You are giving too much credit to the daft, silent 60%.
They only know intimidation, MUP/LUP, "Sorry". Solution? Dun think so
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PAP's New Strategy - will it work?
- Thread starter scroobal
- Start date
You are giving too much credit to the daft, silent 60%.
They only know intimidation, MUP/LUP, "Sorry". Solution? Dun think so
Keep calling them daft, and you will start to believe it.
But if you want to strategize, it will be disingenuous to formulate plans with the assumption that the 60% is daft.
That really depends on what you define as your "product". (Which I think in the real world is different for each individual - some people consume food just for nutrition, some as lifestyle, some as indicators of social status i.e. conspicuous consumption.)
Given that for some - advertising IS part of the product and hence your analysis is valid - there will be others for whom it isn't. And for those who don't think advertising is part of the product (e.g. myself) - well, competition via advertising has served such people badly. It has allowed good advertisers to edge out good nutrition and cooking technique in the cooked food market.
As an ex-English and Humanities teacher, it's just harder to defend absolute claims (e.g. statements with "always", "never" etc) - even if it's not easy to write good essays which are not-so-absolute (just look at all those "to a certain extent" answers).
I won't go into examples again - but "always" is really a very strong position to take. It'll be hard to defend. (Compare with a statement such as "Competition creates more benefits than causes problems for society.")
But, since I'm on the topic of teaching, I have one good example of free competition across schools for good academic results leading to bad outcomes. Principals wants teachers to work harder, assign and mark more work, etc. This is more feasible in Math and Science than in English and Humanities (nature of marking). In the short run, results improve as teachers put their back into it. In the long run, however, English and Humanities teachers tend to get burnt out and resign in large numbers. This is not a problem if we have limitless numbers of skillful English and Humanities teachers. But most schools face a shortage of such teachers today.
This is a classic case of "Tragedy of the Commons" (a result of unregulated competition). A common resource (EL and Hum teachers) can be used by economic actors (principals and school management) in free competition. Nobody can afford not to exploit the resource maximally in the short term - because if they don't, they can't compete ("Why Mr Tan can make his school Band 1 you only Band 5???!? Grade D for you."). In the long run, this free competition destroys the resource, and production suffers (students frequently have EL and Hum lessons with relief teachers in lower secondary).
In fact, we have precisely rewarded most richly the people who contributed most to the problem - while castigating those who rejected it.
You can say we had bad outcomes because we had free competition in the wrong things (poor KPIs, overly short-term outlook, too little oversight from regulatory body i.e. MOE, etc), and that free competition using good KPIs would avoid these problems. I would agree. But this should show that not ALL free competition will lead to good outcomes for society.
Hi metalmickey
I'm back from the weekend finally (yeah very long - I have a "poor work ethic" according to some people - I like to think I have a "good life ethic" though).
Well, back to the discussion:
1. Democracy vs alternatives
- dictatorships in Asia have succeeded in kickstarting equitable growth for societies
- however, from Naomi Klein's shock doctrine, implementation of the Washington Consensus has often required violation of democratic processes, and has occurred widely in Latin America, and among recipients of World Bank and IMF aid (e.g. as far back as 1960s in Jamaica, and as recently as Thailand, Indonesia, etc during Asian Financial Crisis).
- not all democratic states (mostly in West Europe) have grown equally well post-WW2 - but most have seen growth while maintaining pretty good standards of living for their people
- I am hard-pressed to think of a country with strong democratic processes who have failed in either growth or living standards - whereas I can think of plenty of dictatorships who have (re: your examples of 1970s UK and Japan - well I still think they did pretty well for their citizens, if you consider the big picture - life is still better there than in many other places in the world; India is often mentioned to me as a democracy that doesn't really work well for its people - my response is that democracy is not a binary state of "have" or "don't have" - you need a lot of cultural technology and infrastructure for it to work well - without which corruption, cronyism etc can occur - and make things undemocratic. The distribution of power in democracies is key - it can't be concentrated, or you won't be able to have strong democratic processes.)
Conclusions (mine)
- democracy is not a necessary condition for growth or improvement in living standards (c.f. Asian "miracle" states)
- strong democracy tends to lead to decent standards of living for people - examples of poor outcomes under democracy usually are instances of non-democratic actions by so-called "democratic" governments (a la Shock Doctrine), or of nominal democracies that are not fully democratic (e.g. India).
2. Re: punishment for poor policies, and how it takes a long time. Yes I agree in general that this is the case even for the best of democracies. But Singapore is a little more special - since we didn't really have strong democratic processes (e.g. free press, right to protest, political competition for PAP, etc), so our "punishment" of public policy might have been retarded compared to if we had stronger democratic processes. But I do agree that even democracies can make mistakes on long-term decisions and consequences. But so can dictatorships.
3. Re: America - is not exactly a good example of a democracy, both by some international measures, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index , or if we consider its processes.
It's chief problem, I believe, is the capture of politicians, regulatory bodies (i.e. civil service), the judiciary even (via power of politicans to appoint/approve judiciary appointments), the media (via ownership of media firms), the academy (think-tanks, universities, grants and funding of biased research), etc by moneyed interests (corporations, and rich individuals - who either own corporations, or are in finance).
(Re: deadlock - I believe partly it reveals the nature of American society - when you have a homogenous people, or at least not so distinctly polarised categories, it's easier to compromise; the deadlock seems also partly a political construct - it looks like a TOOL used by the elites, via their proxies the politicians, to block democratic processes - it's an "acceptable" way to deny progress - elected representatives can tell their electorate - "Look - we tried our best - but those !@#$%^ keep blocking us".)
Re: the deficit - I'm with the Modern Monetary Theorists (it's not easy to grasp - for myself at least - but if you need a quick intro, try googling Stephanie Kelton's speeches/public lectures - the public lectures are more accessible - or most faculty in University of Missouri Kansas, Levy Institute, or people like Bill Black, Steve Keen, etc) on this. It's not a problem at all, since the USA issues its own currency. So basically the whole debate shouldn't be about deficit or not. It should be how to allocate resources. It should be about - we have a lot of unemployed people, we have idle machines, idle factories - what do we do with them? It should also be - our society has this much real wealth - how should we distribute it (I mean - people don't become rich in a vacuum - so saying that everything you earn is by dint of your own effort doesn't make a lot of sense to me - and if luck is involved, which it is, do we really think life as a casino is better? Then why do we buy insurance?)? And also - how much healthcare/social support do we provide (should it be universal? to what extent?)? Etc.
In a way - I think the Reps and Dems are just fooling around with the deficits issue because they're captured by big money. The Reps are trying to use it to cut taxes, and the Dems are pretending to fight but actually playing along because they're not really ideologically with their progressive voter base too (overall - USA politicians have shifted farther right than their electorate - because of their capture by big money - which naturally lean more right than the average person). They just try to satisfy their voters while actually serving their paymasters/kingmakers/career-makers, etc. (Same thing with Reps also, actually.)
The issue ultimately isn't about the deficit - it's about what to do with society. And both the Reps and Dems are quite captured. So - the will of the American people will not get translated into political action. Which is why I think we will see a decline of the US - much like how the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire - which expanded a bit more - but more or less exhausted the capital left behind by the Republic era and then declined.
I'm back from the weekend finally (yeah very long - I have a "poor work ethic" according to some people - I like to think I have a "good life ethic" though).
Well, back to the discussion:
1. Democracy vs alternatives
- dictatorships in Asia have succeeded in kickstarting equitable growth for societies
- however, from Naomi Klein's shock doctrine, implementation of the Washington Consensus has often required violation of democratic processes, and has occurred widely in Latin America, and among recipients of World Bank and IMF aid (e.g. as far back as 1960s in Jamaica, and as recently as Thailand, Indonesia, etc during Asian Financial Crisis).
