So. Africa – World Bank/Grim Forecast and Utility – Deploying Prepaid Meters.So. Africa – Eskom to continue with power cuts in Soweto | eNCA

Installing prepaid meters allow customer to consume what they 
can afford.  Also, asking landlords to collect utility costs from tenants.

https://www.enca.com/news/eskom-continue-power-cuts-soweto
December 24, 2019

Eskom to continue with power cuts in Soweto

JOHANNESBURG – Eskom said it will continue to cut power supplies to residents who do not pay their electricity bills.

Residents of Soweto collectively owe the power utility a total of R18.2-billion, which is reportedly almost half of the total local municipal debt owed to the electricity utility. 

‘Unfortunately, we cannot go on … where we just watch where the residents are just consuming without us collecting the revenue and hence that is why we needed to implement our credit management strategies,” said Eskom’s Client Service Senior Manager Daphne Mokwena.

READ: Eskom refuses to restore power to areas over debt owed

Mokwena said those who don’t pay will be disconnected. 

Eskom has also begun converting conventional meters to prepaid meters, allowing residents to manage their electricity use.

“We are saying that if customers are on prepaid then you can actually manage what you are consuming, as per your affordability but unfortunately most customers in Soweto are resisting this”, added Mokwena.

Mokwena says some residents continue to tamper with meters and buy electricity from ‘ghost vendors’. 
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https://www.enca.com/business/world-bank-cuts-sas-growth-forecast
January 9, 2020

World Bank cuts SA’s growth forecast

JOHANNESBURG – The outlook for South Africa’s economy is not about to improve, according to the World Bank.

In its latest Global Economic Prospects report, the World Bank cut its economic growth forecast for South Africa to below 1 percent for 2020 and its all thanks to Eskom.

READ: Stage 2 load-shedding continues into Friday

The World Bank now expects the economy to grow by a mere 0.9 percent this year.

This comes as Eskom has announced that Stage 2 load-shedding will continue until Friday morning.

READ: Massive debt wave could crash on developing countries, World Bank warns

The power utility says it lost additional generating capacity overnight.

Eskom’s emergency reserves are also insufficient to meet the demand for electricity during the day.
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https://www.enca.com/business/massive-debt-wave-could-crash-developing-countries-world-bank-warns

December 20, 2019

Massive debt wave could crash on developing countries, World Bank warns

WASHINGTON – A wave of debt in emerging and developing nations has grown faster and larger than in any period of the last five decades and could end with another crisis, the World Bank warned.

And if the wave breaks, it could be more damaging since it would engulf private companies in addition to governments, at a time when economic growth is sluggish, according to a new report that covers four debt surges from 1970-2018.

“The size, speed and breadth of the latest debt wave should concern us all,” World Bank President David Malpass said in a statement.

“Clearly, it’s time for course corrections,” he added.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund have been sounding the warning about growing global debt for years, but the latest report is even more stark and turned up the volume on its calls for governments to take steps to prevent a debt crisis.

IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva on Thursday said developing nations in Africa especially need to strike the right balance between financing development and a manageable debt level.

– Surging to $188-trillion –

The IMF reported that total global debt rose to $188-trillion at the end of 2018, equivalent to nearly 230 percent of the world’s economy.

The World Bank report highlights the “striking” debt surge in emerging and developing economies, which is the “largest, fastest and most broad-based in EMDEs in the past 50 years.”

After declining during the 2008 global financial crisis, amid very low borrowing costs in just eight years since 2010, debt in these countries climbed to an all-time high of roughly 170 percent of GDP or about $55-trillion. 

Much of the growth was incurred by China (equivalent to more than $20-trillion), but Beijing also has become a large lender for low-income countries.

The report warns that the current debt wave “could follow the historical pattern and culminate in financial crises in these economies,” especially if interest rates spike or if there is a sudden global shock.

Better debt management, improved tax collection, flexible exchange rates and tighter fiscal rules to manage spending could help avert a crisis and soften the blow if one occurs, the World Bank said.

“Towering though it may seem, the latest global wave of debt can be managed,” Malpass said. 

“But leaders need to recognize the danger and move countries into safer territory in terms of the quality and quantity of investment and debt — sooner rather than later.”

His IMF counterpart, Georgieva, in a blog post on Thursday repeated her concern about the massive increase in commercial borrowing in Africa — accounting for 70 percent of the ballooning of debt.

