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Blog description:
Ivo Vegter writes and argues for fun and profit. He lives and works in South Africa as a columnist and magazine journalist.
the spike writes a lot about:
the spike is ranked:
Africa: 44 | South Africa: 34 | Visits: 89 | Page Views: 101 | Links (Blogs): 124 | Links (Posts): 222
the spike's posts from South Africa
The anti-capitalist clown
Over on the M&G’s ThoughtLeader, Bert Olivier, an academic of the philosophical persuasion, rails against those who defend “the unforgiveable practices of capitalism”. He leans heavily on a polemic known as “The Corporation”, a documentary (and book) by Joel Bakan on which I’ve written before. There’s so much to dispute in his post and the comments, I hardly know where to start. As one of the people who frequently ....
The spike has a birthday
This week marks the first birthday of the spike. It’s been a fun ride, so far, with lots of interesting discussion, entertaining fights and illuminating argument. Some 30 000 unique visitors have come by, of which 20% constitute a hard core of regular readers. The average month entertains about 4 000 unique visitors with around 8 000 unique page views. This is more than I’d hoped for, from such ....
We got guns too, you know!
Now why would anyone want to think South Africa is in deep crisis? If yesterday’s open letter to Jacob Zuma by Alec Hogg wasn’t enough to convince you, how about a deadly shootout between opposing police forces? It appears there is now open warfare between the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD). The former is the national police, run by fat-cat gangsters. The ....
Alec Hogg’s letter on corruption to Jacob Zuma
Considering specific corruption cases in isolation may provoke outrage, but it’s a cop-out. It’s a defence mechanism against despair. Because a full litany of the depth of the crisis in South Africa makes depressing reading. Alec Hogg, the editor in chief of Moneyweb, writes such a litany in his open letter to ANC president Jacob Zuma, prompted by the finding in a recent survey that nine of every ten ....
Scrooge McDuck is fictional, you know
Free market advocates often hear the charge that they don’t care about the poor. That their belief in the power of markets driven by self-interest and the profit motive implies they’re selfish and egotistical. That the rich exploit the poor. That without government help, the poor would starve. “Bah!” says the research data, “Humbug!” Those who place themselves on the right of the political spectrum, according to the General ....
Peak Oil paranoia on path to presidency
Last week, the Financial Mail led with a lengthy cover story on the oil price and its implications for the South African economy. It contains some very enlightening facts, such as a chart which shows that for every ten units of fuel South Africa uses for a unit of production, the United Stats uses only nine, and both China and the world average operate more efficiently, at eight units. ....
There’s no such thing as a “fair” price
Here’s a great little piece by Jeffrey A. Tucker, the editor of Mises.org, on the delusional and self-serving habit of politicians, journalists and dinner party guests to declare that this or that price movement is a problem, or worse, that it is “unfair”. I’ll extract the most salient sections from the article: What kind of theory of the world insists that houses and stocks always go up ....