- not all democratic states (mostly in West Europe) have grown equally well post-WW2 - but most have seen growth while maintaining pretty good standards of living for their people
- I am hard-pressed to think of a country with strong democratic processes who have failed in either growth or living standards - whereas I can think of plenty of dictatorships who have (re: your examples of 1970s UK and Japan - well I still think they did pretty well for their citizens, if you consider the big picture - life is still better there than in many other places in the world; India is often mentioned to me as a democracy that doesn't really work well for its people - my response is that democracy is not a binary state of "have" or "don't have" - you need a lot of cultural technology and infrastructure for it to work well - without which corruption, cronyism etc can occur - and make things undemocratic. The distribution of power in democracies is key - it can't be concentrated, or you won't be able to have strong democratic processes.)
Conclusions (mine)
- democracy is not a necessary condition for growth or improvement in living standards (c.f. Asian "miracle" states)
- strong democracy tends to lead to decent standards of living for people - examples of poor outcomes under democracy usually are instances of non-democratic actions by so-called "democratic" governments (a la Shock Doctrine), or of nominal democracies that are not fully democratic (e.g. India).
2. Re: punishment for poor policies, and how it takes a long time. Yes I agree in general that this is the case even for the best of democracies. But Singapore is a little more special - since we didn't really have strong democratic processes (e.g. free press, right to protest, political competition for PAP, etc), so our "punishment" of public policy might have been retarded compared to if we had stronger democratic processes. But I do agree that even democracies can make mistakes on long-term decisions and consequences. But so can dictatorships.
3. Re: America - is not exactly a good example of a democracy, both by some international measures, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index , or if we consider its processes.
It's chief problem, I believe, is the capture of politicians, regulatory bodies (i.e. civil service), the judiciary even (via power of politicans to appoint/approve judiciary appointments), the media (via ownership of media firms), the academy (think-tanks, universities, grants and funding of biased research), etc by moneyed interests (corporations, and rich individuals - who either own corporations, or are in finance).
(Re: deadlock - I believe partly it reveals the nature of American society - when you have a homogenous people, or at least not so distinctly polarised categories, it's easier to compromise; the deadlock seems also partly a political construct - it looks like a TOOL used by the elites, via their proxies the politicians, to block democratic processes - it's an "acceptable" way to deny progress - elected representatives can tell their electorate - "Look - we tried our best - but those !@#$%^ keep blocking us".)
Re: the deficit - I'm with the Modern Monetary Theorists (it's not easy to grasp - for myself at least - but if you need a quick intro, try googling Stephanie Kelton's speeches/public lectures - the public lectures are more accessible - or most faculty in University of Missouri Kansas, Levy Institute, or people like Bill Black, Steve Keen, etc) on this. It's not a problem at all, since the USA issues its own currency. So basically the whole debate shouldn't be about deficit or not. It should be how to allocate resources. It should be about - we have a lot of unemployed people, we have idle machines, idle factories - what do we do with them? It should also be - our society has this much real wealth - how should we distribute it (I mean - people don't become rich in a vacuum - so saying that everything you earn is by dint of your own effort doesn't make a lot of sense to me - and if luck is involved, which it is, do we really think life as a casino is better? Then why do we buy insurance?)? And also - how much healthcare/social support do we provide (should it be universal? to what extent?)? Etc.
In a way - I think the Reps and Dems are just fooling around with the deficits issue because they're captured by big money. The Reps are trying to use it to cut taxes, and the Dems are pretending to fight but actually playing along because they're not really ideologically with their progressive voter base too (overall - USA politicians have shifted farther right than their electorate - because of their capture by big money - which naturally lean more right than the average person). They just try to satisfy their voters while actually serving their paymasters/kingmakers/career-makers, etc. (Same thing with Reps also, actually.)
The issue ultimately isn't about the deficit - it's about what to do with society. And both the Reps and Dems are quite captured. So - the will of the American people will not get translated into political action. Which is why I think we will see a decline of the US - much like how the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire - which expanded a bit more - but more or less exhausted the capital left behind by the Republic era and then declined.
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I've given up arguing with this turd a long time ago. There is only so long you can keep on wrestling with a pig.
Sometimes when they run out of things to say about your ideas and your arguments, they will even say ridiculous things like questioning which part of the world you are in and how and why you're typing this in the wee hours of the morning. As though I need his fucking permission to wake up and sleep.
Basically he has nothing of substance to contribute to this discussion.
You will find quite a few hidden gems in sammy boy political forum, and some of the gossip is juicy and exlosive, and some of the commentary is really insightful.
This thread will for me cease to be one of those gems.
I give you two rules for arguing with somebody on the internet.
Rule 1: your purpose is not to convince the other guy. It is to convince the bystander. Sometimes there is no point in trying to convince the other guy because he is too dumb to see your point.
Rule 2: the internet is a written medium. When you think about it, repeating again something that's already been said in print somewhere else is totally ridiculous. So I don't do it.
If I have to violate any of these rules, the conversation is over.
Sometimes when they run out of things to say about your ideas and your arguments, they will even say ridiculous things like questioning which part of the world you are in and how and why you're typing this in the wee hours of the morning. As though I need his fucking permission to wake up and sleep.
Basically he has nothing of substance to contribute to this discussion.
You will find quite a few hidden gems in sammy boy political forum, and some of the gossip is juicy and exlosive, and some of the commentary is really insightful.
This thread will for me cease to be one of those gems.
I give you two rules for arguing with somebody on the internet.
Rule 1: your purpose is not to convince the other guy. It is to convince the bystander. Sometimes there is no point in trying to convince the other guy because he is too dumb to see your point.
Rule 2: the internet is a written medium. When you think about it, repeating again something that's already been said in print somewhere else is totally ridiculous. So I don't do it.
If I have to violate any of these rules, the conversation is over.
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Democracy and dictatorships have their own time and place. So I'll probably agree with you that dictatorships are not really a good way to run sufficiently mature societies. They are a great way of bootstrapping societies from the third world into the first, but after that, it has to be democracy.
You cannot judge a democratic system based on what happened over the last 50 years. The sample size is exceedingly small, and even if you have 2 countries side by side in the same era, they have to be considered as the same case. In Europe's case, it probably started off from the post war era, so I'm not sure that even Europe would be a good indication of what happens for democracy for a long run. My concerns for the democratic / capitalist model is what happens in the long run, when the system is allowed to run long enough. You can see it happening around now. "Developed" countries laden with debt, unemployment sky high, uncompetitive economies, treasuries kaput. In the long term, the tragedy of the commons sets in. Every citizens wants what he thinks is his fair share, which is inevitably more than his fair share. I will be quite curious to see how they solve this problem in the long run. Perhaps we should have a system where the system swings between democracy and dictatorship, each era compensating for the weaknesses of the previous one.
It is not true that America is not a good case study for democracy. I would argue that since America was at some point a more genuine democracy, it is important to watch what happens to America because it can tell you what problems will creep into the system in the long run. It's almost like you are saying, "I only want to know what young men are like, I don't really care about old men's problems". No, because an old man's problems tell you what will happen to the young man when the young man grows old.
When you say that moneyed interests subvert the proper functioning of democracy in America, we agree on that. But - democracy / capitalism system created those moneyed interests in the first place. It provided the conditions for the prosperity of many, then it morphed into the conditions for prosperity of the few. The fact that democracy carries within itself the seed of its own destruction must be factored into any assessment of democracy as a system.
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This makes a lot of sense.
I only rehashed old topics because I thought I hadn't been clear enough previously so I provided more details, and fresh examples. Maybe I did so for the bystanders? Not too sure - it's a quite off-the-cuff response.
Anyway I guess the horse is now well and truly dead. I'll not flog it anymore.
Oh yes, I would agree with you on this.
What I meant was - America today is not a good example of strong democratic processes and institutions. So don't point out America's problems and say "There! Democracy brings you problems! Look at the US!". Ditto for other nominal/flawed democracies (local favourites include Thailand, Greece, India, etc).
But it's relevant for you to point out that if most democracies end up being flawed (esp in the long run) - then it behooves us to wonder why. And whether it's inevitable, whether it's preventable, what causes it to go there.