She urged governments in the region to find a “balanced approach” to managing debt and development. 

“Africa is seeking to find the right balance between financing development and safeguarding debt sustainability, between investing in people and upgrading infrastructure, between long-term development objectives and pressing immediate needs,” she said.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/02/homeland-security-face-recognition-airport-citizens/

Homeland Security wants to expand facial recognition checks for travelers arriving to and departing from the U.S. to also include citizens, which had previously been exempt from the mandatory checks.

In a filing, the department has proposed that all travelers, and not just foreign nationals or visitors, will have to complete a facial recognition check before they are allowed to enter the U.S., but also to leave the country.

Facial recognition for departing flights has increased in recent years as part of Homeland Security’s efforts to catch visitors and travelers who overstay their visas. The department, whose responsibility is to protect the border and control immigration, has a deadline of 2021 to roll out facial recognition scanners to the largest 20 airports in the United States, despite facing a rash of technical challenges.

But although there may not always be a clear way to opt-out of facial recognition at the airport, U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents — also known as green card holders — have been exempt from these checks, the existing rules say.

Now, the proposed rule change to include citizens has drawn ire from one of the largest civil liberties groups in the country.

“Time and again, the government told the public and members of Congress that U.S. citizens would not be required to submit to this intrusive surveillance technology as a condition of traveling,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union .

“This new notice suggests that the government is reneging on what was already an insufficient promise,” he said.

“Travelers, including U.S. citizens, should not have to submit to invasive biometric scans simply as a condition of exercising their constitutional right to travel. The government’s insistence on hurtling forward with a large-scale deployment of this powerful surveillance technology raises profound privacy concerns,” he said.

Citing a data breach of close to 100,000 license plate and traveler images in June, as well as concerns about a lack of sufficient safeguards to protect the data, Stanley said the government “cannot be trusted” with this technology and that lawmakers should intervene.

A spokesperson for Customs & Border Protection said the agency was “currently in the rulemaking process and will ensure that the public has the opportunity to comment prior to the implementation of any regulation,” and that it was “committed to its privacy obligations.”

https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/pig-ebola-is-now-running-wild-in-indonesia-and-it-has-already-killed-about-one-fourth-of-the-worlds-pigs/

The global pig population is being absolutely decimated by a disease that does not have a cure.  African Swine Fever, also commonly referred to as “Pig Ebola”, is raging out of control in dozens of countries all over the globe.  It has a mortality rate of close to 100 percent, and once it hits an area even the pigs that are able to survive the disease are killed off in order to prevent it from spreading elsewhere.  Unfortunately, African Swine Fever just continues to pop up in more locations.  As you will see below, it is now sweeping through the heavily-populated nation of Indonesia.  Nearly 270 million people live in Indonesia, and they are heavily dependent on pork as a source of protein.  But of course the same thing could be said about almost all of the countries where African Swine Fever is currently raging.

The mainstream media in the U.S. hasn’t been properly reporting on this crisis, and that is likely because this disease has not spread to our nation yet.

But let there be no doubt – this is truly a crisis of Biblical proportions.  In fact, it has been estimated that this epidemic has already killed about one-fourth of the world’s pigs.  The following comes from an Australian news source…

Experts say the disease has wiped out an estimated 25 per cent of the world’s pig population.

The fever has been reported in around 50 countries, including China, Belgium, Slovakia, Cambodia, North Korea, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines.

And this same figure is being quoted by the New York Daily News…

African swine fever has been reported in nearly 50 nations — including China, South Korea, the Philippines and Belgium — and it’s causing an incredible crisis on a global scale. Alarmingly, more than one-quarter of Earth’s pigs have been wiped out by the virulent disease.

This should be front page news all across America, but of course the big news networks really don’t want to talk about anything other than the impeachment of Donald Trump these days.

Unfortunately, everyone on the entire planet is going to feel the pain of this crisis as it continues to intensify.  We are potentially facing a serious global pork shortage, and this disease continues to pop up in new areas.  When it recently began spreading in Indonesia, it made headlines all over the globe.  The following comes from Reuters…

Nearly 30,000 pigs have died from African swine fever (ASF) in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province as of Dec. 15, causing millions of dollars of economic losses as authorities try to quarantine the areas affected, officials said on Wednesday.

The Agriculture Ministry has declared an outbreak of the highly contagious virus in the country and said it is contained only in some parts of North Sumatra, minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo told reporters.

