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Sunday, June 08, 2014 - 22:42 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

To Complete

Lethargic mood. Oh well. They've also begun chopping down most of the trees lining the carpark, which may create a more open appearance, but is also... harsher. I suppose we will only be seeing more of this, as a not-very-large empty patch nearby has been taken up by a new block of flats, just like that. Population White Paper on track, then.

Finished up all 424 Panini stickers this week, with the last player sticker being Benoît Assou-Ekotto, the last overall being - fittingly - the trophy, and the most duplicates being Mario Götze (4). Had this been done for real, it would have cost about S$950, but for the online version the rate limiter is the restriction to opening five packs (25 stickers) a day. There's a code generator available, but given that one automatically gets several packs a day, and a bonus pack for each team completed on top of that, it was fairly extraneous. Considered trying to crack the formula like the old days, but figured I had better things to do.

And for World Cup viewing, I'm going for a VPN solution. It may or may not work, but I'd rather flush S$15 down the drain, than cough up S$112.35 to Price-Taker Red Umbrella. Having said that, streaming from BBC's UK-only iPlayer, after PPTP-ing to a UK server, has gone swimmingly, and if for some reason that doesn't work for actual World Cup games (split between the BBC and ITV), there remain any number of non-ripoff alternatives available.

The Straits Times has put out a comprehensive World Cup guide, including predicted formations, so they do have that going for them. 2022 may be seeing a new host yet, though, as Qatar's coming under increasing scrutiny - the most shocking revelation being that it allegedly took only US$5 milion to arrange. Given that the Miami Heat are complaining of being "smoked out" of Game One of the NBA Finals as temperatures indoor neared 32 degrees Celsius - i.e. a nice, cool summer night in Qatar - this could be worth a thought.


Game On

"What's out on the Internet everybody knows can be utterly scurrilous and no action can be taken, because it's very difficult... they are worthless people, they've got no money. You take them on, you waste money and then what will you get in compensation? Nothing."

- Wisdom of the father,
Hard Truths To Keep Singapore Going


Well, no surprises. Blogger has raised over S$91k of his original S$70k target, likely with more trickling in, as the story was caught by AFP and proceeded to get plastered all over the globe. The relevant press secretary was at a loss for words, no doubt still stunned at having an adversary that would not simply lie down and die, as they've become all too used to. Some credit goes to the mainstream news for not acting dumb, if being days late, no doubt in an effort not to provide any additional publicity; still, they've done their part.

Sure, there's been the very coincidental front-page headlines on a lady squandering S$1 million in two years, but one can't expect that much from the state press. That said, it seems that her siblings played a big role in relieving her of her windfall, whereas in our local "welfare" context, one is supposed to hit on all available relatives before going to the state. Then again, it's not as if the few hundred bucks a month that most CPF Life members are drawing is going to be sufficient if anything major happens anyway...

Online pundits have been busily bouncing their opinions on what the PMO's exit strategy will be. If it does go to court as scheduled, one now expects that the blogger will likely be able to raise just about any fine imposed from the general public, unless it is some unprecedented and totally ridiculous sum - say, millions - that will make for even worse press.

Some older hands are portending that, you know, that inconvenient guy could get it under some other mostly unrelated technicality, perhaps even have his assets frozen, but any stunt of this sort would be looked extremely dimly upon by a growing number of citizens. However, it's also probably too far gone to make a show of magnanimity and drop the case - as it is, taking the S$5000 and having the sole truly libellous article removed is looking more and more like the best way out, but that boat's sailed too.

Or has it? One cannot completely dismiss the possibility of a private settlement, along the lines of having the damage claims waived (or greatly reduced), in exchange for a promise not to go too far in the future, and a non-disclosure agreement. Given that the relevant blogger appears to have no intention of toning down his rhetoric (as he is well within his rights to), though, any such offer might be rebuffed. Oh well. Unfortunately, since it was a personal blog, the powers that be couldn't simply legislate it to death...

In the meantime, thousands have thronged Hong Lim Park over the CPF issue, a reminder to be careful about what one wishes for. Some prominent members of Singapore's literary circle have also identified this as an opening to pile onto, with l'enfant terrible Alfian Sa'at offering his condolences, and one-time homegrown favourite writer Catherine Lim being more circumspect with her open letter. But then again, this is what men (and women) of letters do.

We can...


Expert Opinion

Herr Ahm: *enters* What were you thinking, navigating the depths of political discourse without a qualified guide, like myself, and paying the usual fees? My union shall hear of this!


Herr Ahm cuts through the crap and tells you like it is!
(Original source: tehcute.com)


Me: Well, if it isn't everyone's best-loved Master Political Analyst hamster. And as I was saying, we can consider this from many angles, the first of which is: how did it come to this? Granted, that offending article might well be construed to be libellous, as there is no evidence of any such misdeeds.

