South Africa's dissident press. Supporting freedom and reason since 2015. Subscribe to us on Substack.
South Africa
Joined January 2016
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Rational Standard retweeted
Back when CBDCs were all the rage, Nigeria was often held up by people in Western pro-liberty circles as proof that ordinary people would simply reject them.
None of that happened.
Nigeria didn’t reject CBDCs. What actually happened was more complex & frankly, far more disappointing.
There was one silver lining: the Austrian School was once again vindicated.
In my @RationalStand article, I share the disappointing reality.
@LPNational @mises @mises_media @BobMurphyEcon @ComicDaveSmith @MattKibbe @mattpheus @RealDougCasey @JayantBhandari5 @saifedean @Breedlove22 @ThoBishop @ThomasEWoods @FMFSouthAfrica @DavidAnsara @Martin_ASFL
open.substack.com/pub/ration…
Rational Standard retweeted
This is it, right here. The start and the end of the matter, as presented by @SkyeZedA in the @RationalStand.
News24, especially since January 2025, has done a lot of work to discredit journalism per se. That is incredibly unfortunate.
The AfriForum scandal that wasn’t.
News24’s “bombshell” says more about the state of journalism than it does about AfriForum.
My latest, published on @RationalStand.
rationalstandard.com/p/the-a…
Rational Standard retweeted
The AfriForum scandal that wasn’t.
News24’s “bombshell” says more about the state of journalism than it does about AfriForum.
My latest, published on @RationalStand.
rationalstandard.com/p/the-a…
Rational Standard retweeted
"Acknowledging that history is constructed does not mean that all historical constructions are equally valid.
History as an academic discipline remains constrained by evidence and standards of historical inquiry, and any respectable historical construction recognises these constraints and operates within them."
Writes @ASZulu and @NWoodeSmith in @RationalStand on proposed changes to history curriculum in basic education.
Rational Standard retweeted
🔴 LIVE on Thursday, 9 July at 12pm
This week's @RationalStand Podcast has been moved to Thursday, but we'll still be live at the usual time.
We'll be unpacking another week of big stories, sharp analysis, and lively debate that you won't want to miss.
Set a reminder and join us live.
🎙️ Watch here ⬇️
youtube.com/watch?v=-e8dWbHx…
Rational Standard retweeted
Corruption doesn't just steal money. It steals the quality of the public goods that low-income households depend on entirely. That's the cost of cadre deployment and tender fraud.
True transformation means those public goods work. It means the nurse is there, the textboks arrive, the water stays on.
To help make SA a winning country, join Team #WhatSACanBe! 👉 irr.org.za/whatsacanbe/join-…
Rational Standard retweeted
“A cabinet reshuffle is like shuffling a pack of jokers.” - @ConCaracal
Ramaphosa's cabinet reshuffle replaced bad with bad.
South Africans were promised better. Instead, they got another recycled political appointment.
The Department of Social Development is responsible for the country's most vulnerable people. It deserves principled leadership, not another minister carrying ethical baggage.
Action Society's @Juanita_DuPreez explains why this reshuffle is more of the same. Nothing has changed except the name on the office door.
Rational Standard retweeted
I reckon any party who credibly campaigns on lower taxes will have the attention of millions.
@VFPlus it’s time to campaign on lowering taxes. South Africans want lower VAT, lower income tax, and lower fuel prices. More money in our pockets means higher spending power, and ultimately it will create jobs.
Rational Standard retweeted
Which is good, but they have no policing powers in that role bar what ordinary citizens have. The point is that the SAPS had a tremendous resource, and they squandered it.
Rational Standard retweeted
SAPS reservists have declined by 94% in the space of 15 years.
This is (was?) a FREE resource consisting of highly motivated and dedicated VOLUNTEERS, and all the SAPS had to do was manage it responsibly and efficiently.
They chose to destroy it instead. Criminal negligence.
