Tag: Free Market Foundation

Read our exclusive cover story titled Let me work! - official violation of the rights of the unemployed must end by Eustace Davie, Director, Free Market Foundation, plus a host of other topical management articles written by professionals, consultants and academics in the June/July 2023 edition.

For us liberals, it matters little who makes a million dollars every other day, or how the world’s most endowed billionaires spend their wealth. As long as legitimate effort is exerted in an environment of free market competition; where entrepreneurship is recognised and rewarded on the basis of good business ethics and hard honest work.

A trade in the commercial sense is a mutually beneficial exchange. With the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement having come into operation in 2021, it would be fitting to remind ourselves of the benefits of free and unfettered trade, especially for the African continent and its people.

As a result of the collapse of almost every government service and state owned enterprise, South Africans are perforce increasingly seeking ways to avoid or replace government services. State insurers have also failed.

The Certificate of Need (CON) provisions in the National Health Act 2003 will require doctors to apply for CONs for everything they do and plan to do, including opening a practice and medical equipment they want to use.

The Competition Commission has aroused the ire of mainstream economists and analysts with its latest Essential Food Pricing Monitoring Report for 2021 to 2022. It has charged the maize as well as the meat and poultry markets with ‘excessive pricing’.  This time, even the halls of academia through the likes of Prof. Johan Kirsten of Stellenbosch University, shook in disagreement.

“Don't harm your neighbour” is much better advice. This is a passive rule. It does not require you to do anything, just to refrain from doing some things. I believe the gap between these two rules summarises the gap in Western society between left and right, between Democrats and Republicans, between the kindly, caring, sharing, socialists and the individualistic, thinking, independent, self-reliant capitalists. Both sides passionately believe that their rule is the better one.

Estimated Tax Freedom Day (TFD) – the day after the country has earned enough money to pay for government – will be on May 14 this year. That is 2 days later than last year’s prediction. The prediction is based on the intended level of tax collection for central government mentioned in the Budget Speech.

If jobseekers in South Africa currently had the right to freely enter voluntary contracts with employers at wages and on conditions acceptable to both parties, the country would not have mass unemployment. Figures recently released by Statistics SA confirm the statement by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) that at 29.8 percent South Africa had the highest unemployment rate in the world. At 4.9 percent the USA had the lowest rate.

Modern day states are characterised by an implicit admission that everyone who is living under them, consents to be governed by them. Yet when one looks at the world, in any society, there is always a large portion of people who not only disagree with authority but actively did not consent to it by voting differently or not at all. Are the views of these people not important because they represent a minority?