Tag: free market

While the President has signed the National Health Insurance (NHI) into law, the bean counters at National Treasury have yet to start looking for their excel sheets needed to ensure the NHI is fully costed. The first reason is due to the confusion of objective versus political ideology. The NHI has been touted as introducing “universal healthcare coverage” (UHC).

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.

Standard Bank CEO Sim Tshabalala recently suggested that Eskom should consider hiring an international candidate to succeed its outgoing CEO, André de Ruyter. Although Mr. Tshabalala is trying to be helpful, his suggestion misses the mark. A foreign appointee – no matter how capable or qualified – will not be able to fix the mess at Eskom. Another South African in the post won’t succeed either.

Because of its illiberal and authoritarian policies the choice of Qatar for the World Cup created a lot of controversy. A repressive dictatorship itself, Qatari police had their hands full going after people from countries who actually believed they had a right to freedom of speech. 

Both private and public sector corruption, whether moral or criminal, is a result of perverted incentives. These incentives are in turn a result of a political philosophy that regards it as at best appropriate, and at worst imperative, that policy (and political) considerations play a central role in commercial and economic decision-making. South Africa would do better to shift its focus to enterprise and away from politics.

The almost simultaneous implosion of socialist and communist systems throughout the world is arguably the single most significant political event of the twentieth century. The year 1989 is particularly poignant because in that year the Berlin Wall was dismantled.  This event signalled the beginning of the end of socialism in Europe and hastened an already growing worldwide disillusionment with socialist ideology.

What can we do to stop the bleeding? According to SARS data, the number of companies in the financial and business services sector dropped from 222,532 in 2007 to 139,664 in 2016 - a loss of more than 80,000 firms in 10 years.

To say that South Africa is a capitalist society is popular among journalists, politicians, and trade unionists. If capitalism is understood to mean a system of free and voluntary engagement without third-party interference, the notion that South Africa is capitalist is false.