Morality dictated by majority.
How perfectly disgusting.
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How perfectly disgusting.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
Morality dictated by the powerful, also disgusting.LeafByNiggle:
Morality dictated by majority.
How perfectly disgusting.
Then why are you defending it?
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Ridgerunner
Guest
It would be more like deciding who, in the case of where I live, to give it “back” to? Right before historic times the Osage drove out the inhabitants, who uncertainly were Caddoans. The Osage left more or less voluntarily when other tribes began coming into the country and killing all the game. Those were Kickapoo, Delaware, Chickasaw and others. Later, the Cherokee came in with the “TRail of Tears”. Lot escaped and intermarried with the white settlers then coming into the country and who had already intermarried some with the Kickapoo, Delaware and Chickasaw.
So who gets it when we exact “justice” upon the descendants of white settlers?
It really just sounds like you want to dispossess the whites in SA because they’re white. Remember, some of the dispossessors of the bushmen were black, particularly the Zulu. Do we dispossess the Zulu too?
Natal, where they predominate, is a pretty sizeable place. And what about the “Black AFrikaners”? Do we take away their land because they identify as Boers or do we let them keep it because they’re black?
And what of the numerous Cape Colored; about 8 million of them? They’re composed of East Indians and mixed black/white people. Do they get to keep their land?
Now, given that farming worldwide has greatly tended to bigger and bigger farms, largely because of mechanization, the likelihood is that if the large white-owned tracts are divided among a number of black small farmers, the latter will eventually sell up anyway because of inadequate capitalization, farms too small, and the fact that fragile land like that in S.A. really doesn’t lend itself to small farming.
The difference would be that the probable buyers will be blacks with political connections, with terrible loss of productivity in the meanwhile. And, as with Zimbabwe, a lot of the land will be ruined for decades because not all politically-connected people know anything about farming.
So who gets it when we exact “justice” upon the descendants of white settlers?
It really just sounds like you want to dispossess the whites in SA because they’re white. Remember, some of the dispossessors of the bushmen were black, particularly the Zulu. Do we dispossess the Zulu too?
Natal, where they predominate, is a pretty sizeable place. And what about the “Black AFrikaners”? Do we take away their land because they identify as Boers or do we let them keep it because they’re black?
And what of the numerous Cape Colored; about 8 million of them? They’re composed of East Indians and mixed black/white people. Do they get to keep their land?
Now, given that farming worldwide has greatly tended to bigger and bigger farms, largely because of mechanization, the likelihood is that if the large white-owned tracts are divided among a number of black small farmers, the latter will eventually sell up anyway because of inadequate capitalization, farms too small, and the fact that fragile land like that in S.A. really doesn’t lend itself to small farming.
The difference would be that the probable buyers will be blacks with political connections, with terrible loss of productivity in the meanwhile. And, as with Zimbabwe, a lot of the land will be ruined for decades because not all politically-connected people know anything about farming.
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John24
Guest
I wonder how many people maintaining that black people are going to mismanage the land are aware that was probably the main pro-apartheid argument?
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Ridgerunner
Guest
I don’t know. Nor do I know whether they said it before Zimbabwe became ruled by blacks. It did happen, though. Mugabe redistributed the land, mostly politically, to people who didn’t know what they were doing and also to people who were undercapitalized, and the farming economy crashed and burned. Seriously significant parts of Zimbabwe have become desertified and will take decades of proper management to repair if ever they’re turned over to decent managers.
It’s not a matter of black people mismanaging because they’re black. It’s a question of whether the land will be turned over to people who a) know what they’re doing, and b) are sufficiently capitalized to do it right and not just “mine” the land until it’s barren.
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LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
Even if everything you say is true, disenfranchising people because they don’t have the resources to utilize their land as efficiently as someone else does not excuse the immorality of the disenfranchisement.John24:
I don’t know. Nor do I know whether they said it before Zimbabwe became ruled by blacks. It did happen, though. Mugabe redistributed the land, mostly politically, to people who didn’t know what they were doing and also to people who were undercapitalized, and the farming economy crashed and burned. Seriously significant parts of Zimbabwe have become desertified and will take decades of proper management to repair if ever they’re turned over to decent managers.
It’s not a matter of black people mismanaging because they’re black. It’s a question of whether the land will be turned over to people who a) know what they’re doing, and b) are sufficiently capitalized to do it right and not just “mine” the land until it’s barren.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
One doubts anyone who was disenfranchised is still living. In any event, I think this all relates to changes in land ownership that occurred after 1913. It appears there was an attempt to redress it in 1995, but it had a short claim period.
