During the 15th and 16th centuries in England, starvation in the countryside was widespread. Subsistence farmers grazed their sheep and cows on commonly held grazing land. Herds intermingled, livestock diseases travelled easily, and the soils were depleted.
The problem that medieval peasant farmers discovered was this: as long as the common area was massively big then there could be no limitation on grazing; as soon as grazing became in short supply then everyone had an incentive to use up the last of it as quickly as possible before anyone else did.
Modern free markets have a solution to such shortages. The price goes up.
Medieval commons had no such mechanism. Everyone owned the right to graze, and so the grazing had no value. Starvation followed.
The solution was as simple as it was devastating. The commons were enclosed and title was transferred to individuals.
The waves of peasants who flocked to the cities in the 18th and 19th centuries were fleeing villages wiped out by enclosures. They triggered the most dramatic social change in human history: the industrial revolution. With it came the astonishing innovations that led to the motor car, airplanes and cellular phones. The 2,000 years of the middle ages came to a cacophonous end with the coming of the industrial revolution and, a little over 100 years later, to us.
There are plenty of good reasons to buy hand-made or bespoke goods. There is the support of individual craftsmanship, high-quality originality, and ensuring that life doesn't become a mass of hum-drum sameness.
Declaring that "hand-made" is more efficient and better for the environment is not one of them.
Yet this is precisely what the HandMade Project declares: "The accumulating environmental effects of mass production are a major cause of global warming and the poisoning of our air, water and soil." This being the third-tier of their justification for promoting "handmade" over "factory-made".
Purely logically, that doesn't hold. The peak times for electricity consumption happens to be 18h00 to 21h00 ... AFTER people come back from work and start preparing dinner, bathing, and watching television. In small family groups.
Trevor Manuel, South Africa's long-serving Minister of Finance, has had a busy time of it. When he hasn't been demanding reform at the IMF, he has been lecturing the US and Western Europe on their theft of valuable skilled people from our nation.
Let's lay to rest this claim that skills are being plundered from South Africa.
Say little Johnny or Sarah comes running home and says, "I'm leaving Pofadder for Jo'burg. I can earn twice as much and the opportunities are more exciting." Is Jo'burg "stealing" skills from Pofadder?
There are plenty of small South African towns that are dying as young, ambitious people leave to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Should their municipal councils demand that Jo'burg refuse to take these migrants in and return them at once?
"Run your small business as if it is a big business," says Erik Parker, South Africa's franchise guru, as one of his points for business success. Or, if you're more of a socialist, "Become the change you seek," according to Mahatma Ghandi.
From a business perspective it means that, if you're aiming for the long-term, you don't take short cuts even if they look lucrative. The result is a contradiction: proclaiming one thing while acting in quite the opposite way.
The expectation that, one day when the company is big, you'll correct all the misdemeanours in between is ignorant. It is no more likely than waking up on your fortieth birthday, after a life of indolence and fatty foods, and completing the Comrades Marathon.
Public Works Minister Thoka Didiza is considering importing an Indian employment model that will guarantee every household the right to 100 days of paid work per year. Didiza, as a representative of the state, is promising people the right to a job based on the premise that not having a job is sufficient reason to get one.
There are 33,000 vacancies in state hospitals. Government administrators have thousands more unfilled positions. And this is just in the public sector.
Clearly there is no shortage of opportunities to work and, just as clearly, the massed unemployed must be unsuitable for the work available.
aloft: the whythawk blog 
