Latest Band Aid: MSF new bidding system for HDB sites

The seeds of suspicion I had about the government indulging in band aid since the last GE has been bearing fruit and now turning into a harvest. MSF new bidding system for pre-school facilities is but the latest example.

I have mentioned band aid a few times already in earlier posts but never clarify what it mean in our context. Any solutions the government come up with that is reactive rather than thoughtful is simply like a quick plaster you paste over the wound. Their political, economic and social philosophies are temporarily suspended as they serve analgesic to the people.

Childcare fees are too high. A primary reason of its inflation is rental. The ABC response is to curb rental. The larger consideration of the philosophies that guided the PAP approach to governance is conveniently ignored - in this instance, letting market forces price real estate for the longer term, larger and more enduring good. This is tantamount to sailing into the future without their erstwhile trusted map and compass.

The world has changed, we need new maps but this government use its smarts to relook a new world in their old world terms. You want evidence? Just see how differently wars are now fought. The primary latent driver in the world never change and that driver is Power. How it is acquired, especially transformed, negotiated and used.

I digress. Back to band aid, I can go on and on about the $1 billion for buying new buses; how they are fixing the train system; COE conundrum and then the runaway property prices and all the way to healthcare and education. The PAP is in fire fighting positions. It was never in soul searching mode except as public display of contrition for whatever political mileage was available. That's why there is no new philosophy of governance coming out from them and you could never have a guided, meaningful and substantive OSC from the most intelligent and concerned citizens out there. The admin service observing is right to be disdainful seeing how most OSC participants could only play in small playpens compared to their 'holistic' and globally optimizing plans. So clever hor! The big problem  for them is we aren't buying their morally bankrupt solutions. Each policy without explicitly stating so assume we are economic digits, can be conceputalized, measured and managed with various KPIs but truly very narrow minded and totally dehumanizing

Simply put the government just want to put out the fires and return to business as usual. They want to go back to the old paradigm when conditions permit but I don't think suitable conditions will ever return unless they brutally force it.

Do the people know that we are heading toward a governance vacuum? That the Singapore premium would be wasted away? That the PAP government will then push back, blame us and say we couldn't learn except by the hard way? Were you able to understand the veiled threats from the PM earlier about slower growth and we are living that now? That's what is coming. Give us a real life painful lesson so that we will return and accept their familiar ways. Unlike then, this time they will wear like Dystopia because that old approach of a top down controlling government could not produce the wealth and power of the new economy. Stay around and watch them fail at A*Star where they try to micro manage R&D. They believe they could have their cake and eat it. Those economies with longer experience in such activities are not so foolish to even try. In the meantime they patiently let a weak economy, higher unemployment, declining opportunities brow beat us back into obedience.

Today the government is not wise but very smart and self serving. On the other hand the opposition is wiser but not so smart. To get us going we need leaders in touch with the people and possess both wisdom and the smarts. Therefore there are two ways to a successful the future. Either a PAP that is willing to become wise or an opposition that grow to be much smarter. If we sail into the future with the present premise and endowment, we will sail into trouble and return to tyranny. Incumbents enjoy a huge edge but what they don't believe is that it would be too late and as they fail, we also fall with them.

So why are we fighting the government over MDA latest licensing measures? There is a bigger existential struggle going on and so many government critics missed it. Just another recurring evidence many of them are not as smart as those on the government side. Lee Kuan Yew was right all along. We shall never arrive and that is a hard truth for a little red dot.

Update: 3:10pm

I just can't resist inserting this here which I posted on June 8 in this blog. Teddy Stevens is so PAP! and in conversation with Abraham Lincoln, so hilarious to us living here.