Comments by "" (@FOLIPE) on "The Downward Spiral of South Africa" video.

I have a different view on decolonization. While it was a messy process (unfortunately so) and it left many wars and destruction on its path (due in part to local demands and in part to how colonies were set), the massive "empovirishment" of Africa is more due to a population boom than to decreasing economic outputs. It's not that colonial economies were more dynamic or productive, they were extractivists then as they are now, but the denominator was a much smaller population of locals. As for South Africa. One cannot deny that the post-apartheid regime has been disappointing and a massive failure. However, I disagree with some of the points put forth in the video. South Africa's economic history is actually similar to that of the southern cone of Latin America, and in the same way as them it was never an industrial, modern western economy, but always an extractivists economy which lagged behind the western core more as technologies advanced. This was true both before and after apartheid. The problem with South Africa is that with apartheid instead of having a poor unequal country with a rich upper class like we all know South American countries are, they were a poor country where the elite pretended to be in Belgium while surrounded by a massive Congo. The whites in apartheid South Africa didn't live in a rich western country, they lived in as a segregated elite of a poor developing third world country, the two bejng parts of the same economic model. This illusion of wealth, that whatever the whites were doing could be "extended" to the non-whites without massive economic reforms that changed the model of economic development of SA, and the historic decadence of early extractivists economies in the 20th century, are two of the big stories of South Africa and are parallel to Argentina, Venezuela, Chile etc, with the aggravating racial issue (except Latin Americans were more aware of these issues as we weren't all busy thinking about racial apartheid all the time). Also, I do think some redistribution could have been positive if it had been well managed as it was elsewhere, but the racial tensions and the type of farming (which is related to the economic model) of South Africa, make those harder to do right. Giving land to small tenants can help increase both productivity and the consumption as incomes rise, but it's different when you have plantation-style farming systems, especially when modernized, as those require large technical and capital investment.
32
I think the apartheid South Africa was not a very pragmatic policy, to be honest, as it was rather idealistic. They thought they could sustain a system of racial segregation with a minuscule minority of the population indefinitely? That doesn't seem very pragmatic to me. Instead of trying to incorporate the other races, they antagonized them. Instead of giving them an alternative homeland, they always systematically tried to exploit their labour due to being addicted to their unduly high standards of living. All those things don't go well together, it would be rather hard to imagine in the modern world that such system carried on systematically after the defeat of the fascists in Europe.
20
I think land reform would be good but since South Africans aren't peasants in a feudal economy it isn't as simple as giving the land to those who work in it, as it happened in South Korea, Taiwan, France or other countries. It would have to be a different model, like the homestead act of the US, except modernized, or else a slower system where people can be trained or given loans to work the land.
15
Also they got to learn by doing instead of having modernity appear ready made on their face usually on the shape of guns brought by boats
6
@vorynrosethorn903 I didn't forget it, it's just irrelevant to the argument. You say the white south Africans are so intelligent and that without them society would collapse, however as I point out it was their mistakes as a ruling elite that led south Africa to a situation where it had the ANC as a dominant party post apartheid. Anyway, your view of black Africans as somehow not intelligent enough for modern life is also laughable, and African Americans do better in standardized tests than most Europeans
2
@useodyseeorbitchute9450 Norway and Australia aren't extraxticist economies and no, it's not awkward to admit a country that makes enough wealth for 1/10 of it to have decent loving standards cannot extend it to the other 90% without major reforms. It can, with some work, change the 10% at the top, though.
