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Sunday, Sep 05, 2010 - 17:23 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

The Deal


Monopoly Deal

Discovered the charms of a nifty card game called Monopoly Deal recently, and spent several hours trying it with my cousins (who had some experience with it in social group settings/NS[!]). It turned out to keep much of the fun of the classic original, while upping the pace significantly; The description and basic rules are simple and listed on Wikipedia (also see the Hasbro demo), and therefore I will assume prior knowledge and continue on to the observations.

  • Being the starting player is generally a disadvantage, since any properties/cash laid down are fair game for succeeding players' money-collecting cards (e.g. It's My Birthday, Debt Collector) - quite often, if the first player lays down three cards in some combination of property and cash, a single Debt Collector will clean them up and leave two moves open to expand a property/cash buffer
  • The "no change" stipulation opens up additional considerations when deciding who to charge - a "rich" player with say two 10M notes and a property worth 4M would be totally cleared out by a player who rents him thrice for 1M in a single turn!
  • Building on this, it is always best to pay debts with as few notes as possible - i.e. a 5M debt with a single 5M note, rather than a 2M and a 3M, or five 1M notes
  • The Deal Breaker card, which steals an entire set of property, appears to be regarded as overpowered - but becomes weak when players wise up and break up their properties before ending their turn (which is legal, and exposes them to Forced Deal and Sly Deal instead). Well, its 5M value is often useful...
  • The Just Say No card then becomes less useful too, since its greatest value comes in countering Deal Breaker (and of course other game-winning Deals)
  • Clinging on to situational cards in the hope that they become useful (e.g. a blue-green Rent card when one has neither blue nor green properties) is usually less than optimal; It's usually better to play them for their nominal cash value, and eventually be able to draw five. (N.B. I believe this is termed in many card games, most notably Magic: The Gathering, as card advantage - on which more later)
  • Cash seems relatively more important early on, as it tends to be that players soon amass sufficient cash reserves to make money-collecting cards irrelevant (perhaps bar ridiculous combinations like Rent-Double The Rent-Double The Rent on a blue set with house and hotel for 60M)
  • As with many other card games, counting important cards can help immensely - for instance, once the two Deal Breakers are out, players can (and should) combine properties into sets, since there is no longer any downside to doing so

All in all, an addictive game, but best with at least three players - with two, it's often difficult to stage a comeback after falling behind in the first couple of turns.

FourOPoly Deal? Hmm.


Sian, I tried to HOR? his Anyhow Collect Rent but he IFUL it


(Here, thanks to occ aka mm for organizing the San Katong Laksa steamboat outing, and too bad to tpk)


The Singaporean Deal

Some days ago, the government announced the National Service Recognition Award (NSRA), which effectively grants newly-minted NSmen S$9000 (S$10500 for commanders), and slightly less for NSmen who have already completed some of the milestones (and unfortunately, nothing for those who have already completed it all).

Not surprisingly, there have been some rumblings online about how the award "cheapens citizens' contributions" and is even "insulting", in such diverse (well, ok, maybe not) forums such as the Straits Times discussion board and the not-very-pro-incumbent-regime Temasek Review.

The major complaints are that:
  1. By putting a monetary value on service, the award reduces citizens' service contribution to the nation from something noble to not only a mere job, but a lousily-paid one at that
  2. It's unfair to older generations who completed their service without this additional reimbursement
  3. The handout (because that's what it is, after all) is simply yet another political ploy to distract attention from anti-(mass-)immigration grouses ahead of an election
  4. The award is dumped into the CPF anyway (see allocations), which to some commentators appears akin to a black hole from which they are unlikely to see their money

Taking these one by one - for the first point, I have to say that NS allowances are rather piddly, even after recent increases; Most NSmen should expect to get around S$500 a month for their entire service period (they do get three hots and a cot), while even officers mostly top out at about S$1000. In comparism, a McJob at S$4 an hour would pay S$640 for an 8 hour day, weekday-only workmonth, and I daresay a motivated and hardworking person with some skills would be able to make double or triple his NS pay in comparably-demanding civilian job(s).

This may not be too much of a sacrifice for the moderately well-to-do, but can be quite a bother for poorer citizens, especially if the family relies on the soon-to-be NSman as main breadwinner. Taking this further, it can be argued that the two years of service has a compounded effect on citizens' future earnings, which can conservatively tot up to some S$150000 by age 40 (well, the author of that article doesn't include the NS allowance in his table, but the point stands)

It is also true that tacking money onto an award might change one's perception of a task (see the The Induced-Compliance Paradigm) - but then would paying market rate for NS inculcate more pride (servicemen get the recognition of being paid closer to what they are worth), or less (since it's now effectively just another [forced] job)?

[Sidenote: Personally, I think it would be interesting to see how well a completely voluntary National Service term would work - would those might later claim that NS has taught them a lot etc, still sign away two years of their lives if they had the choice? Would the love of country/sense of responsibility/social stigma of not contributing be sufficient to inspire/shame the majority of young men into the armed forces, or would personal pragmatism prevail, and make passing up this presentation of patriotism prudent?

Some questions may best be left unanswered]

Second point: Yes, it's unfair to past batches of reservists. While nobody has quite been able to solve this problem in its general form yet (see the NUS context), in this case it shouldn't be much more difficult to simply give the award to all NSmen past or present (since NS only began in 1967, I daresay the vast majority of servicemen are still alive), and adjust the monetary component accordingly (or even just give a token sum).

While a couple of retired servicemen have come out to say that it doesn't quite matter to them and that they have moved on, it isn't hard to imagine that at least some of the old guys could really use the money; As to why the award (which must have been designed by extremely-smart policymakers) is structured this way... is anybody's guess.

