiency correlates heavily with democratic regimes), the more the market deteriorates, and with it, does all economic prosperity. This only makes governmental inefficiency felt more heavily, the more prominent the corruption becomes, and the vicious circle continues. AFAICT this is what is happening in South Africa for last few years.
If you're one of the top 1% in America life is great. But the 99% should not be going around saying socialism sucks. That to me indicates you're gullibility and mindless support of the 1% who have waaaay too large a share of the wealth. The 99% have a lot of room to increase their wealth in America at the expense of the average by leaning a little more into socialism honestly.
The USA has 401k which is the same as super in Australia. Social security is another thing altogether comparable to the dole but you have to first pay something in to ever get a pittance out. I'm not sure you should count it.
The correlation that you draw between progressive social democracy and a good place to live for the average citizen, might not be the correlation that promotes your cause.
I just see it as a scale. Both extremes are terrible and the middle is the answer. So Australia is more to the middle but that still makes a good comparison. Op said that he's from a socialist extreme but that's just more to the point. There's a balance to be found and criticism of socialism isn't that meaningful compared to criticism of extremes.
I was born in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and it took decades to get rid of its awful legacy.
Socialism sucks. The idea of "means of production owned collectively" tends to suck even in capitalism (too many shareholders), but if the owner is the state, it sucks massively. Any alignment of interests goes out of the window, massive white elephant projects get built in the name of ideology, "superfluous concerns" such as environmental damage are ignored, incompetent people get promoted to directors because their uncle is a Party bigwig. Nothing acts as a check on rampant corruption.
I was born in the People’s Republic of Poland, and I think most of the suckage you’ve described are due to oppressive authoritarianism of the former Eastern Bloc countries, and have little if anything to do with collective ownership of means of production.
They have to do with the mechanisms of the commune being used to produce a dictatorship or a bureaucratic upper class, which has happened in ever circumstance where communism has been implemented.
We should know by now that communism as a form of government appears to be better than average at enabling corruption, because the underlying mechanism of removing personal choice is so well aligned.
> which has happened in ever circumstance where communism has been implemented.
Not so; I’m not aware of this happening on a large scale in the Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities in Mexico, for example (please point me to sources if I’m wrong).
Socialism in Western Europe stopped to be about collective ownership of means of production very long before the fall of the wall. That was maybe the goal of sub 5% far left communist parties, not even mainstream ones.
Nepotism, corruption and waste of resources are well established even in non left wing countries.
"Nepotism, corruption and waste of resources are well established even in non left wing countries."
True, and the problem gets worse with concentration of power in just a few hands; the absolute extreme is reached if all the power is concentrated in one person, or two (Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu come to mind, or Stalin).
This process is mitigated by the chaos that is inherent in markets and democracies; but classical socialism is an intellectual construct that seeks to avoid most of the chaos and replace it by central planning and predictable development.
Decentralized socialism might avoid that particular trap, but I suspect that in decentralized socialism, people in many jurisdictions would just vote for return to the older form of private ownership and so it would end.
AI will. Once we get past the hype and scam phase.
People have forgotten the alternative to capitalism and communism proposed by Veblen and others was the technocracy.
Back then there were no computers which is why the movement failed. But there already existed a tension between the Engineer and the manager/luxury/leisure class.
Veblen said the natural instinct of the Engineer is to reduce waste (ie corruption). While the natural instinct of the leisure class is to signal power and status through how much they can waste and get away with.
This tension is very much alive and is what produces Snowden. With AI do not underestimate what the next bunch of Snowdens will attempt as a natural reaction to the injustices they see.
Not an actual quote, but rather a later-paraphrased summary of John Steinbeck, "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
I see socialism like unions. Instead of addressing the underlying problem they seek to build a permanent detente with it. To that extent, people are much better off seeing themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" otherwise they risk becoming the "permanently politically exploited underclass."
Steinbeck was a hack. There aren’t enough calories in breastmilk to sustain life for an adult male. Also, equal opportunities for your whole population is a noble goal. Twisting that into, “Americans are delusional to think they could ever succeed”, just makes it seem like you hate America. You could twist socialism into, “You were afraid that not everyone could win so now nobody wins”, and be equally wrong.
Steinbeck was one of our great writers and the Nobel Committee, which is hardly American-controlled, awarded him the prize in literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception."
From reading that article (until the paywall hits) it sounds like South Africa is a libertarian paradise - private security, private road repair, private fire brigade.
Whenever folks like you denigrate 'lawless' libertarian shitholes, it always ends up that the reason such territories are so terrible is because of a government using its monopoly of violence to extract rent from business, either through outright taxation or currency inflation. Yet, every single time, people can't get the irony.
I dont know if you are being racist or trying to sarcastically point out racism against white people, but the first sentence in the article says "Corruption, government incompetence and policy paralysis", and Im guessing SAR doesnt have a white only govt.
