The Soapbox | Where South Africans Speak Out

BY FREEMAN

Stories emerge every day of a new act of corruption and connivance.  Goldman’s role in the AIG bailout, talk of dodgy swap agreements between banks and Lehman’s prior to its collapse, Goldman’s ”off balance sheet” deals with Greece to help it cover up a shocker of a debt book, political corruption and thievery at every turn, Tim Geithner ‘forgetting’ to pay taxes owed (yes, that’s the tax collector guy in the US right now), SA president Jacob Zuma ’forgetting’ to declare all assets and ‘gifts’, Julius Malema scoring sweet tender deals via cozy ANC connections, and on and on and on.

Wherever the government-central bank-commercial banking cartel is involved you can be sure dodgy you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-your-back deals are being forged, ‘favours’ being rendered, contracts being awarded, and grubby fingers being put in many a filthy cookie jar.

How’s this for a little theory: give the sheeple enough freedom and they’ll turn a blind eye to all this skullduggery.

It’s not that it doesn’t piss us off or that the media isn’t trying to unearth some of the rotten sludge, but it’s just that all the media snoopery only manages to scratch the surface.  Our valiant but lazy journos are like bloodhounds on the scent of wounded rabbit.  They’ve pounced on Malema and made him the poster boy for what’s wrong with our leaders.  All the better for the thousands of other gravy train merchants out there flying completely under the radar and pillaging the productive society with their political privilege.

All of us suckers just suck it up because, well, we all have a serious case of corruption burnout.  Most of us cease to be outraged when we hear of the latest theft by a public official or corruptitude among the banking elites.  We’re burnt out folks.  We can chase and hound and snoop and scoop and scratch and dig and do all the things we’re supposed to do to hold our political and monetary masters ‘accountable’, but in the end, unless the relationship between citizen and state is fundamentally changed, all we’ll ever be doing is chasing our tails from cradle to grave.

Corruption burnout is debilitating and citizens feel helpless, so the state has to feed us all just enough freedom and comfort so that we don’t take to the streets with pitchforks and petrol bombs.

This is an insidious system folks.  Most upper income earners in South Africa are paying about 1/3 of their income to a corrupt and inept state.  Let’s put that in perspective:  That means that from January through to the end of April, you’re working for the government.  From 1 May to 31 December you get to work for yourself.  Happy thought?  Didn’t think so.

Government is a legislatively protected enclave of parasites.  Corruption burnout has rendered us helpless and de-energised to do anything about it.  Our freedoms give us just enough comfort to be able to grudgingly ignore the thievery and unfair privilege.  Left alone this will render our social and economic system perpetually decrepit and sluggish.

The only answer to corruption burnout is for every free citizen to fundamentally rethink the role of the state and the role of the central bank and the commercial banking cartel.  This means more education and more people who know better standing up for freedom at every turn.

Yes, I’m on my soapbox today, but seriously folks, this is crucial to building real and lasting prosperity.

The state and the money manipulators have given us all corruption burnout.  This and our relatively comfortable freedoms have rendered the citizenry impotent.  The solution is to alter the view of what constitutes a free society.  South Africans gained a half-freedom in 1994, now its time to push on toward a truly free society and relegate the corruptocracy to the dustbin of history.

Freeman is a financial market economist. He writes for SA economics blog Human Action in his spare time.