So I agree with you America is a great case study of how formerly strongly democratic societies can become less so over time.
I more or less concur. Cheers :-)
(Except I would say - it is only sometimes, only attested in Cold War era East Asia, that dictatorships are good for bootstrapping societies from 3rd to 1st world. Because of the overwhelming number of dictatorships that didn't manage that. Makes you think that whether countries develop from 3rd to 1st world doesn't depend as much on government type as on other factors - e.g. political interference from abroad due to Cold War geopolitics, or Confucian traditions or part thereof, e.g. strong focus on education, respect for knowledge/teachers, etc - I think Ngiam Tong Dow suggested parallels in such attitudes between Confucian and Jewish cultures in an essay once.)
Well - yes, economies and societies aren't subjects in controlled experiments. Which is why social scientists always get shit from hard science folks.
Nonetheless - if we accept provisionally our imperfect measures like how free the press is, how egalitarian societies are in terms of power and wealth, etc - some European states have stayed very democratic, esp. the Nordic areas. Australia, NZ, Canada have also been pretty good by those measures - those aren't losing democracy - we can look at them as case studies of how to maintain democracies - the flip side of states like the USA. (You might be interested in Iceland which voted in a democratic socialist government right after their banking crisis. Very democratic place. Not doing the austerity thing like most of the rest of Europe is doing too - and better off as a result it seems.)
I'm not sure we should always analyse democratic and capitalist together. Or maybe I mean - we shouldn't confuse neo-liberal ideas of capitalism with broader notions of capitalism. (I think broadly capitalism is a pretty good way to approach things - so long as we manage its failures.) And the failures we see in the world today - aren't they largely a result of implementations of neo-liberal ideas of capitalism and free markets and competition? E.g. free markets are good and regulation is bad. (Even in finance? Agriculture - people starve and die when supply falls - but we want to set prices with supply and demand curves? Whoever said we couldn't put a price on life? And we ban human trafficking? Slavery? Child labour? Why do we accept these "free market distortions"?)
The relevant thing for us is - how did neo-liberal ideas get such great traction in formerly democratic societies? People like Naomi Klein more or less push the idea that it is concentrations of money that did it (beginning with Ford Foundation's funding of scholarships for Latin Americans to Chicago University's Economics dept - incidentally Desmond Choo is an Econs grad from Chicago too!). Lots of talk on Naked Capitalism is about how the US gov't interacts with financiers - and discussion from lots of academic, journalistic, etc sources about how various aspects of gov't are captured by money is frequent. USA election commentary discusses these too. This is why I think concentration of power (in the USA via money - in Singapore via other means) is the root cause of democratic erosion/suppression.
This kind of capture didn't happen in Scandinavia, where societies reject strong concentrations of wealth (and hence power). It didn't happen in Canada and Australia and New Zealand - left-leaning places (Australia less so now - maybe a good case study?). In Iceland - the ideas took hold for a while (and earned huge profits) before backfiring (costly!) - and being rejected - and people could reject it I guess because Iceland is a well-functioning democracy.
You also talked about fairness - about people wanting more than their deserved share. Notions of fairness - where do they arise?
- evolutionary perspective - Capuchin monkeys and unfair rewards video (you might have seen this on Lucky Tan's blog or elsewhere over the net)
- anthropological perspective - http://mathbabe.org/2012/09/02/fair-versus-equal/
Evolutionarily we primates seem to have found a notion of fairness helpful in group survival. It's biological baggage and should be abandoned in modern times, perhaps (like our sex drives maybe - look how useful those were to YSL, or Palmer). But it gives you some sense of perspective at how crazy paying CEOs a few hundred times more than the lowest-paid workers in a firm can be (especially in the US case where those firms receive public bailouts - or in the Singapore case where those firms are GLCs - arguably semi-public entities).
Anthropologically and archaeologically - we find that the elite serve their own interests before society's interests. Anthropologists find that elites across various primitive societies repeatedly serve their own interests at the expense of their society's outcomes in times of crisis (e.g. Mexican tribes - in times of famine, the rich price-extort the poor). Jared Diamond in Collapse talked about how societies failed because of elite preference for self-aggrandizement rather than conserving ecology as well (e.g. statues at Easter Island, churches and cattle in Viking Greenland, forcing the poor to farm erosion-prone areas and deforestation to construct prestige big houses among Anasazi Indians).
(I also think about consumerist cultures, psychological effects of incentives and rewards, etc - but let's not go there today...)
So... I don't know.
I think the US is a great negative example. I think we shouldn't let power concentrate like they did, shouldn't allow inequity to rise to those levels. (Of course the US has unique qualities unlike Europe or ex-Brit angmor colonies - they're not ethnically homogenous. And Singapore is similar too. So maybe we can't be like social democratic Europe? I don't know - I think a lot rests on the possibility of forging a really inclusive Singaporean identity across not just class lines but racial ones.)
At the time that "Shock Doctrine" was written, I would have said that the European economies were in better shape than the US. As of now, it is actually the US economies that are in better shape. Of course how well I am in a positiion to judge this would depending on whether you think I am lying to you when I say that I'm iin the US. But the US economic recovery is under way. There is a certain form of resilience in the US economy that Singapore would do well to learn from. 20 years ago I thought that the US was going down the tubes (not that the opinions of a schoolkid are very important). Then suddenly the tech boom took place and the US turned around quickly. The US is also a lot more Asian than a lot of people realise. Chile (I'm also sure that Naomi Klein has plenty to say about Chile) is also doing pretty well now.
So I'm not entirely sure that you can say that the US is a basket case democracy. And Israel, paradoxically when they can't help but screw themselves up over and over again with their security situation, seems to have such a great startup culture.
And even if it were the case, that is all the more reason to study the US closely because it will illustrate the pitfalls of a democratic society, and show you how democracy gets eroded over time. And then you can compare this with your Nordic ideal cases and see how it's different, and then you can compare this with Italy and figure out how Berlusconi got elected so many times, etc etc. New Zealand - the impression I get from reading John Gray's "False Dawn" is that it is actually not such a left leaning place.
Yes, I said democratic capitalist system. There are roughly 2 different economic systems in a capitalist system. The more capitalist ones, and the more social democratic ones. Both are capitalist, one just more so than another. And nobody ever thinks that democratic and communist systems ever co-exist, even though North Korea calls itself DPRK. Both systems will have to be accessed on their merits. So you can see I'm not such a socialist democrat like you are. Why Europe doesn't ever seem to produce a Google or a Microsoft or an Apple - there are all sorts of reasons, but indisputably, there is no European Google, Microsoft or Apple.
Fairness and equality - well humans aren't as concerned about fairness and equality as they ought to be. I suppose that's why I called them sheep. I find it strange, a lot of people yelling "fuck PAP" when they should be yelling "fuck Khoo Teck Puat" or "fuck Kwek Leng Beng" or "fuck Ng Teng Fong". I suppose they don't really know what the real problems are.
I'm replying you because you seem to believe in competition. Maybe not as strongly though.
For that metalmonkey, you can see just in this thread alone, I'm not the only one who questioned his agenda/motive.
You are thinking too much, too obsessed and therefore got confused. The product is not the issue here.
In your fast food chain advertisement example, the kids are what matter. Not you. Not me. And certainly not the food.
In your teaching scenario, the MOE, the Principal are the consumers while the Math teacher, Science teacher, English teacher and Humanities teacher are the competitors. "Mark more work" is the product. Again, the MOE, the Principal are what matter. Not you, not me, not the Teachers' Union, not the marking of work.
Drawing parallel to Singapore. The politics (product) is not the issue. The true pink Singaporeans (consumers) are what matter.
Assuming it's on a fair playing ground, the political parties' are making an effort to get the approval of the true pink Singaporeans (consumers), through better policy, better TC management, better online presence (competition). Because true pink Singaporeans are offered the choices, true pink Singaporeans benefited. Always.
Then it is up to the true pink Singaporeans to make the right choice.
Why would you think the competition ("edge out") here is bad? It just shows that the law of nature is serving its intended purpose (provided it's on a fair playing ground, not SingPost vs neighborhood pawn shop).
