Inequality will always be with us
It is regrettable to have to pick on two venerable institutions, ennobled as they are by their good intentions and selfless efforts at improving the lives of poor people. But their efforts are largely in vain. To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, they have ascended their respective ladders only to discover that they are propped up against the wrong walls.
Neither the British charity Oxfam, nor Jay Naidoo should be upset by being compared to each other; they mean well and they are right about the necessity to alleviate poverty. But they are wrong about equating poverty with inequality. Inequality is an immutable fact, always has been and always will be; poverty is a complex socioeconomic circumstance that can change, and it has changed and will continue to change for the better if we permit everyone equal access to pursue whatever makes them happy, including the creation of wealth.
Jay and Oxfam know this. And they should know too that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who gave us the concept of equality and that all inequality stems from the idea of private property, was misread for the expedience of revolutionaries, including the Jacobins during the Reign of Terror and by Thomas Jefferson who gave us the notion that “all men are created equal”. What Rousseau meant was that everyone stood equal before the law, and that the resentment of inequality arises from “envy” and “unnatural desires”.
Perhaps a closer reading of Rousseau’s prolific writing reveals the kind of truth produced by “dead white men”, which the fallists would like to purge from our decolonised consciousness. Good luck to them. No matter what kind of post-truth fallists entertain by declaring everyone a winner in a footrace, even as you verify the facts with your own eyes, it follows the enforcers of the dystopian society Jay and Oxfam seek must pluck out our eyes lest the facts interfere with their purpose.
Even if income inequality has grown hugely, especially in SA, poverty has shrunk in greater proportion and to the lowest in human history, according to World Bank data. It is simply not true that the “global gap between the rich and the poor has reached extreme levels”, as Jay puts it. People are now more equal in their access to nutrients, healthcare, education and shelter than at any time in history.
That is so because people have taken what little wealth they had and put it together and taken a big risk to create more wealth. Mutual societies (such as Sanlam and Old Mutual) and stock-exchange-listed entities have created enormous wealth through volonté générale, the common will to pursue a lawful exercise in creating wealth. Stokvels are the next generation of wealth creators in SA. Would Jay call this an “injustice” as he does in reference to the world’s wealthiest 1%?
Probably not, considering the contradictory deviation from his lament in chief in his praise for the Free State community of Naledi for employing “complex and profitable skills” to lift themselves out of poverty after gaining title to their land. This is an A-grade property right, Mr Naidoo, in the classic tradition of capitalism that you so deride. And that capital was redistributed to them with tax paid by the wealthy. It is not being achieved under any kind of redistribution model. It is possible because the constitutional right to private property, including land, is being recognised.
EVEN IF INCOME GAPS HAVE GROWN, HUGELY, POVERTY HAS SHRUNK IN GREATER PROPORTION
Oxfam’s redistribution model of all the world’s wealth would see the entire world population come into an inheritance of about R107,000 each. Once. After that it is all gone.
Still, in certain circles it is a tidy sum. The question is, how would we spend it, assuming it would be possible to spend anything in a post redistribution economy? Some people might see it as a windfall and blow it all on baubles and party food. Some clever ones might spend it on a spade and a few packets of seeds and pray for rain so that they may live when all the shops and factories have been redistributed.
The truly wise ones will pool their cash and start a spade-and-seed factory. They will employ people, add value to the land and grow obscenely rich.