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Re:How the West Got China Wrong by smithmayowa on Friday March 02, 2018 @05:53AM (#16500507)
Why exactly does land appropriation in south Africa make you apprehensive of its future.
Re:How the West Got China Wrong by fsloth on Friday March 02, 2018 @05:59AM (#16500539)
Not OP, but in general: Empirically, in historical context, land reform done right creates wealth throughout economy.

Do it wrong, however, and you can end up like Zimbabwe.

The track record of the South African state in the past decade has been depressive. After they booted Zuma there is probably a chance to do better, but it's not obvious everything will go well from now on.

Re:How the West Got China Wrong by astine on Friday March 02, 2018 @11:10AM (#16502681)
I'd be interested in some examples of land reform done right. Most examples I'm aware of were disasters (Venezuela, for example.)

One thing to keep in consideration about the South African situation is that land reform in South Africa is not new; it's written into the constitution. What's new is that South Africa is dropping the requirement to recompense the owners. This could be a problem, not just for the white South Africans but for black South Africans as well as it could drive the middle and upper class out of the country.

Re:How the West Got China Wrong by fsloth on Friday March 02, 2018 @04:50PM (#16506075)
This article contains a bunch:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reforms_by_country

The dearest to me, however, is what was done in my native country, Finland, in the 17th and at the turn of 19th and 20th centuries which created the basis for our current national wealth.

To simplify a bit too much: a succesfull land reform looks like splitting the ownership of land which produces agricultural output or timber from few large owners to many dedicated ones. This distributes the revenue from capital among the population using a " market healthy" method. Rather than spread the revenue from the capital, spread the capital itself. This is a solid foundatuon for creating a wealthy middle class - which has been identified as one of the key parts of a healthy modern economy.

Zimbabwe just took the land from it current owners - which were already spread among a fairly large population - to complete people who could not tend it as well, and not utilize the capital as effectively.

Re:How the West Got China Wrong by rz2k on Friday March 02, 2018 @01:51PM (#16504528)
Generally speaking real estate law probably is not constant anywhere over any significant period of time. Even without a revolution, looking just at the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in England[1], it is possible to see how small details were nation-altering in terms of both economic and political[2] power.

England is an easy place to start because the common language leads to an extensive Wikipedia article, but you'd find similar ones for any European country in their own language, especially since most experienced the upheaval of revolutions, conquests or occupations. The US had common trends but different details for each state.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_English_land_law

[2] Failure to redraw maps had meant that sometimes one landowner was the constituency behind a seat in the commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1832

Re:How the West Got China Wrong by astine on Friday March 02, 2018 @03:50PM (#16505564)
I don't think that changes it real estate law are same thing as 'land reform'. The latter usually refers to some sort of overt redistribution, which is what I was talking about. I'd agree that events like the enclosure of common land had profound impact, but that's generally over time.
Re:How the West Got China Wrong by rz2k on Friday March 02, 2018 @05:16PM (#16506262)
Isn't "land reform" just a euphemism though? Whereas there is an intrinsic value to stable property laws, there is always a competing trend toward changing the rules of ownership after the fact, in order to optimize for a specific outcome.

For example, abolishing serfdom made your land less valuable if there were no longer people that belonged to it. Or, confiscating monasteries and abbeys, then gifting them to favored nobles is a form of land reform. Similarly creating the conditions that the large manors dissolved later is another form of land reform.

In California, you can look at the title histories that trace back to large ranchos from the Mexican period and before, and look at how ownership changed hands. Most owners were legally entitled to retain ownership, but any number of tricks were used to get them to lose their claims.

The same goes for changes in ownership of water rights, mineral rights, air rights, or new limitations on what types of commercial activity are permitted.

The measures can be beneficial or not, but it seems extremely common for changes in public policy to alter property rights.

Re:How the West Got China Wrong by dangravell on Friday March 02, 2018 @02:57PM (#16505107)
> I'd be interested in some examples of land reform done right.

Kerala.

Re:How the West Got China Wrong by sn41 on Friday March 02, 2018 @08:46PM (#16507338)
Surprising that this came up. I am a Keralite myself. Is the Kerala land reform well-known?
Re:How the West Got China Wrong by sn41 on Friday March 02, 2018 @05:56AM (#16500526)
I hope it does not end up like Zimbabwe. From what I understand, some demagogues are demanding that white farmers' land must be taken over by the state and redistributed to blacks. This is exactly where things started going wrong with Mugabe.
Re:How the West Got China Wrong by smithmayowa on Friday March 02, 2018 @06:02AM (#16500548)
yep that would be disastrous, but then I do hope they find a way to mediate the two extreme factions, one that wants the white to pay for some past sin, and one that does not believe they did any thing wrong to the blacks, as S.A future depends on this.
Re:How the West Got China Wrong by Hasknewbie on Friday March 02, 2018 @07:22AM (#16500893)
Namibia has a "if you sell land, the government has the option of being the first buyer [to redistribute it afterward]". Not ideal, but way better than Zimbabwe. They probably looked at Mugabe's results and thought "thanks but no thanks".

Not sure this would work for ZA though. Namibia is only 2M people, it's not the same scale.

Re:How the West Got China Wrong by programmernews3 on Friday March 02, 2018 @11:35AM (#16502991)
It is very racist to treat a group ("whites") by their skin color in this day and age.
Re:How the West Got China Wrong by sangnoir on Friday March 02, 2018 @12:30PM (#16503680)
> It is very racist to treat a group ("whites") by their skin color in this day and age.

How convenient, as the end of apartheid was less than a generation ago (1994). What's done is done, right?

Re:How the West Got China Wrong by gambiting on Friday March 02, 2018 @06:28AM (#16500653)
Leader of the opposition literally saying "I'm not calling for the slaughter of white people.....yet" to the thunderous applause from his audience is most definitely a reason to be worried about the future.
Re:How the West Got China Wrong by chesimov on Friday March 02, 2018 @07:34AM (#16500940)
Some people say this kind of populist stuff (and worse) on campus here too. I feel like some of the polarising optimisations in social media that have happened in the US etc spill over to here - but the stakes are much higher here.
Re:How the West Got China Wrong by fleetingmoments on Saturday March 03, 2018 @09:11AM (#16509311)
Malema is not the leader of the opposition, his party has won less than 10% typically. The official opposition is the DA, which governs Cape Town and the Western Cape Province.
Re:How the West Got China Wrong by notfromhere on Friday March 02, 2018 @10:31AM (#16502188)
Do it right and it works well, do it wrong and you get Zimbabwe.

Everyone is worried land appropriation in South Africa is going to kill agricultural productivity like it did in Zimbabwe, where the farms were seized and given to individuals that had no business being farmers.