Again the food (product) is not the issue. The kids (consumers) are what matter.
The food vendors are making an effort to differentiate themselves/their product, to get the approval of the kids (consumers), through more attractive advertisement, more nutritious food, healthy cooking technique (competition). Because the kids are offered the choices, the kids benefited. Always.
Then it is up to the kids to make the right choice.
There you go again. Dun analysis under you paralyze.
Just because "always" is a strong word, hard to defend, doesn't mean one should avoid it even if it is a fact. Like Sun always, always rises from the East. Monopoly is always, always afraid of competition.
For that metalmonkey, you can see just in this thread alone, I'm not the only one who questioned his agenda/motive.
You are thinking too much, too obsessed and therefore got confused. The product is not the issue here.
In your fast food chain advertisement example, the kids are what matter. Not you. Not me. And certainly not the food.
In your teaching scenario, the MOE, the Principal are the consumers while the Math teacher, Science teacher, English teacher and Humanities teacher are the competitors. "Mark more work" is the product. Again, the MOE, the Principal are what matter. Not you, not me, not the Teachers' Union, not the marking of work.
Drawing parallel to Singapore. The politics (product) is not the issue. The true pink Singaporeans (consumers) are what matter.
Assuming it's on a fair playing ground, the political parties' are making an effort to get the approval of the true pink Singaporeans (consumers), through better policy, better TC management, better online presence (competition). Because true pink Singaporeans are offered the choices, true pink Singaporeans benefited. Always.
Then it is up to the true pink Singaporeans to make the right choice.
Why would you think the competition ("edge out") here is bad? It just shows that the law of nature is serving its intended purpose (provided it's on a fair playing ground, not SingPost vs neighborhood pawn shop).
Again the food (product) is not the issue. The kids (consumers) are what matter.
The food vendors are making an effort to differentiate themselves/their product, to get the approval of the kids (consumers), through more attractive advertisement, more nutritious food, healthy cooking technique (competition). Because the kids are offered the choices, the kids benefited. Always.
Then it is up to the kids to make the right choice.
There you go again. Dun analysis under you paralyze.
Just because "always" is a strong word, hard to defend, doesn't mean one should avoid it even if it is a fact. Like Sun always, always rises from the East. Monopoly is always, always afraid of competition.
@SG Parent
You can argue that what matters in education is “the amount of work marked” rather than “the kind of people children grow up to be”, or “the usefulness of children to society in future”. By all means – you’re entitled to your opinion. But it’s just yours. I think lots of Singaporeans wouldn’t agree with you that that is what matters in education.
The same thing with food – you argue that the product is “the ultimate satisfaction children derive from consuming MacDonald’s, including the psychological effects of advertising” – but children are not the only people eating MacDonald’s. Adults do too (Vegans, Muslims, health-conscious people, junk food lovers, etc). All kinds of people potentially consider eating MacDonald’s at some point in their life. It is a substitute (econs jargon) for other kinds of food. Your definition of product cannot be applied to all these diverse potential customers. So, unless MacD wants to abandon those market segments – they need to be competitive to those market segments.
A product is what people want after all. Some people are influenced by advertising, some are not. Everyone has their own preferences.
In fact – this entire discussion about competition is just a metaphor. We’re just viewing and understanding politics through the lens of business. But politics isn’t business. It’s not a perfect analogy. And this has caused a lot of problems (I have always criticized the corporatization of the civil service) – such as having overly narrow or short-term KPIs, or like how the civil service was run on a “cost-recovery” basis for years (when the spirit of public service is hard to reconcile with the notion of tangible “profits” – how do you measure the “profits” of things like reductions in juvenile crime? Drug abuse? Crime? Dropout rates? Etc).
Let’s not get too caught up in the business/capitalist mindset. Life is about bigger things than just that. Framing everything in terms of a business/capitalist outlook can cause us to tunnel vision and lose sight of some important aspects of life.
You're right - let's not "analyze until paralyze". Maybe it's better to just do the unambiguously "useful" things - like put more opposition people into Parliament - and not worry too hard about the theoretical underpinnings of things.
Hi metalmickey
Re: Europe vs the US – well, yes Europe is in worse straits now. They have a few problems that the US don’t have.
1. The euro – where the US can print US Dollars, the individual European states cannot. They cannot devalue their currency to pay off debts, or to make their exports more competitive. The US can do it, e.g. via QE1, 2 and 3. Iceland could do it - having its own sovereign currency. Ireland had a similar problem (banking as well) but couldn't do monetary policy because it was using the Euro. Ditto Greece, Spain, Italy.
2. European institutions are more neo-liberal than US ones. I think there’s a very recent Noam Chomsky interview on Truthout where he talks about the importance of institutions (which are more persistent than current day to day policies), and compares the Federal Reserve to the Europe Central Bank – where the Fed has two mandates – to combat inflation and to combat unemployment – while the ECB only has one – to fight inflation. It’s not even democratic in Europe – because the ECB is not Greece, or Ireland, or Spain or Portugal or Italy. At least the Americans choose Obama – who appoints the civil servants at the Fed. I think this highlights the importance of the wide variety of institutions - the cultural technology - that is essential to democracy.
Re: Chile – well Pinochet was chased out a long time ago (late 1980s?). The Chicago Boys (economists from Chicago University) have lost influence. They’re no longer operating under the Washington Consensus. They have decent elections now, and the Socialist party has formed the government sometimes. Naomi Klein was talking about the problems from the Pinochet days. In fact, it’s generally easier to post good growth from positions of weakness (like how Singapore grew so rapidly in the past, or how Austerity advocates point to good growth in Estonia after austerity – which Krugman pointed out is only good growth if you start counting from the trench caused by implementing austerity in the first place).
Re: innovation in USA and Israel – well, Acemoglu and Robinson have a recent paper discussing this. They proposed two types of capitalism – cuddly (Nordic) and cut-throat (USA) – and showed that the US had more patents than the Nordic areas (but the Nordic region has not been bad at design – Nokia preceded Apple, and there’s Ikea and other innovators – just not as much as the US). They then talked about the comparable growth rates between cuddly and cutthroat capitalist systems – and suggested that this disjunct between innovation and growth is because the benefits of innovation are not kept within the innovating state (think about how computers improve productivity worldwide – even though they’re developed in the US). Conclusion – cuddly capitalists can grow well only because innovation has been “outsourced” to states with comparative advantages in innovation, e.g. the US. The fact of the matter is - cuddly capitalists have not grown more slowly than cutthroat and innovative ones.
Even if the US or Israel has an edge in innovation, I don’t think it’s a net benefit for Americans or Israelis. Is it really good to have such things as “growth”, “wealth”, “innovation” etc if it is accompanied by low security, death from violence, poverty, high crime, racism, exploitation of other human beings, etc? I’m sure the rich and powerful Americans who can sequester themselves from the problems think it is worthwhile (strong echoes of Jared Diamond’s Collapse here). But it probably doesn’t benefit ordinary Americans. And in a well-functioning democracy would probably not be acceptable.
People often get focused on growth and wealth and envy the innovators – which is bizarre. Why don’t we get focused on well-being and happiness, and envy those with egalitarian societies with happy, long-lived people? "Growth" is good when societies are poor - but even when you're rich? Keynes thought societies would outgrow this. He thought the problem in future would be what to do with all our free time once we had met our basic needs.
Re: capitalism vs democracy – I think you misunderstand me. Capitalism is an economic system, and can be mated with various political systems. We can have strong democracies who are strongly neo-liberal capitalists (rare in practice – because of how neo-liberal capitalism tends to benefit tiny minorities while hurting the majority – so that truly democratic societies seldom embrace neo-liberal capitalism – Reagan and Thatcher did try, and see how far they got - well, they're making progress, esp the US, via the erosion of democracy). We also have strongly authoritarian regimes being neo-liberal capitalists (Pinochet's Chile, Yeltsin's Russia, Iraq under occupation, etc - all of which also involve lots of violence). Or we could have more moderate capitalists – more in favour of regulation – with democratic moderate capitalists being Nordic states, and authoritarian moderate capitalists being the old S. Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, even China? – all of which agree that capitalism is generally good – but also favour strong state intervention?
