What I dream of from Santa: less regulation, less bureaucracy, less mindless nonsense.Direct democracy please.No representative garbage, which is partly to blame for the mess we are in.Rules, regulations, and laws which are shorter, simpler, and easier to understand for everyone.Think about inclusivity when doing this, before designing mind-numbing rubbish.It should be clear that it can create impact, not just administrative hassle, otherwise it should be scrapped.Key takeaway: Think. It may be a new experience.Rule of thumb: If a law or regulation won’t make it easier for things to be done, do away with it. Reduce regulations. We cannot regulate ourselves into growth. We can only reregulate ourselves into growth.How to fix the economy?Listen when industry and organised business share their stumbling blocks. Removing those is the answer to SA’s inability to grow. This is what policymaking should be all about. It is not rocket science.But this only works if you educate like it matters – and people leave school with functional literacy. Bad teachers should be jailed. They do more damage than bad politicians.You cannot run a country by watching TikTok. Follow the evidence instead. Add science to decision-making. Otherwise, question why we bother to send our children to school in the first place.Stop with pie-in-the-sky thinking, like Russia matters. They don’t. It is not a country, just a massive gas station. What is happening in Ukraine cannot be justified. Stop thinking it can.Stop wasting money on SEZs in South Africa. They are supposed to be experiments in policymaking, not the answer to the fact that we cannot create an enabling business environment for industry.To business: learn from politicians – lobby like you mean it.None of this is hard. It’s just common sense.
