Quote from: chessnut on March 13, 2014, 03:40:59 AM

Quote from: billyjoeallen on March 13, 2014, 03:20:07 AM

Quote from: chessnut on March 13, 2014, 02:51:51 AM

Im from South Africa, I know if try and tell a guy on the street that, he will kill you take your every belonging to buy food and survive another day. there is no money there, there is no work, they are all slaves to capitalism. and I love those people, they are good people.

and killing and stealing is another free market system that really works.....

Killing and stealing only works until the productive people stop producing, and then everybody starves. The productive people started leaving South Africa in droves when the anti-capitalist Nelson Mendela took over. There's no place on earth with more natural resources per acre than South Africa. If people are starving there, then it's because the government killers and thieves created an environment hostile to peaceful trade.

of coarse Nelson Mandela was anti capitalistic, look how it ruined the country. 'The roads of the british empire are paved with the gold from Africa.'

"all the productive people" includes only rich white boys such as myself. I cant say that I was nearly as productive as those people on the street who have to break any number of laws and endure terrible fighting to gather those natural resources. they wouldn't call it capitalism them selves.

The reason why SA is very unproductive is because when the capitalists in America (that own most of the mining shares) hear complaints about wages in the coal and gold mines, they dont mind if the workers get shot when they protest. and that is the biggest export of SA.

those miners earn something like $1 per hour, and the mining debree is killing them.

South Africa was NEVER capitalist. Imperialism and colonialism is not capitalism. Capitalism is voluntary trade in a system that respects private property rights. What we have is the RELATIVELY capitalist apartheid system under P.W. Botha and the relatively less capitalist system that has been in place since then. Under most metrics, life for the average South African was better under apartheid, even with the gross injustices and racism. Using South Africa as an example of failure of capitalism is like using alchemy as an example of failure of chemistry. It simply doesn't apply. Calling colonialism "capitalism" and then criticism colonialism is straw man argument at its finest.

There are lessons to be learns from South Africa, but no agreement is possible if we can't agree on the definitions of the terms we use.