I don’t know about being called a “socialist democrat” – I guess it’s pretty accurate because on the political compass my coordinates are negative 5 or 6 on both axes. Is it so obvious?
Re: fairness and equality – they’re rather different things. Most people would reject equality of outcomes (all farmers get the same pay no matter how hard they work, how much food they produce – e.g. in the kolkhoz - soviet collective farms) . But most people want some degree of fairness - they want level playing fields, they want genuine meritocracies (it's our biological legacy - stratified human societies have a relatively short history in the evolutionary scheme of things - about 12k years?).
The only way the elites are getting people to accept unfair conditions is by creating myths and propaganda, by obstructing democracy, by obstructing education and information, by excluding people from politics (voter registration laws?), etc etc. Just look at the polling data in the Republican states - people are in favour of social spending programmes - they just vote Republican because of assorted other reasons - religion, gun laws, Tea Party ideology, Confederate historical baggage, propaganda about Obama the Kenyan Muslim - in short everything but policy.
Well, first we have the obligatory passive aggressive side jabs at sgparent.
People like him are an unfortunate reflection of the tendency for some people on the opposition side. It's really fun to be quarrelsome. Really, really fun. It's not impossible for me to imagine him typing out what he types with one hand and the other hand doing you know what. Whatever he's quarrelling about, I can't remember all the details.
That's why 20 years have passed between 1991 and 2011 without much progress (4 seats in parliament vs 6 seats). Because well meaning people like him spend all their time online jacking off rather than reading up on politics / economics. To be fair to them, they probably don't understand English either. I think about how many "democratic" conversations on the internet have been less about policy analysis and formulation, and more about dick waving exercises in establishing that one's anti-PAP convictions are larger and longer than the other guys. And I sadly shake my head.
But he did say something right for once. (If he gets something right, it's only because he gets it right by accident.) He said that you believe competition but not as strongly as he does. This was also my position, but you'd never know that if you only read what he has to say.
OK, I'm learning something from this ex-civil servant. I was wondering - I've never been in the civil service before, and it shouldn't be that he doesn't have anything to teach me about economics and politics.
So some European nations are more democratic than the US, but the European Union as a whole is less democratic than the US. I want to connect this back to what I said earlier. It is very hard for the formulation of economic policy to be a democratic process. I'm not familiar with the EU, but it does seem that the central bank in the US is not that democratic. I don't know how it can be made more democratic, or even whether it should be democratic. The US federal bank is supposed to be undemocratic. The Fed chairman does not report to the president. He's like a supreme court justice - once appointed, he does whatever the fuck he wants to do. This is to prevent the president from engineering some growth during election year just so as to get elected again, because often this short term growth can be harmful in the long run. In Singapore, of course, there are no walls within the system, so the central banker can also be the prime minister (I think LHL has been the central banker before).
I notice that you have a contradictory position. On one hand, you don't believe entirely in economic growth. On the other hand you justify cuddly capitalism on the basis that it delivers better growth than the US (not true by the way if we are talking about the numbers since the Great Recession). I agree that we have to rethink growth. In an economic equilibrium there should not be growth. There will be good years and bad years, but no growth. Technological innovation is the only true source of economic growth. Everything else is fucking around with the numbers. I believe in economic evolution, in technological progress, but not economic growth. The US has been able to deliver economic growth because it has been able to deliver technological advancement.
When you think about the PAP's motto, "more good years" it does make sense. And it does not even have to be interpreted as "we have growth every year". It should be interpreted more as "we've reached a certain level of prosperity, let's maintain this over the long run". These days I think they don't use that motto anymore because it can be interpreted (legitimately I think) as "more of the same fucked up shit". Life is not getting better in Singapore and anybody who is looking than more than just the numbers will understand that.
To me the bigger problem is fundamentalism. In the past, the PAP built its platform on delivering economic growth. People who understand Singapore of the 60s and 70s will also see that it was the right thing to do, and there's very little controversy about that. Problem is when they started believing "growth is always always good". (note that this is a deliberate echo of some fucktard saying that "competition is always always good") Then a lot of what happened in the last 2 decades was down to wanting to sustain rosy growth figures. Asset enhancement fucked everybody over but hey it gives you many years of double digit growth so it can't be that bad. Attracting the wealthy from all over the world fucked everybody over but hey it gives you many years of double digit growth too.
So this idea of growth is an idea that once was good but people started getting stuck on this idea and it became something of a fundamentalist thing with the Singapore govt. The ministers started saying, "it doesn't matter if I'm going to fuck Singapore in the process, when I deliver 8% growth every year, you pay me millions of dollars". Then this idea got stuck, and the system got fucked.
So the thing is, how do you unfuck the system, how do you remove an idea once that idea stops being a great idea. How do you get people to change their minds about things and abandon the old mental models. If you read Donald Low's essays, they are all about the problem of people getting too hung up on ideas that are no longer relevant. So democracy is part of the solution, but also it depends on citizens being informed, citizens educating themselves, and a lot of other things we discussed earlier.
If you want me to describe my position, I once said that I was a moderate. Now I think that "agnostic" is a more accurate description. No wonder so many of the anti-PAP faithful are so angry with me. I am a skeptic, and I believe that skepticism is necessary for democracy. The paradox is that even people who are skeptical of democracy itself are necessary for democracy. If you can't deal with people throwing in your face ideas that you don't agree with, you should just go and live in a dictatorship. Well, we are all living in a dictatorship. People with this "always always" mentality, once you put them in charge of Singapore, they will run it into the ground.
You are a cuddly capitalist. It is quite obvious to me because I can read what you are saying and I can understand it. Unlike some people out there nothing better to do than to shoot from the hip, anyhow whack. I write 20 pages of stuff, they only read up to page 2, and they quibble over some minor detail because they don't even understand what's on page 2.
I don't believe in growth, I don't believe in wealth, but I certainly believe in innovation. I don't really understand enough about cuddly capitalism to know whether a great innovation environment is hard to achieve with cuddly capitalism. I hope that it is. In any case, here's a fun fact for you: San Francisco is the most liberal city in the US, and it is right next door to Silicon Valley. I believe that a good startup environment is inherently democratic. Anybody who has a great idea can start up a business, and in 10, 20 years become a rich man. He can have a great voice in local politics. People don't have to spend their lives sucking other peoples' dicks to stay alive. The great weakness in Singapore's economy is that too much rests on either MNCs or GLCs. The third pillar must be built. Unfortunately, as of now, in spite of our great educational standards, I see little evidence of this. Our innovation culture is screwed up. Too much top down and too little bottom up.
The good news for Singapore is that urban and cosmopolitan areas tend to be a little bit more democratic than others. The crazy weird ass republican portions of America are the small towns and rural areas. So there is a lot of potential for Singaporeans to be more democratic. The bad news is that moneyed interests in Singapore are also very powerful. I feel that people have mischaracterised PAP as the enemy. I tend to believe that the moneyed interests are the real enemy of Singaporeans. PAP is just guilty of not really keeping them in check, or colluding with them. Many opposition people in Singapore don't see it this way, they're used to thinking of PAP as being all-powerful, which certainly was the case in the early years but I'm not sure now.
I'm not going to defend Pinochet's Chile especially since I don't understand it that well.
I don't think that people believe in fairness and equality. A lot of people still believe that CEOs should be paid 50-100 times that of roadsweepers. They don't work 50-100 times as hard, but it's OK to pay them 50-100 times as much. It's precisely because they don't believe in fairness and equality, that they are so easy to manipulate.
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I’m just an ordinary teacher actually. I don’t have insights due to my civil service stint, other than about the ground realities of education in schools, and also meeting a lot of citizens in the form of students and parents. Just wanted to make this disclaimer of having any special perspectives.