Die polisie se jaarverslae dui daarop dat die polisiereserviste van sowat 52 000 in 2011 tot minder as 3 300 in 2024 gedaal het en intussen verseg die polisie om vrae oor sy planne vorentoe te beantwoord.
landbou.com/bedrywe/bedryfsa…
Rational Standard retweeted
“Palestine” was a geographic and administrative term, not a sovereign Arab nation-state. Before Israel, the region was ruled by empires and mandates, not an independent Palestinian government.
Rational Standard retweeted
How about the communist slave labour camps? Or the mass graves of political dissidents? Or the millions dead of man-made famine?
They always draw communism as an empty fridge and capitalism as a full one.
They never draw the homeless person outside the capitalist supermarket, the farmer dumping food because selling it isn’t profitable, or the hundreds of millions who go hungry despite a world that produces more than enough food to feed everyone.
Under capitalism, the fridge is full if you can pay. Under socialism, the goal is that nobody is denied food because they’re poor.
Rational Standard retweeted
The ANC’s greatest fear is not poverty.
It governs poverty quite comfortably.
Its real fear is an independent, prosperous, educated middle class that no longer needs it.
Rational Standard retweeted
🎙️ DA Blunders, Political Opportunism, and the Henry Nowak Murder
Join the FMF’s @NWoodeSmith, Zakhele Mthembu and guest @Joe_Emilio_ on the @RationalStand Podcast as they unpack some of the most pressing issues of the week.
LINK: youtube.com/live/gC_CfFwgPp0
Rational Standard retweeted
South Africa does not need more “radical economic transformation.”
It needs electricity that works, police that protect, courts that function, property rights that mean something, and a government that stops punishing success.
Rational Standard retweeted
South Africa’s survival is not thanks to the ANC.
It is thanks to civil society, entrepreneurs, communities, families and ordinary people who keep holding the line against authoritarian incompetence.
Rational Standard retweeted
It's because the DA (and presumably the PA) don't do vetting in any real sense. To their credit, GOOD does seem to take ideas and philosophy seriously - even if it is horrible, atrocious ideology.
Ideas matter /overridingly/ if you want to solve real problems in the real world.
It should ideally be next to impossible for someone from the ANC, EFF, or PA to simply join the DA (and, mark my words, Jacobs will have some kind of position sooner rather than later) without a true and obviously sincere attachment to a core of liberal values.
Politicians rarely move between parties they regard as fundamentally incompatible.
Yet Liam Jacobs went DA → PA → DA without any obvious ideological conversion in between.
Either his political beliefs changed dramatically twice in a few years, or the distance between the DA and PA is much smaller than voters are being told.
Rational Standard retweeted
To call it a conference of the left is to dignify it.
This is a club of shameless opportunists, authoritarian nationalists, and kleptocratic populists who want to capture state institutions and engage in primitive looting.
Rational Standard retweeted
You cannot create jobs while attacking job creators.
You cannot build prosperity while undermining property rights.
You cannot fix the state while rewarding incompetence.
The ANC knows this. It just doesn’t care.
Rational Standard retweeted
Britain had a moment of silence for George Floyd. Our politicians kneeled en masse to show their outrage at his killing. "I can't breathe" became a slogan.
George Floyd died on the other side of the world. He wasn't British.
Henry Nowak *was* British and his treatment by the police was shocking and negligent in the extreme. Yet there is no minute of silence. There is no coordinated public campaign. There is no kneeling at sporting events.
And we all know why.
During the summer of BLM, some people said "All Lives Matter". This was treated as the highest form of racism and anyone who said this was immediately cancelled. Why? Because the people in charge don't actually think all lives matter in the same way.
They have created a racial hierarchy of victimhood where a career criminal who died through mistreatment by police in a foreign country with 0 evidence of racism like George Floyd is automatically sanctified because of the colour of his skin.
And Henry Nowak, a British man, one of ours, is automatically dismissed and ignored because of the colour of his.
This is the ugly fruit of so-called "anti-racism", an obsession with race that has created a two-tier society which treats people differently because of the colour of their skin.
This needs to stop.