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Ghost riders: the invisible lives of Johannesburg food couriers

theguardian.com

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Re: Ghost riders: the invisible lives of Johannesburg food couriers

#61

Post by FredPret »

pythonic_hell wrote: post #46
fennecfoxen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More broadly, as a pragmatic issue utterly divorced from the goal of “justice”, few nations achieve prosperity when confiscation is the norm, as prosperity usually involves planning and investments with multi year returns. If a nation wishes to repair inequalities through transfers, the less disruptive way to do it is through taxation. Seizing specific properties outright is an arbitrary and capricious distribution o…

I don’t agree with the policies around land without compensation but the economic prosperity that the people of the USSR and PRC experienced after instating those policies can not be denied.

Economic prosperity?! They had massive famines. Tens of millions died.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932–1933

Re: Ghost riders: the invisible lives of Johannesburg food couriers

#62

Post by fennecfoxen »

pythonic_hell wrote: post #46
fennecfoxen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More broadly, as a pragmatic issue utterly divorced from the goal of “justice”, few nations achieve prosperity when confiscation is the norm, as prosperity usually involves planning and investments with multi year returns. If a nation wishes to repair inequalities through transfers, the less disruptive way to do it is through taxation. Seizing specific properties outright is an arbitrary and capricious distribution o…

I don’t agree with the policies around land without compensation but the economic prosperity that the people of the USSR and PRC experienced after instating those policies can not be denied.

You mean the prosperity of China, which is about one-third the prosperity of, say, South Korea, which started out in about the same place? Ah! I regret that it only seems impressive because the nation is very large.

Oh! But perhaps you mean those heady years of growth during the Great Leap Forward itself, where the nation became so prosperous that ~45 million people starved to death.

Re: Ghost riders: the invisible lives of Johannesburg food couriers

#63

Post by FredPret »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #28

When Covid lockdown started last year in May 2020 these folks popped up like crazy usually unlicensed, crappy bike handling skills (lane hogging) on these crappy slow poke two stroke Chinese made bikes. Annoying to share the road with them esp @ night when I nearly took out one in my SUV because he jumped a red robot coming from a store - no reflective vest and only a dinky headlight. Some of the bigger retail outfit…

Robot = traffic light in South African

Re: Ghost riders: the invisible lives of Johannesburg food couriers

#64

Post by mekkkkkk »

lelanthran wrote: post #51
mekkkkkk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this geopolitical perspective constitutes xenophobia. Do you really?

> I don't think this geopolitical perspective constitutes xenophobia. Do you really? Well, yeah, practically textbook: Popular definition from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/xenophobia ("Fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners"). In more detail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophobia - " It is an expression of perceived conflict between an ingroup and an outgroup and may manifest in suspicion by the o…

You'd have a (weak) case if the GP had been talking about westerners in general. They were referring to the extensive exploitation of Africa by western powers.

By your logic any criticism against any world event or fact would be xenophobic against those who caused it. That's silly.

Re: Ghost riders: the invisible lives of Johannesburg food couriers

#65

Post by atdrummond »

dang wrote: post #60
smokey_circles wrote: post #8

I've lived in Joburg all my life. Joburg, especially the inner city, is one of the most dangerous places in the world. Couriers are at risk? We all are. I don't know anyone who doesn't have a story of being held up at gunpoint somewhere around joburg, even the wealthy northern suburbs. Happened to me 4 times, twice in one week. Try convincing an armed mugger some other tit stole your phone already. Fun times. I also…

Please keep flamewar provocation out of your comments here. Your post contained some interesting stuff and also some hellish flamebait, and naturally the hellish flamebait dominated the thread. That is entirely predictable internet dynamics, which is why the site guidelines explicitly ask everyone to avoid it here. Please don't do it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Is there a middle ground here, where you could work with posters to remove the flame bait rather than the content being pushed to the bottom and out of sight? Most of OP is very interesting and has content worth exploring.

Re: Ghost riders: the invisible lives of Johannesburg food couriers

#66

Post by atom_arranger »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #9

Johannesburg resident here, who coincidentally just finished a meal delivered through "Mr D" (re-branded sometime back from "Mr Delivery"). I actually favour use of the locally developed Mr D app as opposed to UberEats so as to keep profits from leaving the country. I don't know what cut UberEats takes from each transaction, but if it's anything like regular Uber, which based on my discussions with Uber drivers (when…

> So when it comes to low-skilled jobs, in my experience immigrants are less likely to be apathetic towards their work. This results in the indigenous people feeling that foreigners are stealing their jobs, when the truth is that they're losing their jobs to people who actually make a proper effort.

Another perspective is that the jobs are not good, or don’t pay enough. If the indigenous people are not doing them you can think of it like a decentralized strike, and immigrants are the scabs. If not for the immigrants doing the work the conditions or payment for that work might improve.

This doesn’t justify violence but I don’t think it would be wrong to be upset about the situation.

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