Burgert Gildenhuys 🙂

Anarcho-capitalist and Urbanist specializing in the quantification of the opex consequences of urban capital programs and the costing of spatial plans

[Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) @StatsSA]

#30YearsOfCountingSA || For 30 years, Stats SA’s provincial & district offices have helped bring the organisation closer to communities across all 9 provinces.

“Our footprint across the country supports Stats SA’s capacity to mobilise all communities - DDG: Statistical Operations & Provincial Co-ordination, Ashwell Jenneker.

30 years of reaching communities.

Read more here: https://t.co/QFlmNDRFP0

#CensusAt30 #30YearsOfCensus #StatsSA #SApopulation #KnowYourStatsZA #GovZAUpdates @GovernmentZA @GCISMedia @VukuzenzeleNews @SAgovnews

[South African Institute of Race Relations @IRR_SouthAfrica]

A one-size-fits-all model of local government cannot work when municipalities vary so widely in economic base, capacity and function.

Join the IRR's Terence Corrigan on 10 September at 12pm as he unveils new research at "Fixing South Africa's Broken Municipalities," hosted by the University of the Free State.

Join us: https://t.co/ts5gfpt2W1

[Burgert Gildenhuys 🙂 @burriesgil]

Read our daily Local Government Brief https://t.co/A1f1c55KKx

[Burgert Gildenhuys 🙂 @burriesgil]

Read our weekly election watch https://t.co/zBlrjRNpe7
#CampaignTrailWatch #LGE2026 #LocalGovernment #MunicipalFinance #Infrastructure #ServiceDelivery #MunicipalGovernance #SouthAfrica

[Burgert Gildenhuys 🙂 @burriesgil]

Look out for our Daily Local Government Brief
Check https://t.co/60Ymgfoc60

[Maria de Andrade 🇿🇦🇺🇦🌻 @AprilSnowGoose]

Martin van Staden's detailed analysis of the ConCourt's 'Tafelberg' judgement is an interesting read.

[Essie @Essiex2a]

😂😂😂

[Aaron @LibertarianZA]

My primary filter for evaluating any political proposal or opinion is simply whether or not it centralizes or de-centralizes power and control.

Sadly, it seems like almost everything coming out of government and every party is aimed at achieving the former.

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

Elon Musk just used a joke to perform an autopsy on the American economy.

Two economists go for a hike. They find a pile of shit. One pays the other $100 to eat it.

They keep walking. Find another pile. The second economist pays $100 back to eat that one.

They stop. Neither man gained a dollar. Both ate shit for nothing.

But on paper they just generated $200 in GDP.

Musk: “That basically would count as a job. This is to illustrate the absurdity of economics.”

That is not a punchline. That is the operating system of the federal government.

Every time a politician celebrates “record job creation” this is what they are describing. Not output. Not value. Not progress. Motion.

The entire bureaucratic machine exists to manufacture friction and then invoice for it.

Compliance layers built to justify the next compliance layer. Oversight committees that produce nothing but the need for more oversight. Consulting firms hired to audit the work of other consulting firms.

Trillions circulating through systems that have never produced a single thing you can hold in your hands. But the GDP number ticks up. So everyone applauds.

The shit gets eaten. The scoreboard moves. Nobody asks what actually got built.

This is why Washington treats AI like a five alarm fire.

AI does not play the friction game. It does not form a committee. It does not schedule a review. It does not file 400 pages of paperwork no one will ever read.

It just solves the problem.

And that is the one thing the machine cannot survive.

The government does not tax results. It taxes the process. The longer the process, the deeper the cut.

AI compresses a ten day workflow into seconds. There is nothing left to bill. Nothing left to tax. Nothing left to skim.

So they will spend the next decade warning you that AI threatens the economy.

What they will never say is what it actually threatens.

The illusion that activity equals progress.

The $200 economy where both men ate shit and called it a job.

The machines are not coming for your purpose.

They are coming to prove that half the economy never had one.

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

Elon Musk just exposed the one lie every modern nation tells itself.

Musk: “In 1969, we were able to send somebody to the moon.”

Rotary phones. Computers the size of rooms. Slide rules.

We put a human on the moon with less processing power than your watch.

Musk: “Then the space shuttle retired, and the United States could take no one to orbit.”

The most advanced nation in human history went from footprints on the moon to zero capability of leaving the atmosphere.

That is not a funding problem.

That is civilizational decay dressed up as a policy decision.

Musk: “People are mistaken when they think that technology just automatically improves… it will, by itself, degrade.”

That sentence should keep you up tonight.

We treat progress like gravity. Like it pulls us forward whether we try or not.

It is the opposite.

Progress is a boulder on a hill. The second you stop pushing, it rolls back over you. And it never announces itself.

Musk: “You look at great civilizations like ancient Egypt, and they were able to make the pyramids, and they forgot how to do that.”

They did not run out of stone.

They were not conquered.

They got comfortable. And the knowledge bled out so quietly that nobody noticed until it was already gone.