Yes, I think this central bank independence from elected politicians is “separation of powers”, to provide “checks and balances” – which is considered a good thing for democracy? Another similar structure is the constitution – which cannot easily be changed by the elected representatives (but which in Singapore is kindof fluid in the interpretation – c.f. Kenneth J. and IMF loan case, requirement to call by-election case). Other separation of powers things are the independence and freedom of the press/media from influence by power (being eroded in the US, and we never had it in Singapore), the state of civil society, etc etc.
Well, the EU is really a strange political structure – I think they have been much harsher to their member states like Greece or Spain etc (both in how they frame the problem, and in the policy actions they then take to stop “the problem”) than the US Federal government would have been to any of its member states – and I think they’re motivated by nationalistic interests (I think the EU central gov’t is accused of more often serving the northern states at the expense of the southern ones). Though of course some elements are similar (both the EU and US refuse to blame and punish banks much for the crisis – though EU is getting tougher on banks now, esp Bank of England it seems (some bankers did get charged, and laws on compensation are being implemented). The US most recently didn’t even prosecute HSBC for funding terror states – a sharp contrast to how they deal with individuals who “send money home” to such places).
I don’t believe in (economic) growth at the expense of society’s well-being and happiness. I also know even if I can personally eschew growth and wealth (as in – I can be a happy man without all the conspicuous consumption?), many other Singaporeans won’t think the same way – so I have to produce arguments that “cuddly” capitalism doesn’t compromise too heavily on growth (the common Singaporean argument goes like this – “You don’t want growth? Then eat what? You want Singapore to become like _______ [insert currently notorious 3rd world country name here]?”). And ultimately, I’m hoping once you give people a taste of life in egalitarian society, they will end up shifting their goal-posts in life (at which point people accuse me of being evangelistic about how we should live life).
But first I think it’s good to show people that “cuddly” systems aren’t that inefficient and uncompetitive when compared with so-called “cutthroat” systems – which seem to have an innovative edge, but suffer from some inefficiencies too – e.g. in the US healthcare. In fact, Chang Ha Joon has argued that unemployment and retraining benefits stimulate innovation and adaptability for individuals (encourages people to pursue jobs without fear of being made redundant and retrenched) the same way that bankruptcy laws and limited liability laws do for firms (encourage entrepreneurs to pursue business ideas without risking all their assets and even their liberty/life) – he talked about how in no-safety-net employment regimes e.g. in S. Korea, there is a disproportionate channeling of talent to “safe” industries like doctoring and lawyering (and maybe finance nowadays), rather than taking chances on being engineers (who might be made redundant).
We often criticize Singaporeans for not taking risks (I have said that to my ex-students too often) – but it’s partly also because we don’t have good safety nets. Who wants to risk not doing well at PSLE, or ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels? And then beyond? (And if everyone channels more effort into doing well in exams – won’t they have spent less working on other things? And then we lament that Singaporeans are only good at exams, but not at innovating, at presenting, at selling ideas, at lifelong learning, etc) And if we lambast Singaporeans for not taking risks – we should consider the returns on taking risks in Singapore (not just economic returns, which are bad enough in an environment dominated by GLCs, but other intangible things like esteem and respect from society – there is too much stigma on not having made it economically, and not enough respect for gumption and fighting spirit).
Yes, yes – agreed. In fact in Singapore we seem to have put the cart before the horse, or the tail wagging the dog. When population shrinks, growth will go down, naturally. But in Singapore, to make growth go up – we import population! (In Soviet Russia, growth make you populate!)
Again I agree. We can call it lots of things – growth fundamentalism (you’re not alone – lots of people have criticized neoliberal economists to be as dogmatic as priests), overly narrow KPI (a civil service wide problem? Starting from who, you wonder?), tunnel vision, excessive corporatization (c.f. arguments for ministerial salary, metaphors like “Singapore Inc.”), etc
And I think you can identify a clear period when this started – more or less the late 1980s or early 1990s. (Perhaps it has to do with the fall of the Berlin Wall? No more socialist threat? Or perhaps Goh Chok Tong caused the change?) I remember reading Toh Chin Chye’s parliamentary speech from 1984, where he took pains to emphasize he was not a capitalist, but he was a pragmatist, and we should do what is good for Singapore (something like that) – which showed the distrust of capitalism back then (c.f. also all the criticism of “Westernization” – and our need for Asian values – then vs the inevitability and embrace of “Globalization” today).
So – well – you and I might think a narrow measure of growth is not the only or even the main thing to worry about. But it’s not easy to sell that idea to Singaporeans. Especially when for some their lives aren’t very materially comfortable (due to wealth inequality), and for those who are materially okay, or even well-off, even if their material lives are comfortable, they have too much material aspirations – and maybe you don’t blame them because that’s the culture here. People judge you based on your job, your material trappings. My friend has told me he’s not looking for high pay for the money, but for the respect from family and friends (he and his wife have a really simple lifestyle actually). So part of the problem is an Asian-style consumerist culture.
On the freedom for even skeptics – of course! And on freedom for fervent anti-PAP-ism? Yes they’re free to talk too. What was the cliché line? Something about I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it. Hmmm… it is difficult to comment on this thing. Speakers who criticize their audiences risk alienating them. Maybe it’s too personal – let’s talk about other things instead?
I commented on culture of innovation a bit in the section on safety nets. I remember Martin Nowak’s book, Super Cooperators, where there was a chapter on what kinds of networks encouraged innovation. He talked about stomach wall cells, where cell division was very “top-down”. Replication of genetic material is “designed” to be top-down there, due to frequent division. And innovation in DNA usually means cancer. Then he talked about the nature of bottom-up networks which I forgot. But basically he shows evidence from mathematical modeling that supports bottom-up networks for innovation and transmission of innovation, and top-down networks for suppressing innovation and its transmission. So I also believe you can’t do innovation top-down too.
You say SF is liberal (I’m not sure in what sense of liberal), but Scandinavia is very liberal too. If liberalness encourages innovation, then that might explain why Nordic areas do still innovate rather well in spite of lower monetary incentives (because it gets taxed away for social spending). I’m really not sure how much people are encouraged to innovate due to monetary incentives actually. You might have come across a TED talk, about how the more incentives you give experimental subjects, the more focused they became on a task, but it made them slower at “think out of the box” experiments? (Dan Pink, Puzzle of Motivation – not a great speaker but interesting idea.) I know programmers, and they don’t seem very incentivized by money. I know musicians who eschew money too. I think this kind of innovators (can I call them primary innovators?) aren’t really motivated by money (more by excelling in their passion/art/craft). But I guess you also have “secondary innovators” who adapt ideas for commercial application – and they’re probably well-motivated and served by money incentives.
So if both liberalness and money incentives matter – that can explain why the US is better than Scandinavia at innovation. But it doesn’t surprise me that liberalness, open-minded-ness, a willingness to experiment, to accept others who are different, is a key factor. People often say (e.g. Sir Ken Robinson in another TED talk) that children are the most creative creatures (before they’re educated out of it), because they’re so open to possibility. Nassim Taleb also talked about how US culture stigmatizes failure less than in Europe or Japan, which is why they produce more Black Swans. I’m not sure how far that’s true. I do think Singapore society stigmatizes economic failure a lot. There’s a lot of scorn for people who “didn’t make it”. There’s a lot of discouragement from parents, friends, teachers from dreaming your dreams, following your passions. There’s not enough respect for people who dream (unless they succeed – in which case suddenly you admire them).
Well, in Singapore we really have a shadow elite. Because the press/media is so much more circumscribed, because the academy is so co-opted or cowed (just look at the Yale-NUS debate), etc, so we don’t get a lot of commentary and analysis on these things. It’s ironic and sad I live in Singapore and I have a better idea of power structures in the US than those in Singapore! Maybe it’s behind the scenes, so I am clueless, but I don’t see too much evidence of the rich wielding political influence here. What I see more of is the politically powerful enriching themselves. It’s easier for democracies to punish politicians than to punish the rich, so in this sense I think Singapore might be better off than in the US. We can vote out our politicians, but it’s harder for the US people to remove the influence of money (they can legislate to cap political donations, to increase taxes so as to reduce wealth inequality, etc – but isn’t legislation controlled by moneyed interests? Then can Americans vote out these “corrupt” legislators? Moneyed interests prevent that! You can only vote Rep or Dem, not Green Party or anyone else…).