Herr Ahm: On this, while doing my reading up, I came across a striking comment: "When people rather give money to a liar than the government, you know the government's days are numbered". Alright, it's just a thousand people or so, but it makes a twisted kind of sense, when you realise that said "liar" is publishing a full accounting of his received funds, while for all the lip service being paid to transparency here, one still can't get a straight answer to, say, how much a HDB flat costs to build - and, you know, the HDB is making a loss.

Indeed, Catherine Lim's criticism of this administration being wedded to concessionary and cosmetic tweaks, but with no real change beneath the surface, was given added weight by the strange admonishment on "constructive politics" a couple of weeks ago, where it was noted that "politics purely for the sake of power, without any notion of what we want Singapore to become, will lead us to disaster" - when it was "a contest for power" not too long before that. Hearteningly, some of the incumbents at least appear to have sensed a change in the wind, but with the party whip hanging over them, it's not as if they're actually going to do anything about it.

Case in point, an incumbent MP has now proposed that the elected presidency should be scrapped and reverted to a ceremonial role, which has been noted by observers to have been made only after the incumbents' favoured candidate barely scraped through by a hair's breadth, and some distance from an absolute majority. Apparently, checks and balances are all fine and dandy - but only when it's your guy who's doing the checking and balancing.

But, to paraphrase a former PM, my take is: "Donations to the blogger is good for Singapore. If there are no donations, then I worry." In fact, on some level, the government - if not exactly the incumbents - should be happy at the show of support for a fellow citizen. Had Singaporeans been collectively so hopelessly balless as to abandon one of their number for saying what has been on at least some of their minds, you lot would be totally screwed. As it is, I am happy to revise my appraisal to probably screwed.

Me: Cheerful fellow, ain't you?

Herr Ahm: Well, remember "government do less, Singaporeans do more"? I see this as a perfect example of doing more for yourselves, since your authorities are the sort who apparently believe all their policies have full support, unless there's a mob forming on their doorstep. Yes, the blogger had some truly illogical complaints, such as the annual CPF withdrawals being a mere fraction of the balance, but the points on the mediocre interest rate and ballooning Minimum Sum are completely valid - and previously, wilfully ignored.

With this, at least Our Most Successful Investment Firm's suddenly being very proactive on not managing the CPF.


Let Us Just Call A Spade A Spade


The guy isn't a legend for nothing
(Source: Hardwarezone Forums [with plenty of other frank quips])


Herr Ahm: By the way, have I told you about this lady friend of mine?

Me: Which one?

Herr Ahm: The one that's running her own multinational company. A formidable lady, that one. Her dad was a titan of industry, and built up Golden Hamster Technologies by himself. Well, not completely by himself, he had a great team, but he was indisputably the driving force. Anyway, she goes and has a brilliant academic career, getting her HamBA with high honours, and various other degrees besides. Her father had passed on the CEO position to someone else in between, but she simply shot up the ranks after she joined up, and soon wound up as CEO with the backing of the board - which included her dad - as well as the shareholders.

Of course, there were persistent murmurs that she got the position partly due to her father's influence, all the more as her husband was then appointed head of the finance division, and I was curious as to whether this ever bothered her - mind you, she was a pretty competent CEO, on her own merits.

Me: And what did she say?

Herr Ahm: She just looked at me like I was the stupidest hamster on Earth. "My dear," she said exasperatedly. "Of course I got accelerated into the post partly due to my dad! Everybody knows that! Why should I be so insecure as to be bothered by this, when it is patently true? You really believe that nobody else in *the entire world* can do this job?"

She went on. "However, I have been delivering above-average returns to the shareholders all this while, so I don't think it's too much of an issue - there's a case to be made for stability and continuity, after all. Of course, people can still point it out, but as long as I produce results, most of the shareholders will be happy, and that's the important thing."

"What do you expect me to do? Be as petty as to sue them for saying something that is true? Herr Ahm, these ties are dragged out every so often - the Kennedys, Bushes, Gandhis, Aquinos, etc... they just shrug it off, because you know, I know, everybody knows! It's probably rude for someone to yell it out loud at the annual general meeting, but I would have to be mentally unsound to make the preposterous claim that my parentage had no impact on my career!"

Me: She sounds like a top character - I have the feeling that I would like to have a chat with her one day, if possible. But, erm, what does this have to do with our discussion?

Herr Ahm: Oh, nothing at all. It was just a personal anecdote. You humans, always so anxious. Ok, back on topic.


Good News And Bad

"Power resides where men believe it resides.
No more and no less."

- Varys, A Clash of Kings
(then, what happens when the belief is gone?)


Me: But, let's get this straight. The PM, and the rest of our Cabinet, are definitely smarter than ninety-nine percent of their critics, by any conventional measure of intelligence - and I don't know about the last one percent.

