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Sunday, Sep 20, 2020 - 22:51 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Xenophilia By Fiat

Sudden torrent of reviewing assignments, but on to another very rapid development that may or may not have relevance to the concern raised in the previous post, on having national assets tied up; just a few days ago, the Chinese Communist Party has officially announced plans to exert control over the country's "private" sector, not that it was ever all that private to begin with (similar to us truly, come to think of it). Well, since it's come to this, we might just pray that our incumbents manage to stay on the right side of the CCP power brokers, and not have our considerable investments there get Suzhou-ed, or rendered effectively illiquid and unwithdrawable.

This comes as GEOTUS goes forward with the WeChat and TikTok bans in America, as decried in The State's Times; the Chinese authorities have apparently pledged retaliation, but as noted by many commentators, what are they gonna do? Ban Google, Facebook and WhatsApp? It's fairly telling that the obvious angle that maybe China should have, like, opened their Internet ecosystem in the first place went entirely unexplored. Of course, there's the argument that the U.S. should not mirror China's policies on banning foreign web services, but Taleb's "dictatorship of the intolerant" would seem to apply in practice here. Consider two largely-equivalent web services, but one is currently available to the entire world, while the other is cut off from 18% of the global population; all else being equal, consumers would tend to be driven to the former service for the convenience of universal access, thus rewarding the initial intolerant behaviour. Well, it might be time for granny to learn how to set up a VPN to perform finger dances?


Perhaps room to do what we do best, i.e. act as the middleman?
(Sources: fakewhats.com, fakedetail.com)


For now, TikTok's parent ByteDance has fled to Singapore together with Tencent and Alibaba etc., but our very intelligent leaders might well be feverishly contemplating the amount of business and largesse it would be prudent to accept in the opening salvos of Cold War II, and this is without going into whether these injections of funding would actually create jobs for locals - currently a very big sticking point in domestic discourse. On this, the breathtaking spin of The State's Times merits closer examination: a Page Four article has highlighted the woes of foreign graduates of local universities in finding jobs, with the proximate cause raised in the opening sentence as due to "raised minimum salaries for hiring foreigners"; the rather more substantial factor, that we're in a bloody pandemic with job support schemes having wound down, and everybody being affected by the Wuhan flu outbreak, was glossed over.

This, by the way, follows a piece on how "Singaporeans don't deserve Piyush Gupta", which has been making the rounds on social media, especially amongst incumbent supporters. The main thrust appears to be that Singapore needs the best talent regardless of nationality, and asserts that the country will decline - no, has already declined - due to a supposed bias towards local CEOs: "A host of Singapore Inc. companies run by real, born-in-Singaporeans - Singtel, Keppel Corporation, Sembawang, SPH, Singapore Exchange etc. etc. are all floundering right now and yet nobody turns the story on its head and asks, 'hey, what are our own people doing for us?' It is these companies that are shrinking right now. Go read the share price of each of these companies over the past two years - they have been on permanent decline long before the pandemic. Singapore is in serious trouble. They are broken, every single one of them and it's a topic that requires urgent parliamentary debate."

On that point, the (accurate) Reddit response was that all these failing Singapore Inc. companies had the incumbents' army cronies parachuted in though global talent searches that somehow always conclude with re-hiring SAF's finest, so what could one expect (and on Sim Wong Hoo being "smothered with love" by the authorities... well, I guess my take on this differs)? In any case, netizen outrage has tended to be based on the government and its apologists liking to dodge the real issues by promoting such articles - having good foreign CEOs and top management, fine, but why is the nation being run such that 70% of created jobs go to foreigners? Are there really no Singaporeans capable of taking up all those desirable entry-to-mid-level openings in finance (with attested cases where no locals were hired at particular banks for years), without resorting to "linguistic chicanery"?


And now the FTs are starting to complain about other FTs...
(Source: forums.hardwarezone.com.sg)


The way I see it, however, the explanation is actually quite simple, if one takes a cold, hard and unsentimental look at Singapore's economy. There was honestly not all that much choice. While it appears fashionable to spout phrases such as "deep tech" and "innovation" in recent times, the fact remains that our growth engine has remained fundamentally warm-body arbitrage on geographic advantage and relative political stability. In this model, cheap labour is imported en masse both to do the work (manufacturing remains 20% of national GDP, mind), and as a critical driver of demand. As supporters of this strategy are wont to crow, foreign workers and PMETs eat at our hawker stalls, patronize our shops, and rent our flats too! Of course, an immediate implication is that productivity and efficiency naturally takes a back seat, but on the other hand, how many landlords does a deep learning A.I. support?

This observation ties neatly into the designation of local property (prices) as the citizenry's retirement nest egg, also from the last blog entry. Following this logic, property prices die die cannot drop by any significant extent. These property prices fundamentally require (a large and increasing) population to support. However, very conveniently, the government can induce such demand through allowing more immigrants and foreign workers at a whim, while expending basically zero effort or "innovation". Do you think that any ruling party would willingly abandon such a golden goose?

The PM has tried to reason that the government would not create jobs for foreigners if it doesn't benefit Singaporeans, which the online bunch have rebutted by noting that the influx benefits some Singaporeans far more than others, i.e. the higher-SES employer/landlord/capitalist set who thrive on lower wages and expanded demand, as opposed to employees and the working class, who endure the competition for some vague assurance that the rising tide will eventually float their boats. Actually, I do sort of understand the incumbents' logic here, and quite like growth and new developments myself; however, given that the big plan seems to more or less be "let's import twenty to thirty thousand extra workers every year!", it's perhaps not unreasonable for voters to eventually go "fine, we agree, but let's maybe get another party to implement it then, because cheaper faster better!"

Personally, I suspect that some incumbent politicians are secretly itching to just admit the reality, as certain more-charismatic straight-talkers - whether sterner ones like LKY (who really stuck the spurs in with references to "coolie genes"), or nicer ones like TRUMP (who would at least have promoted "Singapore First") - might have: "CB lah, limpeh agah swee swee every year take in 30,000 new kaki forever, new money new customer new kah kia, comprain what comprain? Later HDB resale price go down, you can tahan? Tolong lah, we also kena squeeze until jialat jialat outside, we got Amaravati-ed just last year, tell you all f**k you all even f**k also dun want, now fertility rate 1.14, no new taxpayer, what you want us to do?"


You see this marker? Marker placed by Deng Xiaoping.
Deng very smart man, never poke GEOTUS. Be smart, be like Deng.
(Source: scmp.com)


One consolation is that at least some better-informed locals appear fairly clear-eyed about the predicament we're in, if the fresh r/singapore thread on the brewing U.S.-China conflict is anything to go by, with the more-decisive fellows long taken concrete action (not that I necessarily agree) having sensed the way the wind's blowing. I do think that the U.S. has gone too far in certain respects, though. We worked very hard to build our money-laundering hub! It's modern, upscale, very class, one of the best money-laundering hubs in the world, okay? Why would anybody risk doing business in some rickety underground gambling den in Myanmar or the Philippines, or some disreputable offshore junket boat, when he could perform his laundering in comfort and luxury at our purpose-built hubs? We are a honest, legitimate and non-discriminating money-laundering hub, and it's just bad manners for the U.S. Department of Justice to poke their noses in our affairs!



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