Why are they reviving apartheid?

Most people have heard of the odious system of apartheid: the series of laws in South Africa that intentionally stripped black citizens of their rights. But what exactly was it?

If someone asked you to point to apartheid to what would you point?

It would be difficult to single out any one specific thing since apartheid was a series of laws, regulations, controls and attitudes that permeated South Africa. At its core was a philosophy of separation—the idea that people of various races should have as little to do with each other as possible.

It was established to keep separate the cultures, ideas, values, and economies of the various races. One justification that was given by it’s architects was that it was necessary to “protect” the uniqueness of each culture.

One of the most obvious ways it did this was by restricting trade between the races. For instance whites could not establish businesses in black areas and vice versa. In rural areas where there were white farmers with black farmworkers the law required separate businesses to serve the races. Whites could not purchase from a black shop and blacks could not purchase from a white shop. Somewhere in my photo collection is one I took while driving out in the countryside. It was a sign over a country store that said "nie blanke winkel" or "non-white shop".

Certainly when I was living there opposition to apartheid was almost universal even among whites. The big question was not whether aparthied should go but how to get rid of it. But if this segregated form of living was evil in South Africa then why are so many people trying to revive apartheid on a global scale?

There are organised forces that rally around the idea that the peoples of the world should be kept economically separate. They don’t want us to trade with one another. They don’t want us to buy one another’s products or hire one another for specific jobs.

They argue that the nations of the world should be kept independent of one another. They even claim it is necessary to do this to “protect” the cultures of the different nations. They call themselves anti globalisation activists. I call them advocates of global economic apartheid.

It’s true they don’t go as far in violating individual rights as did the apartheid regime. But in other ways they are worse. The apartheid governments didn’t try to stop various ethnic or tribal groups of the same race from dealing with each other. The Afrikaner could still sell to the Englishman and the Zulu could still trade with the Xhosa or the Tswana.

The anti-globalist wants to restrict trade to only those people who live within the confines of the borders of your nation. Borders which are more often than not accidents of history, rarely drawn with any sensibility behind them.

Apartheid made people poorer. We know that. It was one reason that so many people condemned it. By restricting trade between people of different races it limited the number of potential trading opportunities. By reducing the number of trades possible it reduced the likelihood that any one trader could make the optimal trade possible. It limited the jobs you could take and the number of people you could hire. It said where you could sell your products as well as from whom you would be allowed to buy goods or services.

Every person regulated by apartheid’s economic laws—and that was everyone—lost out. South Africa was poorer because of it.

Global economic separation does the same thing just on a bigger scale. Globalisation is simple the freedom to trade with the rest of the world regardless of the nation in which my trading partner lives. I’m allowed to seek out the best opportunities to buy or sell.

That means I can make trades that make me better off. Often I don’t even realise that I’m doing this. I may not know that the banana I’m eating came from Ecuador or that the book I’m reading was published in the UK. I just know that I wanted that banana and that book.

I wanted them because they made me “better off” is some way that I considered important. At the same time it made farmers in Ecuador and publishers in the UK a little bit better off as well.

Apartheid was a system of barriers that kept people apart. Economically it prevented voluntary exchanges between people of different races. Protectionism, the philosophy of the anti-globalist movement, is the same thing. The only real difference is that where apartheid reduced exchanges between people of different races the anti-globalist wants to prevent exchanges between people of different nations.

That difference is relatively minor. The results will still be the same. Like apartheid protectionism makes us all worse off.

Exploited child worker becomes millionaire

He was just a child, just 14, working long hours for Western exploiters at low wages. Seven years later he still works hours on end. His mother complained that he eats too little and worked until 4 am only to start work again at 8 am.

That’s one way to look at the story. But it is one that the young man, Suhas Gopinath might dispute. His career started before puberty did. An internet cafe opened up near the boy’s home in India and his older brother took him there. From that moment on he was hooked. Every spare rupee he could find was used to spend more and more time on the internet. He taught himself how to build web pages.

