What Sputla, Mteto and CEO of Eskom are saying is that keep transmission assets under Eskom ownership (via NTCSA) with a right-of-use arrangement for a system operator. Ramaphosa overruled this, insisting on full separation for true independence and non-discriminatory grid access. Just in case you not sure what’s the fight is about.
After decades of telling developing nations to privatise and let the invisible hand of the market do its thing, the West is coming out and saying government intervention is the way to go.
Here, American political scientist, Elizabeth Economy says the United States, a country that has historically portrayed itself by free-market capitalism, can’t compete without direct state intervention in the economy.
She says that if the US wants to compete with China it’s “going to have to adopt some elements of their playbook”.
This is is important because she’s effectively saying the Chinese model with its strict control of the commanding heights of the economy is simply the better model.
This moment would have been a great opportunity for the US to showcase to the world once and for all that letting the market dominate the economy is superior to having the state dictate the economy.
Instead, we have the supposedly most pro-market country in the world coming out to say the markets simply cannot do it when forced to compete against state intervention.
This goes even harder when you realise that Economy is responding to a question asking her if the market is not a better option. He response is that China has created a “playbook” of state intervention, and the United States doesn’t have anything to compete with. And you thought they had capitalism.
All of this just reinforces what serious people have been saying for years, that taking firm control over energy, finance, heavy transit and raw materials to dictate national strategy, rather than trying to play a passive, balancing referee is precisely what separates perpetually “developing” nations from those that go on to realise their full potential.
Of course, you have people who insist on some voodoo called a “mixed economy”, and claim that’s what China is doing.
What they don’t say (or realise) is that this middle-of the-road half-assed “mixed” bs approach is what the most stagnant, perpetually “up and coming” countries have been doing for a while now. Think Brazil, India, South Africa and others.
Beyond just its vagueness, the “mixed economy” stuff doesn’t work because whenever a developing state attempts to “balance” public interests with private market forces without establishing absolute strategic control, the private sector ends up controlling the state. Again, see the B, the I and the S in BRICS.
This is because private monopolies, a.k.a. oligarchs in energy, telecom, or banking use their profits to buy political influence, dismantle regulations and extract state subsidies without any pressure to deliver public infrastructure.
The result is that instead of getting a “dynamic market with government oversight” as promised, the nation gets crony capitalism where risks are socialised onto the public while profits are privatised. See Nigeria and Mexico.
The historical reality is that from the West to the Far East, every nation that successfully transformed from poor agrarian societies into industrial powerhouses did so by exercising absolute control over its strategic economic nodes, and not by handing them over to the “efficiency” of the private sector.
In the end, controlling the foundations of the economy with an iron fist, while forcing everything built on top of those foundations to compete ruthlessly, as China is doing, is the most proven industrial formula in modern history, and the Americans are openly admitting it now that doing so suits them.
@leebegeekedd@Franchisehim@savannakamyaaa You can give away ass all weekend and on Monday morning, you still got the same amount of ass you started with. My money is gone.
@ThatOnePoes And in a city where facilities are still targeted and can be halted from operating like on Monday. What makes the case WORSE is that they have refused to let the public know exactly how much water and electricity consumption these centres will use. @ForGoodZA and I will escalate.
Caught on camera, criminals stealing diesel were caught in the act & nearly shat their pants. 😭😭
I won't mention their nationality because people will say I'm xenophobic... "nywe nywe nywe, they're hardworking & you're just a lazy South African." 🙌