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Comment by sn41 | Hacker News Reader

What about a multicultural, pluralistic, democratic, socialist society like India or South Africa which is slow and lumbering, but in the right direction? (A recent talk of land appropriation in S.A. makes me apprehensive about it.)

These countries still have a version of capitalism that is not as aggressive as the Anglo-Saxon model, and a democracy that is far more permissive than the East Asian (barring Japan) model.

Indian or South African growth may not be glamorous, but it might be sustainable. (And the population growth in both places is far less alarming than generally thought.)

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>Indian or South African growth may not be glamorous, but it might be sustainable. (And the population growth in both places is far less alarming than generally thought.)

While I doubt that's the case for either (them being sustainable), you raise an important point.

What we call "success" (economic, and so on), might be in fact a liability (environmental, societal and democratic debt), and countries doing worse than US, Germany, China, Japan, and so on, might be much better in actual sustainability and future-proofness.

The problem is we talk about "progress" without ever mentioning progress towards what. More GDP, more consumer gizmos, more productivity, etc -- but rarely we talk about preferred ways of life, maximizing happiness, inequality, democracy, and so on.

I don't think they offer hope beyond their own borders. India may rise to be a liberal world power with a free people and parliamentary government, but that doesn't really give me hope that the many other nations in the region will follow in their footsteps. For leaders to give up power requires clear and powerful incentives.

Both India and South Africa were British colonies who had some elements of British politics & liberty passed onto them. The freedom of these peoples, if they maintain it, will be down to their history.

Other nations, particularly in Africa, are looking keenly on at China's economic miracle, and realising for the first time in history that liberalism is not a requirement for a thriving market economy. For decades, if not centuries, this has been the established rule. What's so dangerous about China apparently breaking the rule is that every leader, autocrat and downright despot with a population hungry for a better life will now realise that there is a path where they can give their people a better life but they can keep their own power. Before, it was clear that liberty, at least to some extent, went along with prosperity. If and when when African nations get their feet out of the mud it will shake the foundations of the global order. I desperately want to see their power and authority granted and restrained by free and equal peoples. If they follow in China's footsteps that certainly won't be the case.

Why exactly does land appropriation in south Africa make you apprehensive of its future.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

> I'd be interested in some examples of land reform done right.

Kerala.

Surprising that this came up. I am a Keralite myself. Is the Kerala land reform well-known?

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.

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.

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.

It is very racist to treat a group ("whites") by their skin color in this day and age.

> 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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