At the ripe old age of 13 he began his first website. Then he received a call from a major softwar company in the United States. They brought the boy to the United States and made him an offer. They would pay for his education if he would come to work for them. He turned them down. He said: “Why should I do for another company what I could do for my own?”

So at the age of 14 he started his own company. He had to skirt the laws set up to protect children like himself. He was not allowed to set up a legitimate company as he was a mere child. So he went on-line and registered a company outside India with a few friends. Strictly speaking he was a child being exploited albeit by himself.

Regularly he faced a problem. The moment clients found out he was 14 years old they dropped his services. But in spite of that his company continued to grow. Two years ago an investment firm from Texas approach the boy and offered to purchase a majority share in his company. They offered him $100 million. He rejected the offer preferring to keep ownership himself.

Today he employs over 400 people directly in eleven different countries. Apparently he outsources a lot of his work to employees in the United States, where he has 125 employees.

Once Suhas was asked to address a group of business executives at a conference. He rushed to the auditorium straight from school and didn’t have time to change. He showed up in jeans and a t-shirt. The security guard refused to admit him and wouldn’t believe the boy was the main speaker.

When he recently met the president of India he had some advice. He wanted the laws restricting young people from starting their own companies removed from the books. He has lots of faith in the ability of the young. And that is shown when you realize the typical employee in his company is just 21 years old. The oldest employee is 26 and the youngest is 12 but he is forbidden to hire him full time. He gave the boy a laptop and in his spare time the boy works on web designs for the company.

Nazis join Leftist haters of free trade.

One of those conference which deals with trade, which the nihilists on the Left hate so much, is scheduled to take place in a few days in Schwerin, Germany. And extreme socialists of all stripes will be there to condemn the idea that people should be free to trade with one another.

You should expect them to be flying their anti-capitalist banners and handing out leaflets portraying the virtues of state controlled economies. One such group wants to bring in 1,000 of their extremist members under the slogan “Not for sale! Stop globalization!”

And who is that? The Nazis of course. Well, the neo-Nazis to be precise. They don’t openly identify as Nazis as the government has banned such nomenclatures so these groups market themselves deceptively but most people know precisely who they are. Germany needs to repeal that stupid legislation and allow these vermin to stand openly for what they believe so there is no mistaking them for decent human beings.

Der Spiegel notes that the only difference between the rhetoric of the Nazis and the socialist is the “frequent use of words like ‘nation’ and ‘homeland’” by the Nazis. To be expected of course. Remember Nazis are “national socialists”.

We shouldn’t forget that the Nazi-loving advocates of apartheid, in the National Party in South Africa, formed their first government in an alliance with the socialist Labour Party there. And that during the 1922 Rand Rebellion, the Nationalists and socialists marched together for socialism and apartheid and tried to overthrow the government. They were seen in the streets with the slogan “Workers of the world unite and keep South Africa white.”

Mussolini was the former editor of the Socialist Party newspaper in Italy and the leader of the British Union of Fascists, Sir Oswald Mosley had been a prominent Left-wing member of parliament and a member of the Fabian Socialists.

The well known U.S. socialist, W.E.B. DuBois visited the Nazi state in 1936 and enthusiastically claimed: “Germany today is next to Russia the greatest exemplar of Marxian socialism in the world...” And British Fabian socialist leader George Bernard Shaw, as Time magazine noted, “was to praise the death’s-head trio of totalitarianism: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin.”

True the two extremes of the socialist movement hate each other, but for much the same reason McDonalds isn’t fond of Burger King or Hertz doesn’t like Avis. They pinch each other’s customers so to speak. They over emphasize minor differences as a means of product differentiation and, for the same reason, ignore the vast similarities.

Illustration: The cartoon above depicts the previous alliance between Hitler and Stalin.

Globalization haters out of tune with the world's poor.

Every so often some international conference dealing with world trade and issues revolving around globalization takes place. Without fail the organized forces of the anti-globalization movement appear outside the gates. They whine, they protest, they frequently riot and attack. If you ask them they’ll tell you that what they do is justified because they represent the world’s poor.