I believe this current proposal is just “shotgun”. Take all whites’ land and give it to blacks no matter how white ownership came to be or what will happen as a consequence.
Now, whether all white ownership presently resulted from some kind of forcible taking that was not redressed under the 1995 law, I couldn’t say. Probably not.
But regardless, it’s likely to be a debacle, and one ought to consider the immorality of the starvation that went on in Zimbabwe when the government there did it.
I believe this current proposal is just “shotgun”. Take all whites’ land and give it to blacks no matter how white ownership came to be or what will happen as a consequence.
Now, whether all white ownership presently resulted from some kind of forcible taking that was not redressed under the 1995 law, I couldn’t say. Probably not.
But regardless, it’s likely to be a debacle, and one ought to consider the immorality of the starvation that went on in Zimbabwe when the government there did it.
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MonteRCMS
Guest
That’s what happens.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
I don’t think most people realize how easy it is to ruin some types of land. You almost couldn’t ruin land in most of England, for example. Same with much of continental western Europe.
That’s because the soil is reasonably decent due to the nature of the plant and other life in it, and because it rains very frequently, all year long.
Where I live, the annual rainfall is about twice that of England, but it mostly comes twice a year with very dry spells in mid-winter, and mid-summer, or at least a good chance of them. As a result, the composition of the soil is different, the plants are different, the growing cycle is different. It’s easy to ruin land here, though it’s not terribly difficult to restore it if you know what you’re doing and have the capital to do it.
SA is more fragile still. Its rainfall is very concentrated in most of the country with very long hot, dry spells that dessicate everything. Farming really has to be done with care, similarly to the way “dryland farming” is done in places like western Kansas and Oklahoma. And it’s more capital intensive. The Dust Bowl comes to mind.
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LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
I reject the notion that only the people who were alive at the time suffered from the disenfranchisement. Their descendants suffer the effects down to today. If their parents did not have land taken from them they would have passed that land on to their children, and more importantly, to the community, which, despite claims to the contrary, is a real thing.
I will leave it to the South African lawyers and judges to figure that out.
Do you have any evidence that expropriation so far has been ignorant of the history of each white farmer involved?
You continue to argue this point as if someone is arguing against you. No one is doing that for this specific point. So let’s just agree that it takes special skill to effectively utilize South African land, and leave it at that, so that there is no need for you to make this point again.
What you do need to argue and so far have been avoiding is the notion that those who have the skill and resources to get the most out of the land have a moral right to hold that land, regardless of how they came into such possession. I think you will have a hard time making that point for two reasons. Reason #1: There is just no moral justification for holding property just because you can do greater things with that property than those from whom the property was taken. Reason #2: It is presumptuous to assume that such expertise as it needed cannot be obtained in any other way by the black South Africans. Why could they not simply learn from what the white farmers have been doing all along? You cannot presume that they will simple revert to low-yield subsistence farming. There are smart black Africans.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
I see your side conjecturing how poorly the black South Africans are going to manage the farms. And it is not much of a leap that people do in fact leave property to their children.LeafByNiggle:
Conjecture at best.
Is it so hard to argue your case with facts?
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
What facts are you waiting for? Facts that show that most parents leave their property to their children? That is well known.
The only one in which you can tell us all definitively what someone you have never met will do with their land.
You claim it as a fact, argue it, now back it up.
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dvdjs
Guest
What is the basis, if any, in actual fact for this belief?
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Ridgerunner
Guest
The 1995 law’s provisions should have been carried out by now. Or at least the timetable was such that it should have been. All titles lost by blacks due to oppressive white government since 1913 should have been adjudicated by now.
The proposed new law is a different thing. It’s just wholesale appropriation based on race.
Appropriation of land titles based on race alone would almost certainly result in black ownership of uneconomic tiny pieces of land and the destruction of agriculture. That’s the point I was apparently unable to get you to understand, along with the following.
And yes there is moral content to causing a people to starve. Do you really think Mugabe’s destruction of agriculture in Zimbabwe was moral? Is it okay with you if people starve to death in order to ensure that no white person owns land in a majority black nation?
The proposed new law is a different thing. It’s just wholesale appropriation based on race.
Appropriation of land titles based on race alone would almost certainly result in black ownership of uneconomic tiny pieces of land and the destruction of agriculture. That’s the point I was apparently unable to get you to understand, along with the following.
And yes there is moral content to causing a people to starve. Do you really think Mugabe’s destruction of agriculture in Zimbabwe was moral? Is it okay with you if people starve to death in order to ensure that no white person owns land in a majority black nation?
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