That is the real threat to everything we have built.

Not a nuclear flash. Not an asteroid. Not some dramatic Hollywood collapse.

A quiet forgetting.

Every chip we fabricate. Every rocket we launch. Every data center we power. All of it held together by a thin fraction of the population working at a pace that would break most people.

The moment that fraction gets tired or outnumbered by people who believe the machine runs itself, everything dissolves.

And here is the part nobody wants to say out loud.

We are not special. We are running the same operating system as every civilization that came before us.

Comfort is the sedative. Complacency is the flatline.

One generation that stops fighting is all it has ever taken.

You do not lose the future in a war.

You lose it in your sleep.

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

"A lot of what is called 'public service' consists of making hoops for other people to jump through. It is a great career for those who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do."

— Thomas Sowell

[Burgert Gildenhuys 🙂 @burriesgil]

We give a short overview of #SONA2026 in the context of local government in South Africa. The State of the Nation is the State of Municipalities. Check https://t.co/IKpyTYLbYL @SALGA_Gov @imesa_za @willempet @MYANC @Our_DA @VFPlus @IRR_SouthAfrica

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

“One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it.”

— Ronald Reagan

[Burgert Gildenhuys 🙂 @burriesgil]

@No_Drama_Lama_ Cape Town is heading for a disaster. Totally ignoring market signals. Housing shortages is a direct result of land use control interventions from provincial to local goverment levels https://t.co/GA37HZkbEY

[🤍💙✡️ NoDramaLlama until… @No_Drama_Lama_]

Cape Town to impose hefty tax hike on Airbnbs https://t.co/0gouOP68uT

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

“If people are free to do as they wish, they are almost certain not to do as we wish. That is why Utopian planners end up as despots, whether at the national level or at the level of the local ‘redevelopment’ agency.”

— Thomas Sowell

[Burgert Gildenhuys 🙂 @burriesgil]

@PhumlaniMMajozi There is no unemployment crises, the is an economic growth crises caused by a centrally planned command economy. Africa’s average grow is more than 4%.

[Stephan Gildenhuys @stephangil]

@uMarhobane Myself and @burriesgil have been saying it for years but no one wants to listen to fact or reason. Case and point: https://t.co/3Jv3InubHX

[uSakhile kaMkhulunyelwa @ASZulu]

"Freedom is not the property of anyone.

Throughout my adult life, I have resisted being kept in anyone’s pocket. I refused to bow to denominational hierarchies, corporate interests, academic or political elites.

Yes, this refusal carried an economic cost. Freedom always does. Yet as I enter the 60th year of my life, there exists no clergy, no corporate executive, no politician, and no academic who can claim ownership over me. No church formation. No business sector or company. No political party. No academic institution has the right to say, “We made him.”

I learned early that many, if not most, are driven by an insatiable need to possess people. They seek not partnership but ownership; not collaboration but dependence. They demand the surrender of independent identity and insist on being recognised as your source. Loyalty, in their economy, is not to truth, calling, or conscience, but to themselves.

When you refuse, when you insist on remaining free, they will punish you, even while fully aware of your giftedness, your competence, and the clarity of your mind. Independence is misread as rebellion. Integrity is recast as disloyalty.

With time, I came to understand more deeply the words of Abram, who declared with finality in Genesis 14:22–23:
“I have raised my hand to the LORD, God Most High, the Possessor of heaven and earth, that I will take nothing, from a thread to a sandal strap, and that I will not take anything that is yours, lest you should say, ‘I have made Abram rich.’

That declaration became my posture.

So I continue to stand no I continue to live. And when they ask among themselves, “How is he surviving?” my answer remains simple: by the providence of God. Deeply thankful you are not my God. You were never my source, and you will never be the reason for any measure of my success, however success may be defined.

Those who seek to own others trade in the mundane, the material, and the short-lived. They use these currencies to manipulate lives and then claim the right to be revered because they “made” someone. And tragically, that right is often granted when a soul is sold for a job, a position, or money, when freedom is exchanged for security and a person becomes a slave.

Interestingly, they may never say it aloud, but they quietly respect the one who cannot be bought.

Freedom is to respect yourself,
then soberly weigh what others imagine their help can do for you.

Freedom is to remain loyal to who you are, unbought by approval, unbent by their pursuits.

Freedom is to honour your authenticity, to guard your soul against borrowed acclaim.

Freedom is a value money cannot purchase, a worth that cannot be traded.

Freedom is the courage to walk away
from opportunities, occasions, and chances that enslave. where another mortal claims authorship over your name.

I live freedom, and I fear no reprise,
for none exists, neither near nor in view.
Among eight billion souls, there is not one to whom I am beholden,
because none of them made me.

So walk on CNSR, if in 60 no mortal was given that privilege in what remains of your life now much wiser, more astute, much more sophisticated and more surrendered to your values, I doubt the next 30 will see anyone claim they made you."

- Dr CS Ramalaine

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

“All learning is ultimately self-learning.”

— Milton Friedman