2
@punishedksen9135 A couple contributions in a few fields doesn't negate the overall character of the economy. Brazil is highly advanced in the airspace industry and yet it's a commodity based economy, and the same was then true of South Africa. Actually all you said of SA such as it receiving immigrants 100y ago, is valid also for South America, and the context of an economy based in primary goods is also the same
2
@captainvanisher988 Population does matter, especially in extraxticist economies. Norway isn't one, by the way, it's quite a complex economy that dominates all parts of the process of oil production and refining for example. It isn't Venezuela. Australia is more of a resource extraction economy, but unlike South Africa not only is its population small but they do have a lot of strong high services and historicaly even had significant industries (even locally owned). Canada, on the other hand, has historicaly been thoroughly industrial as is the US. The problem with your argument is that it is nice and dandy if you ignore that South Africa has 60m people while Norway has 5ish million. Also, if you ignore that in the same world as South Africa you also have Chile, Uruguay and Argentina, which had similar falls in relative wealth compared to Europe in the last 100y. You rely on the (wrong) notion that South Africa was basically a prosperous country as France or Belgium during the time of apartheid, while it was In fact comparable to Chile and significantly poorer than Argentina.
2
@useodyseeorbitchute9450 You can't compare an economy right after destructive war to their normal state. Both Germany and Japan were rich Pré war, and Korea was fairly developed compared to what South America or Africa were. However ofc countries are capable of development, it's just rare. Staying where you are is not outstanding, it's the norm.
2
@punishedksen9135 It's not fundamentally about human capital, I'm talking about why countries with low complexity economies lost relative ground in the 20th century and this also includes white countries such as Argentina and Uruguay. Also, as you noticed, it doesn't include countries that were able to climb up the complexity ladder, like China, but the moment in which human capital is the big problem is later in the process. I agree human capital plays a role in development, but the economic model in south Africa was the problem not a lack of human capital. If the lack of human capital were an issue you'd expect very high wages there not brain drain
2
@fdhgbjsk Even the Indian caste system wasn't as strict as apartheid, which is a thoroughly modern initiative based on modern notions of racial superiority. Apartheid as we know was implemented in the twentieth century, not in pré-modern times. You can't say apartheid would have worked in a pre-hegelian context because it would not have been apartheid - in pre-modern societies you have surely stratification, but intermariages are seldom totally forbidden, socialization is allowed in many levels, and there isn't the construction of parallel societies. Basically if you want a pre-modern equalivalebt of Apartheid, the whites in south Africa self-imposed the position of the European jews, not that of the indo-European or persian-turkoc conquerors of India.
1
@useodyseeorbitchute9450 Groups have a trend to mix and to segregate, apartheid South Africa took the later to an extreme and look how well it worked out for them.
1
 @useodyseeorbitchute9450 The present is built upon the past, you can't decouple modern South Africa from the legacies of apartheid
1
 @LawofImprobability-2 No but those weren't viable in the way they were made. Apartheid South Africa never really decoupled the white lifestyle from using cheap black labour
1
@useodyseeorbitchute9450 It's not about human capital, it's just that South Africa is a poor undeveloped country.
1
@captainvanisher988 It's still one of the richest countries in Africa by per capita basis, but of course the rest of Africa will catch up as technologies spread. The core of the argument is that some extraxticist economies were benefited by early integration into the global economy, such as southern south America, Peru, South Africa and a few others. But keeping that economic model leads to an increasing gap with developed economies as competition rises in the bottom and gains mount at the top of the economic complexity ladder. The hard thing is to climb this economic complexity ladder
1
@useodyseeorbitchute9450 My point isn't just about infrastructure, it's a mix of accumulated capitals (including human and others such as infrastructure) and, above all, ECONOMIC MODEL and how the country inserts itself in the global economy (also American help and so on, I'm mentioning the development by invitation theory) If you look at Korean economic output and composition before the war of Korea you'll see it was actually fairly developed. It was obvious decapitalized and desorganized after the war, but it could rebuilt because it had land, property and social relations and know how (social and human capitals)as well as of course an economic base to reorganize post war and good policies such as land reform and so on. The comparison with Nigeria is very misleading because it disregards all this context which can be seen easily by looking at the Pré Koran war Korean economy. The regimes in Eastern Europe weren't nearly as damaging as you are saying. They didn't erase social cohesion, they industrialized, modernized, educated, and built decent economic basis for later integration into the global economy. That said, the