Herr Ahm: *extracts cigar* I agree. Then again, it was never suggested that this was something they were short on. Neither are they personally out to persecute citizens. Thing is, so what? Perhaps I should demonstrate the observation that there may be some complacency going on, through some role-playing. Here, you be some young high-flying civil servant with a big, bright idea, and I'll be his boss, alright?

Me: Ok. Herr Ahm sir, may I suggest...

Herr Ahm: Look into my eyes.


You are getting sleepy...
(Source: viralfoto.com)


*words flow unbidden into mind*

You're... Albert, yes? Class of oh-nine? I remember now, one of the scholars, already made MX10 early. You remind me of myself back then. Good chap. High energy. Second-in-charge of the showpiece Productivity Plus project, right? The Perm Sec liked that one. Ticked the right box in the KPI, that did.

I saw your proposal, sweeping changes... um, very daring. Fire of youth. Now, Albert, I like you, you got a bright future. Maybe you'd like to lead the Productivity Times Two team? You're definitely a smart boy. That one's good for your career. We can talk more about it over dinner with the Trade Dept.

You're a fine lad with an eye for detail, don't throw it away. I want to put in a good word for you. I'll be retiring soon, and Wong will be taking over - Wong's a top fellow, I'm sure you two will get along very well - and probably someone from Procurement will have the title after that, they're due it.

But it won't be that long - twelve years, maybe even ten? - and you'll have a good shot at being in my seat. That's Superscale C, forty K's clear and easy each month, before bonuses. Even if not, I have no doubt you'll snag a similar posting. But, see, this is if you don't do unnecessary things, get it? I knew you were a quick study, Albert. Here, I'll pass you the files for PTT, I'm sure you'll meet the targets easily.

Me: Wow. That telepathy?

Herr Ahm: Oh, I pick up a trick or two. Very useful, nonverbal communication. Expressive eyes accomplish a lot. Now, this may be a stereotype of bureaucracy, but given what we have been getting as "major shifts", my professional opinion is that the presented scenario is not that far from the truth.

So, the good news is that your leaders do have all the mental tools - indeed, probably far more than actually needed. The bad news is, due to the incentive structure, which is nobody's fault exactly, approaches tend to... stay fixed. This certainly didn't begin yesterday, and as some sympathetic netizens have recognized, it's certainly not wholly the doing of the current incumbent team.

Given this setup, the only place any real change is coming is straight from the top, but frankly I'm not seeing anything that says it's gonna happen. You can only pull out grade-tweaking so many times before even the densest voter realises that it's only so much lip-service.


Emergency times, emergency measures


The bad news, then, is that the roots go a lot deeper, and even if you lot by some miracle toss the incumbents out, whoever comes in will still be faced with the base reality - that Singapore's growth has been powered largely by working population growth, and that working population growth cannot be sustained indefinitely. Whether it's the Workers' Party "Dynamic Population", or the Singapore Democrats' rights-based society, it's something they can't run from.

Me: The SDP does have an interesting auction allocation method for public housing, which reminds me of this envy-free rent division algorithm...

Herr Ahm: *sighs* Yes, that. Thing is, revisiting the CPF here, I daresay a big part of why the crappy interest rate hasn't been making waves till now was because overall, it did work. People won't care that much about the OA returning just 2.5%, when the value of the bulk of the CPF that has been sunk into their flat has been rising steadily, if not exactly ten twenty times. However, they're now waking up to the realisation that this asset appreciation can't go on forever.

Even discounting the ever-depleting leasehold, a big question is where future demand is going to come from, given that HDB flats can only be sold to citizens and PRs, and that current projections have the size of the citizen population that is nearing retirement age in 2050, being close to twice that of twenty-something workforce entrants at that time.

Here, the parallels with China are really uncannily striking. Sidenote, Superfusion mentions how little China's major banks follow economic rationale, with loans traditionally given to support government five-year plans with no regard as to actual financial viability, but I'm sure Our Most Successful Investment Firm has done their due diligence and have full faith in their guanxi power here.

This also raises another question - if you lot stay on plan, which is conservative given that your government has historically exceeded population estimates by a fair margin, you're going to have over a million new foreigners arriving in the next fifteen years - where are they gonna stay? Some types of labourers will have dorms, and higher-ranked expats may be able to afford condos, but I'm uncertain if the HDB rental market, active as it is, can easily absorb hundreds of thousands of run-of-the-mill PMETs; given your relevant agency's spotty past planning record, I'd be wary at least.

On top of all this, the sad fact is that your incumbents are really not all that popular. It's hard to drum up that much enthusiasm for a party that somehow holds 92% of voting Parliamentary seats with less than 60% of the popular vote, after all. And this is after carrots such as HDB and primary school entrance priority are accounted for.

