Tag: Free Market Foundation

The heart of socialism is the class system. Whether it is Julius Malema or Vladimir Lenin or Fidel Castro or your Professor of Sociology, all socialists believe they belong to a superior class entitled to rule the inferior classes.

Freedom is the most important human right. Over the years, people of all nationalities, races and cultures have always migrated from oppressive regimes to countries where they enjoy greater freedom. The most liberal countries – like South Africa on the African continent – attract the most refugees. Liberty gives meaning to human existence; it is what we yearned for when we were under the yoke of apartheid. We sought true freedom; not only civil liberty but also economic liberty.

There is a humorous saying: 'The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. 'It’s often attributed to Albert Einstein, but he isn’t the one who said it. It isn’t the definition of insanity either—but it does describe a trait we could call crazy. Our species tends to repeat past mistakes hoping our 'good intentions' will be enough to change the results—this time.

Removing the right to compensation when expropriating property that is currently contained in section 25 of the Constitution, will be a lethal blow to the legitimacy and stability of our constitutional order if done under present conditions.

It is a well-known fact that the ANC sees itself not primarily as a ruling party, but rather as a movement. This means that it needs to justify its continued existence in terms of the attainment of the objectives given at the organisation’s founding. The need to do this is what informs former President Thabo Mbeki’s critique of the Expropriation Without Compensation policy (EWC) through the 'leak' of his foundation’s memo.

Discovery CEO Adrian Gore mentioned at the recent Leadership Summit that there is an element of 'declinism' - a pessimism about the state of one’s country - in South Africa, and that it did not accurately represent the situation facing our country.

A market for electricity has a salutary effect on the behaviour of all the participants in the generation and supply of electricity. Generating plants, transmission grids, distribution grids, wholesalers and retailers, all behave differently when they compete for business with alternative suppliers.

The problem of inappropriate labelling is not confined to law. It is appearing in the financial services market which should take deliberate steps to resist incorrect labelling, particularly by regulators.

South Africa was once speculated to have a government workforce larger than that of the United States. Think about that for a second or two. A country whose population numbers close to 57 million with more civil servants than a nation of over 300 million individuals.

The only social responsibility of business is to use its resources and occupy its energies in the generation of wealth, so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which are to engage in open and free competition, without deception or fraud.