Gold Pirates Plunder South African Mines: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Gold Pirates Plunder South African Mines: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance: "The gold poaching does not only endanger the pirates -- known here as 'zama-zamas.' Haphazard digging -- the miners often lack technical skills -- can destabilize the shafts, putting thousands of legal miners' lives at risk."

Gold at $748 an ounce (today). South Africa's per capita income (PPP, GDP per capita) is $13,300. If you can just recover 18 ounces of gold - I have a necklace that weighs nearly an ounce of pure gold, over an ounce gross weight, if it helps you visualize it - just 18 little tiny ounces of gold, about as much as a decent gold coin, will catch one up to the national GDP in South Africa. Wealth and poverty are relative - most studies say that one simply wants to do better than one's reference mates. How hard can it be to gather 18 ounces - just over a pound - of gold from a proven mine? Plenty hard, the mine-owner says, but the poor, starving man trying to convince himself that he's a good provider, maybe he thinks differently.

I am not a humanist. I am an Americanist, if such a thing can exist. I understand that every human has a right to a good life, but I want to support the American right to a good life first and foremost. It is to my own benefit, it supports my ideological beliefs that the Constitution is a superior document that created a superior nation, it is a goal that drives me. Let Bill Gates rape America for every penny he can, only to donate it to the very worthy cause of providing education and health care to the very poor non-Americans of this world. I say, take care of Americans first. Let non-Americans take care of non-Americans first.

Yet, to support American success, I think one must understand - as best one can, in a nation where our garbage is often of better quality than the food and goods offered at many non-American public markets - how the competition lives. Would you sacrifice your life for $750? Heck, I pay to insure my life, and I don't even do anything more dangerous than drive on California freeways. I am absolutely positive that some of America's criminals are foreign invaders - illegal immigrants - national burglars - whatever you want to call them - for whom a stolen stereo is quite the coup. I worked with a woman whose car was broken into in San Francisco - the window damage cost a couple hundred dollars, the thief took a few dollars in coins out of the ashtray. The risk of arrest was worthwhile for the thief, presumably, while the cost of the theft was excessive for the victim. She stopped locking her car after that, and I stopped keeping coins visible in my own car. Not to say that all car break-ins are perpetrated by people of foreign birth, in this nation illegally (is there a shorter, more precise term for such people??). Just that there is an American culture, largely derived from a perspective of such wealth that our trash can support people - and there is a separate culture, most specifically attributable to foreign-born illegals, but also recognized and ascribed to by our homeless and other economically displaced citizens. And there is another culture, where life is worth far, far less (in their home countries) than it is here in America.

Oh, sure, our gang-bangers have no compulsion about shooting each other, but I think they place a high enough value on life to secure their own lives in some ways. It takes a tremendous pessimism and disregard for life for a person to say "what, go down in those dangerous mines way underground and steal gold? Okay, sure! Hey, if I die, give my wife a couple bucks, okay?" And those people are taking jobs that we Americans largely don't believe or realize exist (Chinese counterfeiter, anyone?) and jobs that directly benefit our national competitors to our own detriment.

It is very 30-ish of me to say that I don't think that Americans are willing to die over a few bucks. Americans have always been the same combination of thrifty, smart, foolish, spendy, calm, aggressive, pugilistic, peace-loving, etc., as any other large population (though we do have the relative disadvantage of being highly diverse, which gives us less of a cohesive national culture to draw upon). But I can tell you, as a 30-something American who has lived in many states, I have not met many people who have told me - despite friendships and deeply meaningful conversations - that they understand how very, very poor many foreigners are compared to us, who have told me that they appreciate our relative wealth, even among poor Americans.

Americans cannot truly understand International trade - nor International terrorism or International security - without understanding how freakin' rich we are. Let me throw in the fact here, that I graduated from a foster home into "holy crap, how do I support myself? What do you mean, I have to have kid to get welfare? What if I screw up, like most 18-year-olds do? Holy crap" at 18. I haven't experienced the abject poverty of the inner city, of not knowing when one will eat again, but I have experienced the absolute responsibility to provide my own meal every day, without a viable fallback position.

Still, that cannot compare with the total hopelessness that motivates a child to blow himself up for the fuzzy hope of 72 virgins in heaven, and, I propose, the far more important notion that his family will be well-provided-for after his death by the remaining terrorist organization. Our economic competitors are equally scrappy. Nigerian fraudsters have become a particular thorn in our sides, but how could they not?

We feed our pigs on better slop than many humans hope to eat for dinner tonight. Our dogs can reasonably expect good medical care in most American homes - indeed, many of us put our dogs through dialysis, chemotherapy, and the like - while the majority of humans in the world face less hopeful medical outcomes.