Leading into the third point, a possible, if extremely cynical, conjecture is that the younger guys are less beholden to party loyalties, and therefore shaping the award to benefit them the most would get the most bang (for bang, read votes) for the buck. While the truth is likely not so cruel (I hope), it is hard to believe that the basic well-timed-goodies-for-support exchange was completely absent from policymakers' minds - because it does work much the same way, almost everywhere, unless the goodie-giver is extremely disliked.

And as to the fourth and final CPF-as-black-hole complaint - I admit that I knew very little of the CPF, other than the fact that many netizens didn't think much of it (which may be a skewed selection of opinion). A bit of reading up reveals that it's a form of social security for Singaporeans (alright, I had that figured out), and that both employers and employees (are forced to) pay into the employee's CPF account, which is mostly used for housing, retirement and insurance purposes.

Sounds pretty reasonable - so why the hate? Basically, the issue is the government directing how one's money is being spent (or not). True, all governments do that by collecting all sorts of taxes, so by itself this is nothing new (or popular). Indeed, whichever way one carves it up, the CPF is still better than a tax, since it's still technically your money, even if you can't quite use it the way you want to - at worst, it goes to your next of kin upon your demise.

Still, it stops people from spending their money the way they want to (which is the only way it ought to be spent, after all). Oh, of course, if one desires to be a model citizen and buy "subsidized" public housing (another common grouse) and guarantee oneself a pension so as not to burden society, the CPF would mostly do what they would have done anyway. The yield of 2.5%-4%, while not out of the ordinary, doesn't look too bad compared to say 30-year US Treasury bonds (currently at 3.78%), at least until the boom years return.

However, given that the average return of the stock market has been known to be 8-10% over the long term (a not insignificant difference from even 4%, after compounding - you do the math), it might be understandable that some citizens would at least want to be allowed to choose that option.

But perhaps the biggest concern is the, let us say translucency of the whole gig. In some reasonably (in)famous words, "Where is the money?", the full answer to which not even an elected president could get. This is also before taking into account the continually shifting goalposts where retirement (and now, property) is concerned, or if it will even come.

So, another policy ends up in the netizen could-do-better bin.

But, objectively, I believe Singaporeans have got a good deal.

Eh, wait! Knn, how can? Gahment bootlicker!


The Raw Deal

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
(not that liberals are all that selfless...)


Let's see - to begin with, the food's good, crime's low, place's clean and corruption's virtually unheard of. Frankly, there are far, far more places where average conditions are worse than Singapore, compared to where they are better.

Which doesn't mean that there's nothing to complain about - but what about the favourite destinations of emigrating Singaporeans (about ten thousand annually): the U.S.A, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc? Clearly they have their own set of pros and problems - yes, one might gain political and personal freedoms and space and a relaxed lifestyle and welfare, but in return one gets to dip into a mixed bag of guns and drugs and poorly funded schools and taxes to support that welfare, depending on exactly where one settles; One might not see much of the darker side in upscale districts, but this is as disingenuous as a resident of Sentosa Cove claiming that Singapore is as good as it gets.


Freedoms freely expressed
(Source: Teamexpansion.org)


And ironically, Singapore's emigrants being the immigrants of those countries, it turns out that at least some of the citizens of the U.S. and Canada and Australia etc have similar doubts to those that some locals hold about mostly-mainland-Chinese newcomers; Just as Singaporeans bemoan fresh arrivees from taking their jobs for less, others elsewhere complain in the same manner. The grass is greener everywhere, and everywhere people wonder why they have to give up a share. Alright, Singapore may be laxer in doling out actual citizenship than say the U.S.A, but hey, we're the most popular by percentage, so why not make people happy, right?

In fact, if one knows the right websites to visit, it is not hard to get the impression that any given government is a self-serving, little-man-ignoring, hopelessly incompetent collection of greedy underqualified morons. Mark Twain: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

But that's what governments do - if everyone agreed on the issues, there would be no need for politicians, parties, or power blocs. Sadly, they don't, and it is almost a given that there will be unhappy citizens. From the economy to gay marriage, military action to immigration policies, the man in the street is sure that he has The Answer.

Politics is a strange beast, though. I doubt that it's a science, whatever university departments say, and it barely looks like art either. Many of the causes and effects are fiendishly hard to disentangle on a national level, and since a perfect state has yet to exist, there will always be dissent. Still, it appears likely that there are "better" and "not as good" states - so how do we tell them apart?

This is difficult too, given that people prize different values (one person's wish for an idyllic, less crowded lifestyle may be at odds with his neighbour's drive for educational achievement and economic prosperity). While admittedly a very crude measure, I think that the degree of actual action taken against the current government is a possible indicator (aside from health and life expectancy etc, in obvious negative examples).

When people feel that they truly have been grossly mistreated, or driven into desperate straits, mass violence is the inevitable eventual result. It might sound strange, but Singapore is hardly the only developed nation that takes action against protestors (it has to be said that Singapore is good at it); Students of history can observe that Singaporeans were far from averse to rioting, despite the very real risks of injury and arrest (surely such demonstrations were not legal then as now?). Indeed, other than the luckless Dr. Chee and his associates, small vigils and the like appear tolerated.

My conclusion is that the majority do in fact think that life here is, on the balance, alright. Not quite ideal, and thus open to the usual (often faceless) complaints, but sufficiently tolerable as not to warrant any more concrete efforts. Of course, this is not to say that satisfaction, or even gratefulness, must be due our well-renumerated administrators...

[To be continued, maybe]


The Double Deal


Double Take (Source: Redcafe.net)


May they never retire.



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September 19, 2011 - 12:38 SGT     

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