Asian countries rely very heavily on pork to feed their populations, and the severe losses that we are witnessing are not going to be easy to replace.  At this point, Indonesia has become the 11th Asian nation where African Swine Fever is spreading…

To date, 11 Asian countries have reported outbreaks since August 2018, including Indonesia, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Timor-Leste.

The epicenter for this crisis is in China.  The Chinese produce and eat more pork than anyone else in the world, and it was recently projected that their hog herd “will likely shrink by 55% by the end of the year” due to this disease…

China’s hog herd fell by half in the first eight months of 2019 due to a devastating outbreak of African swine fever and will likely shrink by 55% by the end of the year, analysts at Rabobank said on Wednesday.

As I detailed in a previous article, it has been estimated that 150 million pigs have already died in China.

To put that in perspective, there are only about 70 million pigs in the United States right now.

So you could kill every pig in the United States twice and you would still not get to the total that have already died in China because of this epidemic.

Needless to say, pork prices are absolutely soaring in China.  They have more than doubled since this time last year, and in November we saw another huge jump in Chinese food inflation.  The following comes from Zero Hedge…

As has been the case for the past year, the culprit behind the headline CPI surge was food inflation, which accelerated further to a record +19.1% in November from +15.5% in October, primarily on higher inflation in fresh vegetable and pork prices.

So what is the bottom line?

The bottom line is that this is an extremely serious threat to the global food supply.

Beef, chicken, fish and pork are the four main global sources of protein, and right now pork is already in very short supply in some parts of the world.

And of course this comes at a time when global weather patterns are going absolutely nuts and we have seen disastrous harvest seasons all over the planet.

We are entering the time of “the perfect storm”, and most people have absolutely no idea what is ahead of us.

Even if you don’t eat pork, this is a story that you need to keep a very close eye on, because this is going to push up food prices everywhere.  Demand for beef, chicken and fish will increase as pork becomes more expensive and consumers turn to other options.  And in some of the poorer places around the world, some impoverished families may have to start cutting meat out of their diets entirely.

We have never seen a crisis quite like this in any of our lifetimes.  Despite all of our advanced technology, we are still dependent on farmers to produce the food that we eat, and this is truly an existential crisis for the entire global pork industry.

There is no way to spin this to make it sound nicer.  Many are hoping that this outbreak will subside eventually, but right now it doesn’t look like that will happen.

And once this disease reaches the United States, we will start to experience the same panic that is already sweeping through nearly 50 other nations around the globe.

Read more “Prisoners Drink Sewer Water – Levees at Risk/Homeless/Giant Nutria – Rodenticide/Anticoagulant”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-20/silicon-valley-seasteaders-go-looking-for-low-tax-sites-on-land

Patri Friedman is sick of the jokes about floating tax havens. About a decade ago, the former Google software engineer (and grandson of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman) co-founded the Seasteading Institute, a nonprofit with the stated aim of developing a model for self-governing offshore communities. The idea was to allow people to set up more laissez-faire laws for themselves on mobile, artificial islands resting in international waters. An invaluable experiment, he calls it now. Also: “Baggage.”

The institute’s Silicon Valley backers most prominently included Peter Thiel, the conservative billionaire and future Trump adviser, and traded in no small part on Thiel’s imprimatur. But the effort was as impractical as it sounds, and it drew criticism from local leaders and good-government groups as a form of neocolonialism. In 2018 locals defeated a commercial spinoff’s attempt to establish a seastead off the coast of Tahiti. Seasteading, like vampirism, is now on the unofficial list of topics not to raise with Thiel, who hasn’t written the institute a check in at least five years. Nonetheless, he’s become the anchor investor for Friedman’s new venture capital firm, which is trying to create some similar-sounding communities on land.

Pronomos Capital, which Friedman incorporated in August, is supposed to bankroll the construction of experimental cities on vacant tracts of land in developing countries. Pronomos is set up like a venture fund, making investments in local organizations that do the work of securing government approvals, finding tenants, and hiring retired U.K. judges to enforce the new legal framework, to be based on British common law. The firm says it’s discussing semi-autonomous cities of varying sizes with foreign and local businesspeople in countries where officials have seemed receptive to exempting them from area laws, including Ghana, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Nigeria, and Panama. A given community could start as small as an industrial park, Friedman says. Most will be aimed at foreign businesses seeking friendlier tax treatment.

relates to The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land
Patri Friedman

Courtesy: Patri Friedman

While other organizations with names such as Free Private Cities and Charter Cities Institute are advising similar efforts around the world, Pronomos is the only one with seed money from boldface names including Thiel, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, and Bitcoin evangelists Roger Ver and Balaji Srinivasan. In describing his new firm, Friedman isn’t shy to use seasteading as a reference point. “I’ve been putting these ideas out there for 20 years, and they’ve grown and compounded,” he says, sipping well water at his mountaintop compound south of San Jose. “What we get excited about is the ability to do this repeatedly.”

