chrislbecker.com

Nyiko Mageza tweets regarding my post

Some weird stuff here: 1 step from CIA conspiracies “@chrislbecker: Re: Why Socialist Central Planners Love The Census bit.ly/Sje2ro”

— Nyiko Mageza (@nyiko_mageza) October 31, 2012

I assume Nyiko refers to my point that central planners create crisis after crisis, which gives them more to do, and that this is conspiratorial.

I don’t maintain that central planners are necessarily conspiring to cause crises that would give them the need to intervene more in the lives of people. A few of them, maybe, but not all of them all the time. My position is that central planners are not clever enough to know what the next crisis is that will come of their socio-economic engineering, because no human being can predict all the unintended consequences of central planning. While they might mean well, their actions end up causing more problems than it solves.

So my first point is that there is no conspiracy here, it is plain ignorance and stupidity on the part of central planners.

Secondly, it is a fact that the census is the statistical ‘proof’ that central planners use to ‘test’ whether their plans are working or not. As Trevor Manuel wrote in the Business Day today:

We can and should use the statistical data set to build on our gains in more inclusive ways. In this sense, the statistics can bring together policy makers and communities, as well as our international partners, in partnerships and relationships that are based on evidence — and not narrow, sectoral interests based on opinion.

That is the FACT that I pointed out earlier: that central planners love the census because it arms them with the ‘evidence’ to embark on new central planning projects. Nyiko, of course, is just as ignorant as the central planners when it comes to this point. So he writes to me

@chrislbecker – Good luck with the census conspiracy fella, remember to keep your foil helmet on tight beware those CIA(ANC?) microwaves.

— Nyiko Mageza (@nyiko_mageza) October 31, 2012

The thing is, Nyiko, there’s no need to wear a foil hat around the ANC. There isn’t enough brain power there to build a microwave, or to deliver textbooks to Limpopo schools. But even still, people like Nyiko believe the ANC can centrally plan and engineer the lives of ~50 million people. Don’t make me laugh, Nyiko!