‘Why are such vacuous slogans as ‘white monopoly capital’ and ‘radical economic transformation’ taken seriously?’

“Inequality” implies a socioeconomic definition of equality, but none exists.  We are never told under what conditions disparate people would be “equal”.  Or life on verdant islands versus barren deserts.  Equality of circumstances cannot be conceived, let alone achieved.  Measured by quality of life indices (life expectancy, healthcare, housing, education, food, social security etc), there has never been more equality and less poverty, yet we endure a daily deluge of sensationalised “inequality” propaganda.

“Classical liberalism”, “liberty” and “libertarianism” are among the few coherently defined terms.  They define societies in which people are free to interact by mutual consent without coercive interference by governments or criminals.

LEON LOUW: Definitions lose all meaning when in the service of dogma: today in  BusinessLive published by Business Day [inexpensive subscription now required]

Further excerpts

Why are coherent definitions and ideology incompatible?  Why are such vacuous slogans as “white monopoly capital” (WMC) and “radical economic transformation” taken seriously?  Do such commonplace terms as “right wing”, “left wing”, “capitalism”, “socialism”, “fascism”, “neoliberal” and “communism” have coherent meanings?

Sloppy language has profound consequences.  To legitimise the fascist ICT White Paper, for instance, telecoms minister Siyabonga Cwele denies that the transfer of private telecommunications assets to a single state-controlled monopoly is “expropriation” or “nationalisation”.

When the chattering classes say whites own, and they want to “redistribute”, a stated percentage of land, they never say if they mean land by area (least important), number of properties, usage or value (most important), or if they want redistribution to government or black owners.

Although the world’s new ideological frontier is “inequality”, no-one defines the term coherently.  Oxfam’s headline-grabbing absurdity is that the world’s eight richest people have more “wealth” than the world’s poorest 50%.  Oxfam’s very rich managers know the wealth ($440bn) they attribute to the eight is peanuts literally and figuratively.  It happens to be roughly the value of peanut sales and is well below 1% of the world’s actual wealth (the sum of GDP, capital, savings, housing, human capital, social security, possessions and the like).

Famed inequality junkie Thomas Piketty relies on equally absurd definitions.  He, like all socialists, reaches loony conclusions by attaching zero value to what socialists supposedly value: government ownership and welfare.  Socialists also devalue what ordinary people value (cars, phones, houses, appliances, jewellery, furniture, services, education, healthcare, skills, jobs etc).

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Mzwanele Manyi defined WMC as “oligopolies” (not monopolies) regardless of who owns, works for or benefits from them.  Undefined WMC, he opines, owns “R15-trillion of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange‚ with only 3% owned by black people”.  Not only are none of his “oligopolies” monopolies, but they amount to a small proportion of the economy, and one predominantly black-owned conglomerate, the Public Investment Corporation, is the biggest owner of listed shares.