Why the colonial-sounding framework, right down to the old British laws? Dressed in a well-loved Slytherin sweatshirt, Friedman says it’s the best fuel for a fledgling economy and property values, and to assure global investors that their money will be safe in Pronomos projects. The justice system is more important than the tax breaks, he says, citing research that suggests faith in a functional code of laws is a leading indicator of a region’s economic success.

That’s been less than reassuring to politicians and residents leery of ceding land to unaccountable foreigners, in exchange for theoretical network effects. Fierce local opposition has halted a plan to create an independent area on a stretch of coastal land in Honduras, for example. The proposed tax incentives and other benefits for foreign investors were about as popular as you’d expect. “That land belongs to someone,” says Silvio Carrillo, the nephew of assassinated Honduran rights advocate Berta Cáceres.

Pronomos “will only go where we are wanted,” according to Friedman. He also says, with a straight face, that if Pronomos can get local officials to agree to its plans, “we have a credible shot at eliminating poverty.”

Friedman’s grandfather spent his life attacking government oversight in the field of economics, but his father, a law professor at Santa Clara University, has advocated for a kind of anarcho-capitalism on a legal basis. At age 43, Patri Friedman has pushed his family’s do-what-you-feel ethos to some other extremes, advocating for communal living, polyamory, and human-machine hybridization. He’s spent most of his career at Google, including his Seasteading Institute years. He left Google this summer to work full time on Pronomos.

“Do I want to create the first venture-backed city-state? Hell yeah”

The venture firm has raised about $9 million so far (more than half from Thiel), well short of Friedman’s initial goal. He says that’s only enough to cover basic fact-finding expenses for his local partners, and he’ll raise more to buy and develop land once governments approve the plans.

Similar ideas have gained some support beyond fringe libertarian circles. Honduras amended its constitution in 2013 to allow the creation of special economic zones outside the country’s legal framework. Erick Brimen, a startup founder who has coordinated development projects in Central America, is informally working with Friedman and others on Prospera Honduras, a local business advocacy group there. Brimen says it’s too early to discuss publicly. Other groups aiming for these kinds of extralegal territories have announced priorities including tax holidays and privatized health care and police forces.

“Our vision aligns” with Friedman’s, says Taavi Kotka, who runs an Estonian organization advocating for looser employment and tax laws to attract immigrants. “He’s a pioneer in setting up these special zones,” blockchain enthusiast Barak Ben Ezer says of Friedman. He and Friedman are working to turn the Marshall Islands into a tax haven similar to the Caymans. Friedman says he hopes to back more than a dozen projects in the next four years.

Yet even if Friedman and the other landsteaders can assuage concerns about colonial-style exploitation and the flouting of local laws, there are few guarantees in the world of quasi-sovereign states. In April a couple proclaimed their small fiberglass pod, 14 miles off Thailand’s coast, to be self-governing, and the Thai government sent its military to destroy the pod, calling their proclamation an act of war. (The couple is now working on a similar project in Panama, this time in cooperation with government officials.) That’s why, says Friedman, he’s making sure any Pronomos projects have local officials on board. Further out, “Do I want to create the first venture-backed city-state? Hell yeah,” he says. “That’s what I’m in it for. That’s the long-term goal.”

(Updated final paragraph to add new details about the couple who set up a pod off the coast of Thailand.)

About

At The Seasteading Institute, we believe that experiments are the source of all progress: to find something better, you have to try something new. But right now, there is no open space for experimenting with new societies. That’s why we work to enable seasteading communities — floating cities — which will allow the next generation of pioneers to peacefully test new ideas for how to live together.

Founded in 2008
by Patri Friedman and Peter Thiel
The Seasteading Institute was founded in 2008 by activist, software engineer and political economic theorist Patri Friedman, grandson of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman, and technology entrepreneur, investor and Philanthropist Peter Thiel