The PAP is the enemy or not… (strange metaphor, enemy)… Actually one of the good outcomes (among many alternatives) in political change I look forward to is the transformation of the PAP. But I do believe getting more opposition seats in parliament will help Singapore get there. Mostly because we need to break the stranglehold on power, the control of institutions, etc the PAP has built (for its own benefit, at the expense of the nation) over the years. The definition of product is important to recognize here – for the PAP (and all political parties actually) the desired “product” is continued political dominance, whereas for Singaporeans it is a better future for us living here.
Re: CEOs and roadsweepers… sadly yes. I think it’s more true for the Chinese than other races. Ancient China wasn’t so different. Singaporean Chinese people have quite similar views to that rugged individual view in the US. It’s both good and bad – it leads to a good work ethic, makes people “hard-driving”, so they don’t need “spurs stuck in their hides”. It puts “fire in their belly”. But I’ve talked about the bad aspects for society a lot already. Safety nets can be more efficient. It can make life more worthwhile. It can lead to investment for long-term stable growth (health, education, infrastructure) (and I do think growth is good – just not at the expense of other important things).
You are still confused.
You are still playing God in all the examples. The patrons of the food vendors are the consumers. Not you. That fact that the consumers get to choose, made available through healthy competition, is the evident that they benefited. Whether you think they should really be careful with junk food-health or not is irrelevant.
Same with the "mark more work" example. As I'd mentioned MOE, Principal are the consumers. Whether you empathize with the English Teacher or the Humanities Teacher is irrelevant.
Drawing parallel. Imagine we have a fair competition among the political parties, Left, Right, Center, whatever. You are the consumer. The moment you get to choose how your constituency is manage, how Singapore is managed, means you already benefited. Whether your parents in Canada are worried if you are too obsessed with politics and therefore got not enough time to find a good girlfriend is irrelevant.
Exactly. The moment people can choose base on their own preferences means they have already benefited.
Drawing parallel again. The monopoly threatens you by withholding the MUP/LUP. It also threatens the much smaller players by legal actions, by disadvantaging them. Your manager happens to be a White Scum lackey. Do you feel benefited? Do you get to choose freely based on your own preferences or more probably based on your fear? Or worse, there is no viable alternative because they have die off, so you dun even have the chance to exercise your choice.
Actually you are the one that came up with all those business/corporate/education examples. You are welcome to just reason within yourself, with examples say in sports, bringing up kids, keeping ornament fish, etc, etc.
You will realize competition always, always benefits the consumers.
Agree.
One last thing I'd like to point out, putting more Oppo into Parliament is also a way to introduce the much needed competition that always, always benefits the consumers.
Bro, I live in Singapore. I need to eat too. I'm using myself as an example - I'm sure lots of bros out here think similarly to me when it comes to food. We're all food vendor patrons. Food vendors got to compete for our business too.
Er... really ah? Hmmm, so what about the children? I thought we all signed up for the children (MOE HQ personnel, principals who used to be teachers, teachers). Guess I was wrong. Nahbeh they lied to me. Actually they are just serving their own careers!!! Thanks for letting me see the light. I now know in education, the ultimate consumers are MOE and principals. No wonder we let the kids down.
Different market leh...
One is political market. Customers are electorate. Product is policy (but is package deal - you get the whole PAP package, or WP package, or SDP package etc).
One is wife market. Customer is unmarried men (and their kancheong - possibly in Canada - parents). Product is potential wife. But I think AWARE is going to whack me for objectifying women.
Or possibly... son's future market. Customer is kancheong parents. Product is whatever things can help son get hitched faster (possibly spend less time on politics, finding matchmaker, chicken essence, tiger whip, etc)
Different markets thing cannot cham cham talk, right? You can imagine things to be markets all the time. Some people say when you have a hammer every problem looks like a nail. Maybe when you have an economics approach to problems, everything looks like a market. But that doesn't mean things are actually nails or markets.
This one I agree with you is indeed a case of not enough competition = bad outcome. Feels damn shitty to be in that situation. Let's vote some PAP MPs out next election. (BTW my estate got LUP by them liao, so acherlly no need to vote against PAP, but we all know it's not about the LUP, it's about the whole public service package.)
The notion that "competition is always good" comes from where ah? I thought it's a foundational premise of classical economics? You have a bunch of assumptions, like perfect knowledge, perfectly rational firms and customers, many economic actors (this is where the competition idea comes from - monopolies don't work), then you just have supply and demand curves determining the price, and that price is the most efficient price. Which can allocate scarce resources optimally. (And also the notion of "consumers" - which again is economics jargon. Let's not unpack that.)
Since you started talking with the economics framework I respond with the economics framework lor. I also like to approach problems with an ethical or philosophical framework, e.g. "Nahbeh, this kind of life is too shit for human. Live like dog like that. Where got dignity. We should reject it - make it against the law to pay people less than $2.50/hour". And also, everyone should get healthcare coverage for tuazhong illness. Flu, fever this kind nevermind they can afford. But anyone tio cancer or what, gahmen pay. And also if baby born with congenital defect. Afterall, nobody purposely go and get cancer, or hope their baby have defect, so that they can kio the gahmen money." This kind of ethical or philosophical framework also got a lot to contribute to how we do our politics.
Yeah okay man let's do it! Majulah Singapura!
Ok I was thinking the kids are the consumers in your fast food-hawker center example, because why would you worry for an adult if he chooses bright, colorful, well advertised food over more nutritious alternative? Any case, dun you feel benefited from the competition, the choices?
In your "mark more work" example, you or your kid has no part to play.
But if you are talking about education in general, then as a parent, yes, you are the consumer. In fact, even though in Singapore, all schools need to follow the syllabus set by MOE, the schools are still competing. Some are more focus on academics. Others on Co-CCA/CCA.
Yes you are correct. I was giving you an example to not confuse among direct consumer/immediate market with indirect ones.
As I've mentioned, you are welcome to reason it out by yourself, by substituting business, product, market with others. You will realize competition still always, always benefits the consumer
Actually "competition" is only the first step. What follows next is consumer awareness. This is the difficult part because what you think is best product/price may be junk to another.
In any case, let's get through the first step first, shall we?
Why you would feel crappy is because there is no competition, only monopoly.
If majority of true pink Singaporeans want to have a more compassionate government, in a healthy competition, a political party that promises/delivers that should have won the GE.
But this is not so, in Singapore. Here, because there is no meaningful competition, the monopoly decides that there shall not be a minimum wage. The monopoly decides each true pink Singaporean shall take care of his/his family own healthcare expenses.
It's sad. But it's true.
And it gets worse. There are some fake Oppo supporters who now say competition is not good.
I hope you are better than me, in finding a more effective way than my "competition" theory, to convince more people to vote for more choices.
I've more or less given up on reading anything sgparent has to say. I would rather have constipation for a few hours than debate with him again. Kudos to you, I don't know how you do it.
But I saw that he used the words "paralysis by analysis". I'm pretty surprised that he knows the meaning of that phrase, since that is the most important argument against a multipartisan parliament - deadlock through too much debate. True, such a parliament might reach a better solution than a Unitarian one, but it will reach a solution slower, or if you are watching US politics these days, never. So what's that again about competition being "always always" better?
Well of course, these sort of arguments are always about furthering his own arguments. He could never listen to anything he doesn't agree with.
That's the strange thing about the European Central bank and the IMF. I think they were set up by banks to help protect their interest. It's not so much that they are intrinsically controlled by the richer states, it's that they are controlled by the big banks and those usually come from the richer states.
