Tan Chuan Jin and his colleagues must be pleased to have this development in the Nordic states reported in the media to rebut those who have been plugging that we learn and adapt their social system. To me nobody was better than LKY in explaining why it wouldn't work here. They couldn't be more different from us and we could never from our mixing pot of cultures and religion pull it off.
It is easy to sell and win support if you could borrow a successful model elsewhere but what Singapore needs really is to find our own way and continuously discover ourselves in the process. Now this is very hard and also frightening; a journey into the unknown. Even historical Venice is no longer instructive.
Like us the Chinese are also at a crossroad today. Unlike them our government think we have a working system and it ain't broken why discard it? I belonged to the camp that emphatically disagree with them. Also to me, it looks like the Chinese are going to be more successful navigating the huge changes than us.
Put aside the Nordic model. Worry about our model but most of all our greatest challenges come from demographic change and the external environment especially when the Chinese overtake us.
We can make a good living when they are behind us. It is an even better living for us with bountiful opportunities when they are closing the gap with us because of the insatiable demand they generate. It is most hazardous when they are on the verge of closing in and overtaking us. The waves they create could cause our boat to capsize. Now if we can survive that and with them ahead of us, we can forge a new and mutually beneficial relationship with them. But first we have to survive when they pass us.
Think and decide what we must do to survive and thrive on these challenges. Let's not waste time and be theoretical talking about models. Government is getting more and more abstract here. I was aghast at Gan Kim Yong's health care model. It is not about models but beds, although not necessarily beds in acute care hospitals. I don't care for beautiful plans on paper but if we keep running out of beds, the MOH and its minister have failed. There is nothing to explain.
We have many problems without solutions today and a government in denial by forcing reality into their neat framework so that they could just tweak policies. But as citizens we see that increasingly things are not going well and the failure rate rising. If this trend persist we will only have time and resources for fire fighting. We would be in a vicious cycle like so many SMEs here.
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