What is clear is that rarely are the protesters themselves poor. These protesters tend to come from wealthy nations and tend to have been born in families that are more economically advantaged than the people on who’s behalf they pretend to speak. Critics of the anti-globalists have long contended that they don’t represent the poor at all but are more in tune with politically fashionable views among the more wealthy of the world. Now an on-going poll of world opinion seems to back this up.
The Pew Global Attitudes Project surveyed some 66,000 people in 44 nations. Generally the results have been met with much interest and little anger. But the anti-globalization movement itself is rather unhappy with the results and with good reason.

The poorest nations have populations more supportive of globalization than do the wealthiest nations. The survey noted that: “Only one-in-ten Americans and Canadians (10%, 11%) characterize globalization as a very good thing, and fewer Europeans agree. By comparison, nearly six-in-ten in Nigeria (58%), and more than four-in-ten in Kenya (46%), Uganda (44%) and South Africa (41%) see globalization as a very good thing.” Only Jordan has a majority that says globalization is bad.

It is true that in all 44 nations a majority of the people said globalization is either “somewhat good” or “very good”. But those who see globalization as “very good” are significantly more likely to come from poorer nations.

Even when it comes to contentious “cultural” issues majorities, especially among the young, see globalization as good. And most agree that they have a better selections of food and medicine as a result. When anti-globalization forces target “fast food” restaurants like McDonald’s for their ire it again appears they reflect the values of the world’s economic elites. German’s, by a six-to-one margin, think that fast food has a negative effect on their life. In Canada and the United States significant margins share the German view. But more than seven out of ten, in the Philippines, Vietnam and China, give fast food a thumb’s up.

“Commercialism” and “consumerism” are further favorite targets of the anti globalist. And while 63% of the French say both are threats to their culture the poorest countries, on a whole, don’t see it that way. The survey reports that this criticism is not prevalent “in the Middle East/Conflict Area. Majorities in Lebanon (64%), Uzbekistan (57%) and Jordan (54%) say commercialism is no threat to their culture. Pluralities in Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan agree.” In Vietnam 66% say commercialism doesn’t threaten their culture. In Nigeria its 65% and in Angola its 56%.
Multinational corporations are another favorite target of the anti-globalist. Again this is at odds with the views of the world’s poor. The survey reports: “In 33 out of 43 countries in which the question was asked, majorities think that foreign corporations have a generally positive influence on their countries. Majorities in every African country surveyed say major foreign companies have a good influence.” The survey also notes that: “Dislike of foreign firms is mostly limited to people in the major advanced economies of Western Europe, the U.S. and Canada.” Once again anti-globalist attitudes are more in tune with those of the wealthy and well-off. For instance 93% of the Vietnamese and 78% of South Africans view multinationals favourably while only half of Americans and half the French do so. What is particularly ironic is that in every single nation surveyed multinationals have more favourable support than do the anti-globalists themselves.

Support for international markets tends to indicate support for domestic economic freedom as well. A majority in 33 of the nations surveyed agreed that people are better off with free markets. The highest level of support was found among the residents of Vietnam, ostensibly a socialist state, where 95% agreed. And while the United States is often seen as being the most “free market” country in terms of ideological support the fact is that the free market has higher levels of support in Lebanon, Vietnam, South Korea, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Uganda and South Africa.
The anti-globalists have denounced global capitalism and domestic free markets. They claim to do so on behalf of the world’s poor. But it appears that globally most people disagree with them—most espeically the poor themselves.

Photo: The photo is from a free trade demonstration held at the UN Summit on Sustainable Development. The poor people of South Africa marched demanding freedom to trade. Only a few of us, who were delegates to that conference, joined the poor on their march (I was about half way back in this crowd). Most the delegates never strayed from the luxury hotels and restaurants though they loudly claimed they were speaking for the poor. What they actually meant was they speak for the poor because the poor are too stupid to speak out for themselves properly and don't hold the "right" views as the elite at the conference see fit.

SOURCE: A source for this information has been requested. The information in question was found in this report: Views of a Changing World.