DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

John Fund asks a rhetorical question.

Hint: Yes.

An almost certain sign that a nation’s economic future and rule of law are in danger is the decision by its government to seize private land without paying compensation. From Cuba to Zimbabwe to Venezuela, expropriating private property has almost inevitably meant a slide into authoritarian rule.

That’s why many South Africans are worried at the news last week that its African National Congress (ANC) government has for the first time moved to seize land without going through the courts first, with two game farms in Limpopo the first test cases.

The planned seizures are part of a larger government plan to use its two-thirds majority in Parliament to change the nation’s constitution to legalize unilateral seizures. Once it has that new constitutional power, the government could in theory posture at being magnanimous and merely force landowners to give up their land for only a token or very small payment.

If history teaches us anything, it teaches us that once black people get in control of a government, that government sooner or later (typically sooner) collapses under the weight of corruption, cronyism, and abuses under color of law. It happened in Zimbabwe, it happened in Detroit, it has happened throughout Africa since the 1960s, and throughout the United States once People of Color got their hands on the levers of municipal power. The only reason that it hasn’t occurred more widely in the U.S. is the un-get-aroundable fact that Africans are only about 13% of the population.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2018 at 12:11 and is filed under Dystopia Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.