There are two things. To keep up our level of prosperity at the level of the individual is important. Too often, we are given the GDP for the entire nation, and that fudges a lot of things: population growth, the distribution of wealth. It is not that wealth is bad, but they are pretending the question of who has the money is not important. The solution is extremely simple: we should report GINI figures and GDP. Not only must the economy expand, but also the distribution of wealth must improve. Failure to achieve either one would mean it's a bad year. But do you think they will ever do anything like that?
It is hard to tell. There are 2 arguments. First, if you take away safety nets, then people will all be forced to work harder. The opposite argument is that you need to provide people with all the basic neccesities, and after that they feel free to take whatever risks they want to take. Since there are merits to both, it's hard to tell either way. But the facts on the ground is that the US is ahead when it comes to innovation. Not only now, but for the last 100+ years. Nobody has ever managed to catch up with them in this respect, except for Japan during a short period of 20-30 years. And today, nobody will ever say that Japan is more innovative than the US.
So innovation is important for Singapore either way. Innovation is not creativity. Innovation is the ability of an institution to transform that creativity into the finished good: new methods, new products. Creativity is about the individual. Are Singaporeans creative? I think they are, and in any case, they are not far behind other countries. If Singapore innovative? No. They have a lot to learn, and so long as we have a culture that resists change, or discredits ideas that don't come from the "right" sort of people, Singapore will not learn to be innovative. The barrier to entry is also too high.
I think somewhere you mentioned an aversion to risk in S Korea. Nokia is kaput, Sony Ericsson is kaput, blackberry is kaput, and it is actually Samsung standing in between Apple and world domination. So you might want to give the Koreans a little more respect! Samsung, for me, has managed to transplant the Silicon Valley culture to their own Asian context, and we have a lot to learn from them. Their research centres are very well respected.
It's true that to some extent, geek / nerd culture has been something good. Yes, the acceptance of great differences between the rich and the poor is something that exists to a large degree in Chinese culture. Although they did go too far and they had their communist revolution. And we all have our era of materialism, Gangnam style. But how does that make us different from Americans, or the richer cities of China, or even ancient Persia? In particular, American style materialism is something interesting. Everybody is already wealthy to some degree, but they want to be even richer. And their wealth was a little more spread out - not in the GINI sense, but in the sense that even the lower middle class were doing pretty OK. Until a few years ago, of course.
We know about the rich wielding political influence in the US because they are more open and everything is more reported on. The connections between the rich in Singapore and the elites? Ever noticed that the beneficiaries of asset enhancement are all the property magnates? How many of them are in the list of richest Singaporeans? How about the casinos? How about the fact that Singapore is posturing itself as a great global financial centre? Who's going to come if you don't start sucking on their dicks? How about all the offshore financing that Singapore is getting from the rich elites of our corrupt neighbours Malaysia and Indonesia? (well maybe that one can close one eye because it does benefit citizens by giving them nice cushy jobs in the financial sector, yah?) How about the multinationals who can squeeze the PAP's balls by saying, "you cut my taxes or I lay off 1000 workers"?
We have such a large portion of our economy based on just the finance / financial services sector. What if that screws up? That's why all those people who think that the PAP is almighty, all powerful - ever considered that maybe, they're just puppets? Ever considered that when you do replace the PAP with the WP, you'd just be replacing one hand puppet with another hand puppet?
I mean, go and vote against the PAP by all means. I think there will be positive results, but if you're hoping for the whole world to change drastically for the better you'd better not get your hopes up.
I have mixed feelings about Yale-NUS. I sympathise with the people who complain about the lack of academic freedom in Singapore, and I know that it will never be as free as an American university, but I sense that the government's ability to control Yale-NUS is not that powerful as some people think. I'm willing to approve of that project and see what really happens then.
But I saw that he used the words "paralysis by analysis". I'm pretty surprised that he knows the meaning of that phrase, since that is the most important argument against a multipartisan parliament - deadlock through too much debate. True, such a parliament might reach a better solution than a Unitarian one, but it will reach a solution slower, or if you are watching US politics these days, never. So what's that again about competition being "always always" better?
Well of course, these sort of arguments are always about furthering his own arguments. He could never listen to anything he doesn't agree with.
That's the strange thing about the European Central bank and the IMF. I think they were set up by banks to help protect their interest. It's not so much that they are intrinsically controlled by the richer states, it's that they are controlled by the big banks and those usually come from the richer states.
There are two things. To keep up our level of prosperity at the level of the individual is important. Too often, we are given the GDP for the entire nation, and that fudges a lot of things: population growth, the distribution of wealth. It is not that wealth is bad, but they are pretending the question of who has the money is not important. The solution is extremely simple: we should report GINI figures and GDP. Not only must the economy expand, but also the distribution of wealth must improve. Failure to achieve either one would mean it's a bad year. But do you think they will ever do anything like that?
It is hard to tell. There are 2 arguments. First, if you take away safety nets, then people will all be forced to work harder. The opposite argument is that you need to provide people with all the basic neccesities, and after that they feel free to take whatever risks they want to take. Since there are merits to both, it's hard to tell either way. But the facts on the ground is that the US is ahead when it comes to innovation. Not only now, but for the last 100+ years. Nobody has ever managed to catch up with them in this respect, except for Japan during a short period of 20-30 years. And today, nobody will ever say that Japan is more innovative than the US.
So innovation is important for Singapore either way. Innovation is not creativity. Innovation is the ability of an institution to transform that creativity into the finished good: new methods, new products. Creativity is about the individual. Are Singaporeans creative? I think they are, and in any case, they are not far behind other countries. If Singapore innovative? No. They have a lot to learn, and so long as we have a culture that resists change, or discredits ideas that don't come from the "right" sort of people, Singapore will not learn to be innovative. The barrier to entry is also too high.
I think somewhere you mentioned an aversion to risk in S Korea. Nokia is kaput, Sony Ericsson is kaput, blackberry is kaput, and it is actually Samsung standing in between Apple and world domination. So you might want to give the Koreans a little more respect! Samsung, for me, has managed to transplant the Silicon Valley culture to their own Asian context, and we have a lot to learn from them. Their research centres are very well respected.
It's true that to some extent, geek / nerd culture has been something good. Yes, the acceptance of great differences between the rich and the poor is something that exists to a large degree in Chinese culture. Although they did go too far and they had their communist revolution. And we all have our era of materialism, Gangnam style. But how does that make us different from Americans, or the richer cities of China, or even ancient Persia? In particular, American style materialism is something interesting. Everybody is already wealthy to some degree, but they want to be even richer. And their wealth was a little more spread out - not in the GINI sense, but in the sense that even the lower middle class were doing pretty OK. Until a few years ago, of course.
We know about the rich wielding political influence in the US because they are more open and everything is more reported on. The connections between the rich in Singapore and the elites? Ever noticed that the beneficiaries of asset enhancement are all the property magnates? How many of them are in the list of richest Singaporeans? How about the casinos? How about the fact that Singapore is posturing itself as a great global financial centre? Who's going to come if you don't start sucking on their dicks? How about all the offshore financing that Singapore is getting from the rich elites of our corrupt neighbours Malaysia and Indonesia? (well maybe that one can close one eye because it does benefit citizens by giving them nice cushy jobs in the financial sector, yah?) How about the multinationals who can squeeze the PAP's balls by saying, "you cut my taxes or I lay off 1000 workers"?
We have such a large portion of our economy based on just the finance / financial services sector. What if that screws up? That's why all those people who think that the PAP is almighty, all powerful - ever considered that maybe, they're just puppets? Ever considered that when you do replace the PAP with the WP, you'd just be replacing one hand puppet with another hand puppet?
I mean, go and vote against the PAP by all means. I think there will be positive results, but if you're hoping for the whole world to change drastically for the better you'd better not get your hopes up.
I have mixed feelings about Yale-NUS. I sympathise with the people who complain about the lack of academic freedom in Singapore, and I know that it will never be as free as an American university, but I sense that the government's ability to control Yale-NUS is not that powerful as some people think. I'm willing to approve of that project and see what really happens then.
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