World’s richest woman would prefer to pay her miners $2 a day

[Felch]

I'm hugely impressed by your in depth knowledge of Africa, Africans and African miners in particular. When was it you lived there in the mining camps in South Africa ? Are you now fluent in Xhosa ? Bet you do a nifty line in gum boot dancing.

Considering that the mines have not had trouble attracting workers in the hundred plus years that they've been open, even during the apartheid regime, it seems self-evident that Africans would rather work in a mine for wages than eek out an existence through subsistence farming.

[regexcellent]

You don't need to be fluent in Xhosa or black South African culture to have a grasp of the situation there; you just have to not be a pretentious spergy attention whore douche-nozzle.

[regexcellent]

South Africa had positive immigration from black people all through the apartheid era. It turns out, even under crushing racial discrimination, it was better to live there than the other surrounding ****holes. This is because they had money and money trumps all.

[Hauldren Collider]

You don't need to be fluent in Xhosa or black South African culture to have a grasp of the situation there; you just have to not be a pretentious spergy attention whore douche-nozzle.

QFT

[Fake Boris]

Of course if there's a river infected with cholera and another one infected with mercury, people will flock to the latter.

Yawn you idiots.

[regexcellent]

Hey, if you had a choice between cholera and mercury, which would you make?

[Fake Boris]

Experience shows that people would take mercury, assuming the usual non-immediately lethal amounts found in contaminated water supplies.

[regexcellent]

I'm asking what you would choose. My point is, isn't it a good thing that they have a choice, so that they don't have to go with cholera? And who knows, maybe with all that money they can get filters.

[Fake Boris]

Yes, it's just so totally kickass.

[Felch]

I'm sure African miners would rather make 71,000 dollars a year, and be totally unaccountable for how much mining they do, but that's not an option for them.

[Dinner]

Hey, if you had a choice between cholera and mercury, which would you make?

I'd go for cholera and boil the water.

[regexcellent]

I'd go for cholera and boil the water.

Thank you Captain Kirk.

[molly bloom]

Considering that the mines have not had trouble attracting workers in the hundred plus years that they've been open, even during the apartheid regime, it seems self-evident that Africans would rather work in a mine for wages than eek out an existence through subsistence farming.

Yes, because the job opportunities for the upwardly mobile black South African were just so numerous and dazzling, that they thought- 'Mmm, digging for gold and diamonds in crappy working conditions for racist bosses- that's just so appealing.'

Perhaps you'd care to tell us what workig conditions were like for miners during the apartheid regime, how many migrants were employed, how many are employed now- after all there were/are more than one or two economic migrants from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, et cetera- and if the choice is work or starve, I'm reasonably sure most if not all people would choose work.

You don't need to be fluent in Xhosa or black South African culture to have a grasp of the situation there

Like your 'grasp' of Zimbabwean politics and history ? Now I know Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe are both black, and Zimbabwean, but there is a difference- like there was a difference between Zanu and Zapu.

you just have to not be a pretentious spergy attention whore douche-nozzle.

Gosh, don't be so hard on yourself.

South Africa had positive immigration from black people all through the apartheid era

Yeah- those black folks sure did love being attacked with sjamboks and having substandard housing and no health care.

it was better to live there than the other surrounding ****holes

There's your nuanced and detailed understanding of late 20th Century African history revealing itself again. My, you just can't keep your expertise from showing, can you ?

What a farce.

[Krill]

You know, sometimes I wonder why the Americans don't want fairer healthcare, and then I realises that it's true, a lot of them have no empathy at all...

[Jaguar]

molly bloom, you don't need a nuanced and detailed understanding of irrelevant details. You need a basic understanding of the actually-relevant concept, which is revealed preference arguments. If people choose A over B, they prefer A to B. That's it. Can we move on now?

However, I just want to take a brief time-out to discuss your "knowledge" of irrelevant details. No, Kuciwalker isn't fluent in Xhosa - and he wouldn't be if he worked in South African mines, either. Mines are located mostly in the north, by Johannesburg, while Xhosa is spoken on the East Cape.

People have long-accused you of just googling obscure things to sound smart, and I've stayed quiet about it for a while now, but this is a particularly egregious example, and an example in an area I'm familiar with (geography.) You just chose a name that sounded exotic and was spelled with an amusing consonant pairing. You didn't choose something relevant at all, which suggests your "knowledge" is precisely the sort of superficial name-dropping people always accuse you of.