Posted on 09/11/2007 10:15:58 AM PDT by PaulScott
How bad must life be to eagerly emigrate to South Africa?
What makes Zimbabweans miserable? Nearly everything.
With Zimbabwe dollars being worth barely more than plugged nickles, there are rampant shortages of … well …. everything except Zimbabwe dollars. A fleeing expat might well be better fed eating the currency than trying to buy food with it.
And some people bought the story, including the British who engineered the hostile Zimbabwe takeover. So far the Brits have botched up the middle east, the far east, and now Africa. I’m not sure we want Parliament as an ally.
Zimbabwe went from being a land of enough to a land of very little to a land of let’s get the hell out of here.
(Excerpt) Read more at guysmith.org ...
Yeah, let's blame the Brits. [/s]
Thats right, because Jimmy Carter was President of Britain at the time.
Those in power in Britian at the time Britain relinquished control of Rhodesia bear some responsibility for the hell hole it has become since.
American and British leftists share that responsibility, led by, as mentioned before the chief bumbler leftist in charge here, Jimmy Carter.
Some, but they tried to make it a peaceful transition. They even agreed to pay the government to buy-out the white farmers, first willingly, then through eminent domain when most landowners didn't want to sell. Mugabe gave all of this land to his cronies instead of to people wanting to farm on it, so the British withdrew the financial support. So Mugabe just took all the land, still giving it to his cronies and thug supporters.
I put most of the blame on Mugabe. This wouldn't be happening if Mugabe hand redistributed the land to actual farmers.
I thought creation of a corporation for each land or groups of land would have worked. Partially buy out the farmer and put him as president of a corporation that owns the land. He has shares equal to the rest of his interest in the land, and the blacks who were farming it get the rest of the shares, and the majority. Everybody wins, food keeps flowing as everything's the same except the ownership structure. If the former owner mismanages the shareholders can force him out of management, or even buy him out.
But no, that's the sensible capitalist, workable solution. A Marxist like Mugabe couldn't understand it.
Maybe, just maybe, the sensible capitalist notion would would have been the people that owned the land would have kept the land. Call me crazy but I don’t see how the government taking peoples land and giving it, or any part of it, to others is particularly capitalist.
Maybe, just maybe, the sensible capitalist notion would would have been the people that owned the land would have kept the land. Call me crazy but I don’t see how the government taking peoples land and giving it, or any part of it, to others is particularly capitalist.
Basically, we're talking about colonial land taken by the British. The natives wanted their land back. It's not a good situation from anyone's point of view. Given that the reality is that it will happen, my solution is about how to use capitalism to mitigate the negative effects of forcing people to give up ownership of their land.
It need not have happened and it should not be the capitalist position to help with redistribution of wealth.
What would you propose? The British came in and took the best arable land, freely distributing it to the settlers around 1900 and later. But now the country is independent (as of around 1980) and the people would like their land back.
The issue was created by a lack of capitalism -- the land wasn't rightfully and honestly purchased from its owners. How can we right the situation as fairly as possible while ensuring it happens? Capitalism is the answer, but a Marxist has been running the country since not long after its independence.
Yes the British came in and took the land. They worked the land and made Rhodesia the bread basket of the region. When communist rebels started a civil war it wasn’t politically correct to support the people that had created a prosperous young nation so instead we have these communists taking the land and giving it to their cronies who in turn basically let the fields go fallow. I propose that we should have supported the colonists. Barring that we should not support communist redistribution of wealth and calling it “capitalist”.
We, or rather the British, did support them inasmuch as they made a deal for all the land to be bought rather than just confiscated. And the settlers still pretty much administered the country, although they had a minority in parliament. But the British pulled out after the massive corruption happened as you said. The question then I guess would be why didn't the British fight for the property rights of the settlers once Mugabe decided to take all the land. I guess it wasn't PC either.
Barring that we should not support communist redistribution of wealth and calling it “capitalist”.
The case I mentioned was more like giving grants to the natives to purchase shares of the land. You could make it loans if you wanted. We have the same structure here with employee-owned companies like SAIC. The only thing not capitalist is that the landowners would be forced to sell the shares just like in eminent domain -- but at fair market value. Except here the landowner gets to stay on his land and continue to manage it and profit from it as long as he does it well.
With grants or loans the British support the settlers, who don't get forced off their lands, and the blacks who were just employees are now motivated shareholders, and production stays high.
Remember, this is just my pie-in-the-sky plan of what could have happened given the circumstances, but absent the Marxists.
As we agree that marxists are the problem, and as I don’t have a time machine, I suppose that your plan of wealth redistribution may have been more palatable then not blockading arms to the colonists. With marxists however the fact that whites still owned farms would have been enough for them to do what they are doing now despite incorporation and selling shares. It’s not about ownership or agriculture, it’s about power.
That's all I'm talking about: Using capitalism to alleviate a bad situation. We know the Marxism angle didn't work -- actually we know Marxism never works, so we could have predicted this starvation over a decade ago.
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