gripe
this has been bothering me for some time since my recent chat with
my uncle whom i respect a lot. much of it has to do with the hypocrisy
i addressed in the first place. the other is with his utter failure to deal
with what constitutes the box that he advocates thinking out of. i'd be
totally embarrassed if that was the best argument he could muster in
defense of his actions but as it goes, at least i have blogger to gripe
about it, instead of embarrassing him on facebook which may prove
to be rather unnecessary.
firstly, the charges.
if your vote can be bought with just $700 cash, please skip the
proselytization about the ideals you stand for in thinking outside
the box because $700 is enough to silence the idealism out of you.
i am most upset that you would reduce politics to whoever puts money
in your pocket. obviously you didnt do your accounts and you didnt
bother to weigh the the arguments that were contrary to your beliefs.
but let me do it for you as your nephew since you hate repetition but
only in the sense that i'm saying it.
1 july 2007, GST was
raised from 5% to 7%
i guess mathematically $700 in rebates meant that you have been compensated
for $10 000 in stuff that you have bought over the last 5 years. that is very
impressive since $10 000 is not easy to find before it is spent. if the $200
increase not worth quibbling over because the government has done a good
job in making sure that they have improved your quality of life with what you
can buy, i would have been silenced. they have not. inflation for one has
reduced the value of what you can buy. even if inflation was a non-issue
because it is good as an indicator of growth, i dont see how this money in
your pocket means very much when your salary is not growing despite the
government's efforts. i guess for all that you dream of enjoying, you would
just have to make do with the $700 more since you're supporting a position
in which your salary rise is lower than the rate of inflation which erodes that
value for $700.
worse still, you held the position that i should think outside the box when
you not only failed to see that the box limited what could be practically be
achieved, you limited yourself to the box because you didnt have the faith
in people that it was possible to do things in any other way. now that my
friend, is hypocrisy, you cant have your cake and eat it this way. i could
propose as i have the ideas to unlock value, you reframed it as a matter
of partisan interest questioning my understanding of governance. could
you be further from the truth of thinking out of the box.
well pak, you're a smart guy, when you figure out, let me know.
what nonsense are they talking about?
its that season again, the only time when people seem
to have a sense of power, and it will not be too soon
before they lose it all again.
elections, the time when the government tells you that
they are not the masters but servants of the people.
it wont be too long before we see them acting like
lords over everyone else, but when that happens you
probably have to wait another long 5 years while
kicking yourself in the butt for keeping them around.
firstly, singaporeans really cheese me off. they love
complaining about everything but mostly do nothing
about it. they really deserve to suffer from government
policies if thats the case, because at the very moment
they have an iota of influence to affect their
self-determination they abdicate in favour of apathy,
misinformation and god knows what other reasons.
1) they dont bother to research on issues and arguments
they feel strongly about.
improvements in productivity? yeah right, balls!
firstly there is a limit to both human efficiency and
the substitutability of technology for labour. yes,
there are lazy people, our army is an example of an
organization filled with people like that. you need
to squeeze hard if you want to get juice from those
rocks. otherwise, people are working very hard. with
downsizing to cut costs, 1 person may be doing the
work of 3 people. it is efficient but how much more
burden must we place on the shoulders of the
individual employee.
does efficiency translate into a social issue as
well? maybe heavy demands translate into an intrusion
into the personal. could that lead to a declining
birth rate, could the declining birth rate lead to
us importing more foreign labour. that maybe requires
us to be more competitive and then have even fewer
babies? does the tried and tested response suffice
as a solution where the environment is very
different from what our predecessors faced? even
as manufacturing plays a huge role in our economy,
there is an increasing emphasis on the service sector.
is this example of a tapering in export led growth
indicative of need to preempt the curve that we
can catch the next big growth driver? what do our
leaders think?
ministerial salaries are another bugbear that
seem to sway people too easily. we dont want
corruption, but we need to pay off the tendency
for greed so that our ministers do a good job.
well, in that case we really need to worry because
a good job is tied to the economy since it benchmarks
the highest paid individuals in a basket of industries.
a good job then probably wouldnt be judged by how
well they serve you but how well they serve business.
what? you're not in the loop? tough. here's 2000
dollars for your university degree. oh and a 400
bonus for the good job that we did. and dont be an
ungrateful leper because there are many more worse
off than you. by the way did we say that your hdb
and children are subsidized too? (at what rate?)
if that justifies a salary 1000times more than
the most of us, maybe we can imagine if we paid
them all half of what they earn and put the rest
in MCYS. you might just get a better life. maybe.
foreign talent is different from foreign labour.
we need foreign labour and foreign talent is pays
off when they contribute skills and jobs that we
do not have. what we do need to scrutinize is the
employment practices of companies. the hypocrisy
of singaporeans is that we claim we are a
meritocratic society but we turn protectionist
when we cannot compete with the "merit" of being
cheaper labour. then we expect the government to
solve the "foreign worker" problem. why not look
at who your bosses prefer to employ, chances are
they dont really like the more expensive guy.
the point is, how does one claim that a party
represent his position when they cannot be sure
how policies(general laws) affect him without
applying clear and consistent reasoning.