integration itself was still painful for them, and that's having historicaly been rich, egalitarian countries nearby to some of the richest areas of the world. It's very different from the south African context, I think eastern Europe is more similar to east Asia or even turkey, south east Asia perhaps. That being said, recent history is surely a part of why parts of eastern europe which were historicaly rich like czehia and east Germany, were surpassed by the area right next to them on the other side of some random political line My point on the bouncing back doesn't apply to south Africa as they are where they have always been more or less. There's no massive change, just slow degradation and worsening. Things can obviously change over time, but shocks don't necessarily cause and usually don't cause structural change, that happens more slowly (one case in which a shock does cause structural change is colonization particularly of the repopulating type like the US expansion eastward, because it totally changes the way an area is operating)
1
@useodyseeorbitchute9450 The bounce back mechanisms are all the things that aren't affected or are not as severely affected by a shock which is usually contained to just some areas of the complex world we live in. If the shock is a war, you have things war doesn't change (geography, most of culture, demographics as much, a lot of the industry, the elite's strategy, development model, natural resources, connections other things). You explain continuation by that which continues and change by that which changes. Now, of course some populations are more or less wise, lucky, or just in the wrong areas of the world for a given historical period and technology. They can also be more or less educated and have a culture and history more or less compatible with modern capitalism or democracy or this or that mode of organizing and thinking. I didn't deny any of that, and even agree that South Africa had the short end of the stick being a racist apartheid-based society in the post war world (even Ian Smith said something like that, that they were being punished by doing something that other counties had done until recently). Dealing with that incompatibility was surely an issue for them. What I deny is that there was even a massive shock in post-apartheid South Africa comparable to say WW2, and in fact things looking at the data continue more or less steadily, with South Africa being a bad performer for its peer group but still in the same peer group and following similar trajectories (you can plot gdp per capita of Brazil and South Africa, or even Uruguay and South Africa, for exemple). However, undeniably there's an erosion that threatens making south Africa slowly drop or be surpassed as former poorer countries rise. Actually this happens to many peer countries of South Africa, as they are overtaken by Asian and Eastern Europeans. Anyway, I don't deny the failures of the post-apartheid regime, it has been pretty bad and at the lowest edge of what you'd have expected. Uniquely bad one could almost say, if we didn't have the Venezuelas and Ukraines of the world. So while I'm saying that South Africa's "place and history" is not that good, it doesn't mean they couldn't have been more competent with better leadership, both before, during and particularly (one would hope) post apartheid. The same applies to South American countries, although I think we are luckier both in context and leadership and also just ideological vision (which in south Africa is sadly overly radicalized and I discussed how that lad to a bad assessment of the situation). There are any reasons why things happened but it doesn't excuse the failure of South Africa or Argentina or Brazil or Chile, especially from the point of view of the decision-makers who made such cumulative decisions, but it's good to know why they made the decisions and the limitations they had so perhaps with a clearer diagnosis better decisions can be made in the future. Personally, I like the comparison between east Asia (Eastern Europe is fine too but less interesting) and South America or South Africa exactly because it allows us to see some political, cultural, demographic and structural causes that make good and bad decision-making possible or impossible, likely or unlikely, and also impact the outcomes of the decisions. The government independence from landowning elites due to the expelling of Japanese colonists in east Asia that allowed them to make land reforms, for example, is often talked about as a positive (versus political dependency on the landowning elites in south Africa and South America), but even that is based on having a peasant society which South Africa didn't have (Latin America did in some parts), and not having a race-based redistribution issue. Anyway, South Africa is also a case that when you look had a lot of problems due to the consequences of the structure of interests that existed prior to any given point in time, although there were definitely key moments like the disenfranchisement of colored and black people after the Union, where things could have turned differently. More recently, the afrikaaner decision to not separate south Africa was both key to the future of the country and caused by dependency on cheap black labour, perhaps it could have been different. One can hope and as a person work so that politics are better and I don't believe we have no action, but there are still constraints. At worse someone might kill you, as many leaders have been killed. At best you can succeed. But not everything can be done.
1