Global population decline may still be on the cards
Paul Ehrlich died on March 13 this year, derided as a false prophet. As the global population rose from 2.3-billion in 1950 to almost 9-billion, Ehrlich’s seminal 1968 book The Population Bomb forecast a Malthusian “correction” in the 1970s through famine, disease and civil strife, which would reduce it to a sustainable 2-billion.
What Ehrlich missed was the connection between the population explosion and an increasing global dependence on oil and gas, which inter alia provided cheap fertiliser as well as powering large-scale agricultural production machinery, worldwide logistics and refrigeration. Doubling food production meant, in Malthusian terms, an exponential increase in population.
Until the time Ehrlich died there was a slim chance that humanity might, with difficulty, avoid net zero population and make a gradual demographic transition, first to a stable and then moderately declining global population. But the American Empire considered global control of oil and gas as the best way to maintain its fading hegemony. To this end it attacked Iran on February 28.
President Donald Trump doesn’t understand that his medieval power play has inflicted a heart attack on the already suffering petrochemical addict. In the next months, as supply chains disintegrate, Ehrlich may yet have the last laugh.
James Cunningham
Camps Bay
NHI and Bela Bill court challenges stir debate on state intervention
Katlego Mothudi’s article refers (“Why NHI must be tested in the Constitutional Court”, May 1). This ruling is important. It will be applied to the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Bill and all future law-making.
Regarding National Health Insurance (NHI), this is an existential crisis for many South Africans who want to stay in the country. Access to healthcare is not the same as access to electricity, water or public transport. The employer class ― those who create all the jobs in South Africa ― can make their own rooftop electricity, purchase bottled/borehole/filtered water for personal consumption, get the international entertainment and news they desire, and solve their transport needs, without reliance on Eskom, SAA, the SABC or Transnet.
NHI threatens the ability of those who pay for healthcare to do so privately, and this has the potential to greatly shrink the supply of medical services as the predicted medical exodus happens. (I imagine many health professionals aged over 60 would just retire. They don’t have to leave ― or be part of someone else’s boondoggle.)
Greg Becker
Via Business Day online
Union influence and labour policy under scrutiny
Neva Makgetla’s most recent column refers (“Myths about the labour movement”, May 5). I have been involved in negotiations with labour unions for 40 years and find they add little value in the workplace.
They are obliged to behave in a confrontationally and aggressively way to try showing their members they are providing some benefit. This they can do safe in the knowledge that any fallout does not affect union officials, who still get paid during a strike, and that the legislation is one-sided in organised labour’s favour.
The unions have prevailed politically, but whether this has been to the benefit of all South Africans is highly debatable. I believe South Africa would have a way better and more equitable educational system without the dubious influence of the South African Democratic Teachers Union, for example.
Ian Ferguson
Via Business Day online
BEE faces mounting criticism over economic impact
BEE legislation should not just be opposed in the legal field, as Solidarity and a handful of law firms are now doing at the high court (“Top law firms in court bid to fight ‘unconstitutional’ BEE legal code”, May 4).
BEE has resulted in billions of wasted expenditure due to inflated procurement, the stifling of economic growth as corporations are disincentivised from growing and the growth of resentment due to a system that doesn’t help the genuinely deserving.
BEE has failed to uplift the poor in South Africa and has only accomplished enriching a handful of already rich, politically connected elites.
BEE is one of the single most destructive pieces of legislation in the new South Africa. A modern, just society doesn’t racially engineer ownership; it equips people with equal rights regardless of race.
Assigning racial categories to people and making their presence in a company necessary for that company to legally do business strips people of their dignity, turning them into tokens rather than skilled individuals.
Black people don’t need legislation such as BEE to prosper. The government would accomplish far more by liberalising the market in general to allow economic growth and absorb the millions of unemployed youth.
All BEE accomplishes is creating a smokescreen to enable cadre deployment and looting. It must not spread to the legal sector and must be pushed back as much as possible.
Nicholas Woode-Smith
Cape Town
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