2) they dont bother to sift out facts from opinion and
misinformation.
the government controlled local media has done a good
job in making us think what they like us to think.
many of us will be guilty of a siege mentality. we
constantly fear a northern invasion from hostile
neighbours or a stirring giant and the threat of
a surge from the south is an ever present spectre.
yet cutting the defense budget isnt all a crazy idea,
even if modernizing is important. if we do not
purchase hardware year after year we can operate
with ( 20x150m = 3-4billion > 20f15sg + 1b armaments)
3 billion less!!! imagine that. what could we do
will 3 billion dollars more circulating in our economy?
it then follows that only the incumbent can secure
our future when the opposition are portrayed as
incompetent, inexperienced and unworthy. yet many
times, a wise leader said that singapore was the
work of a tenacious and hardworking people. if there
is anything left of that tenacious and hardworking
people, we ought to continue with leadership that
remembers where that burden of responsibility is
placed while competency is essential, we must remember
that only the past is certain. like the black swan
argument or humes regularity theorem, experience
may not be such a heavyweight if the future doesnt
resemble the past. we do well to remember that it
was also a young party that with great drive and
determination got us this far.
it is also a fallacy to equate democracy to mean
american-style politicking. however the failure of
the government to mediate between the poles of
society may doom it so. democracy works well when
the people are somewhat homogeneous. a widening
income gap, religious radicalization and ethnic
inequality may lead to entrenched differences.
those are problems that can be solved by the
government if it has the political will and mandate.
democracy can be seen as a value institution, a
means to a non-violent change in leadership and
a safeguard of protections that checks the government.
america was built on unity and compromise, the
founding fathers included a bill of rights to the
constitution to reassure the states against the
federation that their rights would be protected.
the states that did not favour the federal system
complied in the end because it was necessary to
stand united against the british. this ability to
compromise and make deals in the interest of
singaporeans should be the characteristic of a good
burkean representative. that should be the direction
that the white party should guide politics in singapore
instead of using democracy as a whipping boy.
its almost social opium to believe that we are all
treated equally and fairly, we are not. there is an
in group and and out group. while claiming that they
are a government for all singaporeans, there is clearly
a bias against opposition wards and for the elite. the
worrying thing is that we are so opaque about this.
sometimes we sweep this issue under the carpet, but
someone is paying for the funds that others enjoy.
this unfairness and bullying is what we should stand
against in unity because it is the moral thing to do.
wouldnt you loathe for it to happen that when you
open your eyes 1 day in the future the losers in
this unfair game might be you.
3)they dont really make any effort to channel their views
to the government or to the opposition parties other
than to ask for more freebies. (the greed is disgusting)
really, does more money solve everything? how about
qualitative issues like re-thinking value to the ends
of a more gracious society. how can the government
lead the way in promoting flexibility to reduce the
amount of stress that affects everyone in society.
some people enjoy the stress. many are miserable but
bear with it because they might just starve otherwise.
maybe its time for the people instead of the government
to take the lead in re-looking workplace policies to
suggest how they want their lives to be improved.
do singaporeans still dream? i know they aspire but do
they still dream? what if they could turn a fantasy into
reality? would it still be the same picture as that of
the old guard in the party? it was a good picture, but
is there nothing better? is competition only academic,
why is it not cultural? what is stopping us from creating
something new like the most supportive society, where
tolerance and a respect for individual contribution marks
our daily life.
a sportsman trains but also volunteers the experience of
applying his craft. a golfer dreams of a more beautiful
landscape, a dirt biker forms an association to maintain
nature trails, swimmers lead the elderly in low impact
activity to enhance their mobility. can we see more than
1 source of cost reduction to improve our competitiveness?
i can. can we see more diversity than knowledge competition?
its possible.
it isnt too late to see that a party is partisan.
are your interests being represented? maybe its
time to do something about it.
- the writer is critical, however he acknowledges
and is grateful for the achievements of the white party.
this piece is his contribution to debate in singapore
Labels: politics
so patronizing
most people would put a suffering animal out of its misery
most people would not put a suffering human out of his.
and i dont just mean it in the sense in which the suffering human is
an enemy.
in the latter case, some like seeing bad things happen to people
we have words such as schadenfreude, karma, retribution which
suggests that we enjoy what is happening or believe that people
are just getting what they deserve. sometimes we even think that
what they are going through really isnt enough. its just part of life
we say. you get some, you lose some and what you sow comes back
to bite you in the ass.
the former case may be more nuanced though. there are thousands
of reasons why we wouldnt want to mercifully kill someone. theres
euthanasia if that happens, otherwise it may just seem to be
meaningless suffering. pain, we know, is experienced in the mind.
while it may stem from physical means if we suffer from hypoalgesia
we probably wouldnt feel a thing. hence, as a mental state, it also
may have mental or emotional causes.
in the latter cases when a human being is suffering from "hard times"
we tell him that there is virtue in his suffering. we take him to the
side and console him with pretty words. faith be there, hope be
strong, and grace be abundant. we normalize the situation and
say that every body goes through tough times. we tell him it will
pass. we tell him it would make him grow stronger. we tell him
that pain is part of life and life is worth living. we offer our
pretty words for the value of his wretched life.
yet we wouldnt do it to an animal. we stroke them. calm them down.
then smother, inject, or bleed them to death because they would
not survive in the wild with those injuries. we dont believe animals
should suffer to build character do we. we dont believe that by
subjecting them to stress or torture makes them better animals
or that they deserve it in any way do we. a lion is not hanged for
being a murderer, not a goat whipped for eating one's property
because we claim that such is their nature.
so if it is not too far a stretch to claim that not all man wants to
develop along a common rational nature then who are we to stop
them being that way. and if forcing our habits upon them causes
them anguish then why not offer them relief. if we can have
compassion and understanding towards animals then why not
against our fellow men whom we esteem more highly yet treat
more cruelly than animals.
whatever our claims are about humans and animals, i wonder
if we can treat them in a manner consistent with our beliefs
Labels: hypocrisy