As probably previously pointed out, if the solutions presented continue to be "squeeze more" by some other name - because if money's going from citizens' pocket to the government's, why should they care whether it's called a "contribution", "levy", "certificate" or "license" instead of just a tax - it is inevitable that "let someone else have a go, how bad can it get" begins to gain traction.


Out One Level

Me: Lest we forget that there are factors outside the incumbents' control, I should like to draw attention here to econs hit of the year, Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century [summary slides], the main conclusion of which is that wealth is once again becoming concentrated in the hands of a few, as there is no natural force constraining the accumulation of wealth. With reference here to the lady who managed to fritter away a million bucks in two years, it seems a fair bet empirically that the rich tend to get richer, and the poor poorer, without some external countervailing force.

While Piketty explains it on a macro level, we can also look at it from an individual perspective. Rich families, while perhaps possibly prone to some extravagance, are also rather more likely to know and pass on habits that encourage the preservation of their wealth. Apart from access to quality general education, I would gather that they are more likely to know about investment opportunities, tax dodges and plain not getting taken advantage of by freeloading relatives.

Piketty is not without his detractors, hardly surprising given that his prescription is a return to hefty wealth taxes, that are applied globally at that, but the main thrust appears sound. Again from ground level, one forum writer has pointed out that a wealth divide is manifesting at local top schools - revisiting the "social mobility" concern of a few years back. While one rebuttal rests on government being a pure "rule enforcer", rules tend to get adjusted in favour of the powerful.

There is the usual "privatize profits, socialize losses" model, of course, but this effect has also been suspected to manifest itself in many more, and subtler, ways. For example, the Direct School Admissions scheme has long been suspected to favour kids with the resources to pursue other interests and talents - it is likely rather harder to develop one's musical abilities, for example, without a piano at home.

But overall, as mentioned previously as "the irony of Eden", and now also recognized by authors such as Alpert in The Age of Oversupply, the real high-level problem is that this world simply doesn't need most of its inhabitants - the whole point of productivity is to do what's needed with fewer people and other resources, after all. We may be incorrectly regarding not working as a moral failing, when it may just be the case that - in some areas at least - workers simply aren't needed.

Expanding on the example raised then - imagine a farm with a hundred manual labourers. In the old days, they barely managed to cover the whole field, they were inefficient, but they were all employed. However, once the owner brings in tractors with his capital, he will need only five drivers, some mechanics, and a foreman; then, what happens to the other ninety workers, who would only have a negative contribution staying in the fields under the new system? The optimistic answer is "something more rewarding", but one can suspect that there is actually no good reason why this must happen.

We need only look at Europe, where the majority of youth are unemployed in some countries, for supporting evidence - they may be jobless, but also surviving. Admittedly, it is not a very satisfying existence, but this only boosts the main thesis - their most basic needs such as food and shelter are being met, but there is no natural impetus to enable them to claim more. Alpert for one suggests New Deal-like national public infrastructure programmes, but these are, by definition, short-term fixes.


A Pinch Of Philosophy

Herr Ahm: That's some monologue.

Me: Hey, speak for yourself.

Herr Ahm: And then what? Where's the conclusion?

Me: *shrugs* Nothing much. I kinda like this place, I was born here after all, but it's best to let what will happen, happen. As you hamsters love to repeat, dynasties and gods fall all the time. It is nothing very remarkable after all. I can only hope that if anything does happen, it will be reasonably civilised. By the way, the rehabilitation of the legacy of one of our former Presidents was a nice touch, and it would be great if we could continue in like vein.

Herr Ahm: *puffs on cigar* Taking it further, we might consider the eternal struggle between Order and Chaos.

Order is the warden, the guardian, the knight in shining armour; Vishnu-Who-Preserves, the Keeper, the king on his throne; the law, the codes, the rules inviolate; the stone that stands, the pillars of the Acropolis, the runes in a forgotten language carved on adamant slabs; it is the Lion, the Unconquered Sun, the One Above All; the wise father, the owl who watches, the rituals that bind; the formulaic salutations, the walls of ancient Qin, of Trajan, of Constantine; it is a shield, it is armour, and all the towers and fortresses of Man.

Chaos is the reaver, the raider, the warrior all of screaming blood and steel; Shiva-Who-Destroys, at times dark as midnight, other times with colours beyond numbering; it is the blind wanderer, the walker-in-the-flames; abandoned ruins, left to mists and ghosts; the wolves that howl at the moon, the jackals that run; vipers in the pit, and worms in the ground; the Many that rise, and care not if they fall; the honest tyrant with piercing eyes, the lone thief with a rusty dirk; it is a sword, it is fire, and all the passion and cruelty in them.

Me: But order is good, right?

Herr Ahm: And here I thought you had read all the stories.





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