My municipality have 2ce in the last 6 months levied a 4000 ZAR (571 USD) amount against municipal account. The first time they took it because they said I was a high risk client (I was behind 1600 ZAR) and that the 4000 ZAR was a deposit (of sorts). The second amount does not seem to have contributed to my "deposit" with them, it looks like a pure 4000 ZAR confiscation. I am in what currently seems like a cycle of indentured servitude with them. They say my outstanding balance with them is 10946 ZAR, 10515 is due on the 21st. Yet if it was not for their 8000 ZAR "financial charges/ad-hoc security deposits" I would have had to pay a very reasonable 2515 ZAR.
Now as far as I can gather my municipality, the shockingly run Tshwane municipal council, has reached the point of such desperation in it's finances that it is resorting to this kind of theft and confiscation. They are the monopoly providers of water and lights in my city and their equally bad sister municipalities and the national power company Eskom terrorize the most of the rest of the country. My choices are go without water and lights, pay, or go to their offices for an entire day and attempt to find a helpful bureaucrat to somehow reverse the situation. Previous attempts to work with the bureaucrazzzzy have not been successful and seems to have a sort of gravity about it as it keeps pulling you back. What is not an option is to realize the shocking level of unfairness and simply take the knock once and change service provider.
It has reached the point where I'm considering liquidating some of the hedges I have in place against the ever worsening global monetary system simply to ensure a reliable, affordable power supply to my house.
Now as I said this is getting ?worse? since the municipality has been mismanaged for some time and a year or two ago faced having their water contract ended and their power contract. In a totally fair system they would simply fold. But thanks to higher levels of government, provincial and national, that might still be a very long way off. Even if they cannot effectively fund themselves, they can still count on the good graces of the Gauteng province and/or National Treasury to give them a firm talking to and then a nice cheque to hold them over till they can "sort it out". Our government in turn is running a 117 billion deficit so if they can't make things work either, they can always go to intra-national finance and the local reserve bank to hold them over. They can always extort the money to pay back the loans from whoever seems to have it.
I see the chinq in their armour, if they as a whole could not continue ad-infinitum with even small 10% overruns it would al come to a screeching and much needed halt. The reserve bank would close down and its prime down town office space would be rented out by new building owners or converted to low cost housing. The government could loan money, but the people they loan from would want it back and would not be able or willing to keep extending the loan by another 10% for the rest of eternity. They would first pass this discipline on to the receiver of revenue and initially attempt to collect the shortfall from the populace. But they will here discover that money really does not grow on trees and if you tax people directly, they see what government really cost, then they get unhappy with it much, much faster. Having a far smaller budget, national government would be forced to focus on the majors and would not be willing and now completely unable to help provincial or local governments that do not perform.
As for the monopolies in electricity and water; While charging the population "internationally competitive" rates they have been funded by national government through taxation and deficits to cover the shortfalls, or simply left dysfunctional to "prevent inflation". In a system where the amount of money is known and cannot willy nilly be loaned into existence (by them or their higher ups) they would either have to face the reality that their central management paradigm does not work and relax it to some extent or explain to an angry populace why they have ceased functioning.
So please, if feel for me help me, donate me some bitcoin here; 1F5Fr2rBU6iJH9pQf4d3eLR9F7GgT1e1fD
But if you feel I'm a bit arrogant for asking, but you agree with my logic, then do me an even bigger favour and build out the Bitcoin economy;
- Get people on board, rant to your friends about it.
- Buy a mining machine and help further secure the network, they double as great gaming machines I hear ",
- If that's not your speed offer your services online and be willing to be paid in bitcoin, even if it's only a small fraction of your activity.
- Build something and trade it for a bitcoin with one of your friends just for fun.
- Set up a local exchange if you can. Coin for cash maybe if you won't get arrested.
- Add some code to a bitcoin related project.
- Lobby your favourite charity / organization to accept bitcoins as payment.
- Donate to an existing charity.
- Have a little bourbon with breakfast and live as though you were brave and unafraid
