Dr Goh: Luck better than Smart

I know but I didn't say so. One of the great believers of promotion by merit (result of you being smart), Dr. Goh Keng Swee believed that luck is more decisive to success than merit.

I always smile to myself when I hear on 93.8 people talking about fairness and merit. Sure, most of them were quick with self serving logic but no one (because those who knows better keep their own counsel) ever suggested than bad luck undo all your merit and good luck have often brought incompetents and the undeserving rich rewards and promotion.

What I find difficult to accept is how our ruling class have systematically designed bad luck out of their occupational lives. Unless you are caught in a CPIB or CAD case, you are immune to bad luck. You are too talented to waste and every mistake you make is an opportunity to learn but for others they often get punished. E.g., think Mas Selamat.

Wee Cho Yaw is a foxy businessman. In the early days he took potentially catastrophic risks and survived. When he no longer needed to live so dangerously, he took only calibrated risks whilst many others often confused their luck with their skill and get destroyed eventually. Why do you think he is in banking? That's the smartest thing to do in Singapore and many other places too. Look how bankers make their enterprises too big to fail. With that they could play heads they win and tails you lose. They have succeeded at designing bad luck out and by default will only have good luck making everything legal since they don't rob you as a result. This of course is cheating. Nassim Taleb has one of the most erudite and intellectually robust way to condemn this. Like the law of conservation of energy and matter, bad luck cannot be destroyed, it can only be transferred. Guess where they move their bad luck to? How do the bankers, the government etc., go about it? Why do you think they all try to limit transparency and accountability?

Update: 5:55pm

This is the nature of luck many of us have observed but often superficially.

When you are a start up, luck almost totally trumps smart. When you are a giant MNC or a monopolist, you can be bumping into billion dollar bad luck and still stick around.

The journey from start up to becoming an MNC, we all know the death rates. There are numerous ways to look at this from the business literature, but my late father always saw it as a matter of luck. You are not going to get published in HBR much less respected to offer luck as an explanation for random success. Everyone hates it. People want control.

It is the same with schooling. You have less luck (the now preferred word is opportunities) than when you are in the top schools (more opportunities). But this is nonsense. By definition luck is in nobody's control. The fine lady is married to no one. So what  is really happening is that we have a system which controls the schooling environment. People don't see it this way, but we have designed good luck (but never completely) out of the neighborhood schools to the top schools. Luck is here systematic rather than random. The good possibiliites over total possiblities is smaller for a neighborhood school than the top schools, but almost all of us are not good at thinking statistically yet we are faced with more and more situations that demand such thinking. If you are clued in, you know this is also the age of Big Data.

Now this is also the same with the tax code too especially in America. I posted a story on this one recently. Apple paid little taxes because it took advantage of all the legal loopholes. If you are not an MNC, you aren't positioned to enjoy them.

Life for the rich and powerful is creating a system that allows you to push out your bad luck to other people. Because it is called luck and nobody controls luck, your bad luck is not the fault of the rich and powerful until it is carried too far. You will first feel it in your gut and then grasp it cognitively later when others explain the situation to you e.g., Robert Reich. Now all over the world we have indeed gone to far. I am not smart at all, I am simply stating what is becoming obvious. With my hurried and impatient writing nobody would understand me had I written this long ago. But I am blogging for myself!

Intractable problems of race and demography

Most societies are terrible at integrating minorities into their population. Just today there are two bad stories in our papers. We can easily imagine many more but we often only get to read or see it when it blows up.

Integration is so challenging, these societies might as well stop taking in people of other race and religion. It seems that the only safe to admit sort are the global citizens who are highly educated and mobile knowledge workers.

Myanmar is extraordinarily cruel to limit Rohingyas Muslims to two children per family. Only Pharoah of the Bible was more cruel when the Hebrews out produce the Egyptians.

Closer to home didn't Mahathir had a long term strategy to shrink the ratio of the Chinese in Malaysia. Alas he ran out of time. There are fewer Malaysian Chinese now but still enough to assert themselves powerfully.

Further away in Israel, Arab Muslim Israelis are also out producing the Jews. This will change the balance of power eventually. Israel's military, economic and technological superiority is unsustainable. Demographics is destiny and the world will have a real time experiment in Japan to draw important lessons.

At home, of course we can accommodate 7 million people but we will not because we have the wrong leaders taking us there. Our leaders would not try hard enough to make sure that the quality of life for most of us would get better despite the population squeeze. Worse, they have a blase attitude about integrating foreigners with the local population. They ignore the failures they see elsewhere. Today there are two sharp examples. Among the elite, one was callous and dumb enough to articulate that uncaring attitude. Ex SMRT CEO, Saw Phaik Hwa had famously retorted, "People can board the train - it is whether they choose to." With such an atas attitude, why would we back this bunch of leaders to a 7 million people society? No where could I find Peter Ong, the head of civil service shows that he gets it either. To them we exists in spreadsheets, powerpoint slides and may be computer models. So even if we have a different government in charge, the admin service leaders wouldn't change. The 7 million people idea is dead in the water. Many of our problems would not be solved. Those who disagree don't know how wishful they are. They are only seeing part of the larger picture.

Najib will survive as PM

Looks like Najib will stay as PM. Our government judged correctly then. Well done.

On my end I know and have admitted in earlier posts this is a learning journey for me. Along the way I find many people who know even less than me talked like experts. It is especially dangerous if they owns credible platforms.

There was this irresponsible stringer for FT Raymond Bonner. He didn't do a good job with the facts before committing to a story in February this year about Shane Todd's death. He would have gotten away if not for our rigorous approach to the facts of the case. I believe he must have been lucky many times before until he encountered us.

