In South Africa the Liberal party, the Democratic Alliance, which is currently in coalition with the pragmatically neoliberal ANC, is calling for the removal of the minimum wage. Just to give you an idea: 1.43 USD per hour. Also please consider the fact that during Apartheid, black South Africans were subjected to cheap labour, working as miners, domestic workers and factory workers all who were not given a minimum wage by the Apartheid state. Due to Foreseen reasons, the ANC took a Neoliberal approach to address Social injustices, and this in itself has created its own social injustices. Higher Poverty, Inequality and Unemployment especially in Black and brown communities. However the argument still stays from Neoliberalists that the issue of SA is that we are not capitalist enough. Hence we must get rid of the Minimum wage, trade unions must be given less power and more punishment for strikes. It’s fascinating!
Great summary, thank you! Can I ask, where do you get your images from that embellish your story? Are they generated by AI?. I like them and wonder how they were created.
Thank you! As for the images, I do a google search and just look through what comes up. Most come from online articles. I should be better about crediting the source.
Thanks for letting me know. Yes, images can be so powerful, and I think they help to encourage people to read articles. As much work goes into creating those images (if made by a person, and not AI), so agree they should be credited. And even if generated by AI, then credited as such, so people appreciate the differences, if any!
A great deal of regulation is made on behalf of corporations against competition from small operators by loading compliance costs onto small operators. Artisan food producers and licensing of builders come to mind.
In the first case, the move from prescriptive measures like premises inspections to nominally self-authored ‘food plans’, whilst appearing quite liberating, in fact loaded costs onto small producers because a cook rarely has the writing, legal or technical chops to produce their own- it becomes a business cost that must be covered by an artisans income, and a business opportunity for a pen-pusher. Corporate actors can spread these costs far more thinly and have in-house authors. They get the regulations they want.
The Licensed Building Practitioners Scheme is even more egregious. The ‘Leaky Buildings Inquiry Panel’ was stuffed to the gills with representatives of the actual culprits- materials manufacturers, corporate builders and architects, whose interests were entirely served by the outcome of the inquiry- sticking the blame to the tradesmen who were entirely unrepresented on the panel, creating a scheme that again created a new ‘compliance layer’ and associated costs to be borne by the individual tradesman, but avoidable by the corporate builder who has one or two ‘specialists’ to sign off the work of dozens of unlicensed tradesmen. Meanwhile the architects, one of the principal culprits, exempted themselves from the licensing provisions, a privilege that was not offered to any other trade or technical personnel reqardless how highly qualified or experienced.
Amusingly, the make-up of the panel is unsearchable, no doubt the files were ‘lost’ when the DB&H was rolled into MBIE in 2012 Embarrassingly, every business represented ended up being sued for their part in creating the crisis.
On account of my love (and lack) of robust conversation, I seem to have cultivated the habit of writing ‘near-post length’ comments on other peoples Substacks. I often restack them as Notes & occasionally they blossom out into full Posts!
“ in short, the reason why governments have regulations on corporations is that they will not behave appropriately unless they are regulated.”
Who knew electricity and gas electronic meter-reading charges are 3% of the bill? And bonus points if you knew Vector sold its rights to this electricity rort and your personal information to an off shore corporation last year…Unregulated
In South Africa the Liberal party, the Democratic Alliance, which is currently in coalition with the pragmatically neoliberal ANC, is calling for the removal of the minimum wage. Just to give you an idea: 1.43 USD per hour. Also please consider the fact that during Apartheid, black South Africans were subjected to cheap labour, working as miners, domestic workers and factory workers all who were not given a minimum wage by the Apartheid state. Due to Foreseen reasons, the ANC took a Neoliberal approach to address Social injustices, and this in itself has created its own social injustices. Higher Poverty, Inequality and Unemployment especially in Black and brown communities. However the argument still stays from Neoliberalists that the issue of SA is that we are not capitalist enough. Hence we must get rid of the Minimum wage, trade unions must be given less power and more punishment for strikes. It’s fascinating!
Great summary, thank you! Can I ask, where do you get your images from that embellish your story? Are they generated by AI?. I like them and wonder how they were created.
Thank you! As for the images, I do a google search and just look through what comes up. Most come from online articles. I should be better about crediting the source.
Thanks for letting me know. Yes, images can be so powerful, and I think they help to encourage people to read articles. As much work goes into creating those images (if made by a person, and not AI), so agree they should be credited. And even if generated by AI, then credited as such, so people appreciate the differences, if any!
🙂
Thank you 🙏 for your excellent and easily understood summaries of the three pillars - very enlightening and very empowering!
A great deal of regulation is made on behalf of corporations against competition from small operators by loading compliance costs onto small operators. Artisan food producers and licensing of builders come to mind.
In the first case, the move from prescriptive measures like premises inspections to nominally self-authored ‘food plans’, whilst appearing quite liberating, in fact loaded costs onto small producers because a cook rarely has the writing, legal or technical chops to produce their own- it becomes a business cost that must be covered by an artisans income, and a business opportunity for a pen-pusher. Corporate actors can spread these costs far more thinly and have in-house authors. They get the regulations they want.
The Licensed Building Practitioners Scheme is even more egregious. The ‘Leaky Buildings Inquiry Panel’ was stuffed to the gills with representatives of the actual culprits- materials manufacturers, corporate builders and architects, whose interests were entirely served by the outcome of the inquiry- sticking the blame to the tradesmen who were entirely unrepresented on the panel, creating a scheme that again created a new ‘compliance layer’ and associated costs to be borne by the individual tradesman, but avoidable by the corporate builder who has one or two ‘specialists’ to sign off the work of dozens of unlicensed tradesmen. Meanwhile the architects, one of the principal culprits, exempted themselves from the licensing provisions, a privilege that was not offered to any other trade or technical personnel reqardless how highly qualified or experienced.
Amusingly, the make-up of the panel is unsearchable, no doubt the files were ‘lost’ when the DB&H was rolled into MBIE in 2012 Embarrassingly, every business represented ended up being sued for their part in creating the crisis.
You need to write more posts on this stuff. Loving your comments.
On account of my love (and lack) of robust conversation, I seem to have cultivated the habit of writing ‘near-post length’ comments on other peoples Substacks. I often restack them as Notes & occasionally they blossom out into full Posts!
“ in short, the reason why governments have regulations on corporations is that they will not behave appropriately unless they are regulated.”
Who knew electricity and gas electronic meter-reading charges are 3% of the bill? And bonus points if you knew Vector sold its rights to this electricity rort and your personal information to an off shore corporation last year…Unregulated