Dusting off our Canon Selphy

The daughter needed to print some photos for a school project. I usually send my jobs to snapfish or if in a hurry, go to the shop to get it printed. Unfortunately it was closed today and so we have to dust off our old photo printer for the job. I think it was six or seven years old since I last used it. I was wondering if it would even print! Luckily it worked flawlessly.

From Angelina Jolie to Ng Eng Hen

What has Angelina Jolie got anything to do with former Education Minister Ng Eng Hen? The link is Andy Ho, at least for me that is.

I never forgive Ng Eng Hen's prevarication on the education statistics on mobility. He declared the less privileged have not become less mobile. Of course eventually he had to humbly climb down when his boss contradicted him, but to me the damage has been done and I will find it very hard to trust him.

I have no time and so Andy Ho provided the data I need to harden my position against Dr. Ng. Andy in his article explained how the breast cancer incidence and markers statistics are read by doctors. Wasn't Dr. Ng a leading breast cancer surgeon? So how could he have been so mistaken about the mobility statistics? It would have made his competence as a surgeon in doubt. I think he was fixed on some dogmas and didn't want to respect the truth. If I my memory serves me well, Tharman was the first to differ and eventually public pressure caused the PM to disagree with him in Parliament too.

We should be wary of trusting ministers like Dr. Ng Eng Hen. He should be sent off like Mah Bow Tan and Raymond Lim. How can he be useful if he doesn't even respect the facts. That's the way to grow out of touch with the people. A great pity Chiam See Tong failed to send him out of Parliament.

Civil Service Head doesn't get it

So what does the Admin Service really think about us or more accurately what they want us to think about them in these two articles. I am afraid Peter Ong missed it, lost it. Don't even need to read the main article. Just the subsidiary one on the Population White Paper would do.

They still don't get it. Too much pride to defend and self esteem to preserve. The admin service was simply out of touch with the people. How else could they have gotten it so wrong? Then they blame the world for changing too quickly. I wished they would just blame themselves as that is the only way to begin to do better.

This is the only bit worth reading is at the end of the article. Peter Ong's counterparts consoled him that we are a far easier bunch to serve. Well the civil service leaders and ministers have been taking us for granted for too long. We must never allow them to sell us cheap so easily again. We were sold for a song such that foreigners especially some Chinese can't helped themselves but tell us that we are being stupid to give away so much for nothing. That's why citizens feel second class to foreigners in our own country.

If Peter Ong thinks it is going to get easier, he is sorely mistaken. Doesn't his radars tell him that we are no less angry when we shot the PAP in 2011 and at the PE months later. Don't say it is the politicians' problem. Look at the Punggol East by election results too.

So stop telling us how and what to think. Quit telling us what our priorities should be especially when it practically mean many of us become chambermaids in Hotel Singapore serving well heeled foreigners. Your plans reduce Singaporeans sans the elites into a nation of supplicants. No wonder you cannot be anything else but out of touch.

Update: 8:40pm

A cursory look suggest there is nothing in common between Bangladesh and us. Theirs is a system riddled with corruption. Ours is governed by the rule of law and corruption is pursued and prosecuted. So what's common? Both sold themselves cheap. They much cheaper. My worry is more with the trend than where we are now. This policy of cutting prices and not trying hard enough to innovate and add value will over time make us poor. In fact it is the most hard working and miserable road to poverty.

We accuse other nations' leaders of kicking the can down the road but we also do the same; only the cans are different.

There is another similarity with every other nation. Our civil service and the PAP rank their interests ahead of the people. They justify themselves that any alternative to them would be worse and rapacious. So they tell us not to complain. But opposition parties whether they are sincere or otherwise could always try to convince people that they put the people ahead of their party interests. They sell a two or multi-party system rather a single dominant party. This is the WP's strategy. Now is the PAP willing to step up to the plate by upping the standard and seize the initiative back from the WP? We shall see in 2016.

The trap of Japan's markets

I wonder if I should not post this to my private investing blog. Nothing there is confidential but I use it as an experiment too to examine how Google might be feeding me adverts.

I have definitely less than half chance of getting this right, may be not even better than 10%

Japan is not America. They should have dropped money from the helicopter if I might borrow the metaphor from Bernanke long ago. Now they want to do it when Debt/GDP is a more than 200% This is frightening. They are doing it when the locals are running out of money to buy JGBs. Instead they will need to cash them for retirement.

My point? America is a price giver to the rest of the world but Japan has become a price taker. Abenomics would come to grief. But as Japan eventually spirals down it might drag America and the rest of us along. Europe can help to make everyone falls faster and harder. Of course I exaggerate. It is never so one dimensional.

Confidence is the bedrock for quantitative easing. Japan could never do a "It's halftime in America, and we are roaring back". They passed up that chance at least ten years ago. Therefore traders are trading your markets short term. Yen short sellers finally got their profits but this is all flash in the pan.

Eventually inflation would not sustain consumption to grow the economy because an ageing population is worried about using up its retirement savings. Japan is going bankrupt. Perhaps she would be selling their IPs for a song first. Its ambitious young would be forced to leave for greener pastures far away from home but language is a huge obstacle. Again, I am probably wrong here because there are smarter routes to the end but I haven't the time to read up and think through. One possible path takes Japan to war, an alarming thought. Abe is a bloody hawk.

I don't doubt the denouement of Japan but the paths that she might take is much harder to fathom and that is where the money is.

Only the two sentences in bold font are useful and true, the rest is imaginative speculative nonsense.