I lost count the number of ways I have read or slipped in and out of my mind why this White Paper is badly conceived and totally wrong. I let those thoughts appear and evaporate. I know they will come back and all of them and more will reappear all over the place come the next GE. There is however one thought I must record and especially when I am not Malay.
It is patently obvious that the government will have limited or no success attracting Malays either from our next door or the closest possible cousins i.e., the Indonesians to settle here. Over time these non Malay immigrants will reduce the proportion of Malays in our population. This is a sure recipe for racial trouble. It is amazing all the top minds they boast of in government could conveniently just let this vital issue slip. It almost make you think they don't care if they do in the Malays. I would insist that we put aside race and see them as fellow citizens in the spirit of regardless of race, language or religion. Therefore I would want them to feel secure and confident maintaining their ratio in our population.
I am aghast that the Malays have been mostly quiet online about this threat to their reduced representation. I wonder why. Perhaps I ought to start checking with my Malay friends. It would be better to hear them protest or voice their reservations. It is when nothing is heard that it eventually blow up Black Swan style.
Update: Feb 6, 10:00am
Found this off a friend's facebook page. A good article by ISEAS senior fellow Terence Chong, 'Singapore Population White Paper: Impending Integration Challenges'
Update: Feb 6, 9:00pm
Finally found but actually it fell on my lap, a Malay Singaporean blogging about this issue as, 'A Malay Perspective on the White Paper'
Monday, February 4, 2013
Early CNY Reunion Dinner
Look at the pic. We are practical to the extreme.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Meritocracy: The sun might have set
A couple of screen flips later on my iPad I found Li Xueying very fascinating article on Robert Wang autobiography. Clever writer. Put up front what most readers would want to know and then they will follow hook, line and sinker to the end. I am not mimicking her strategy since I am blogging for myself.
In times past meritocracy in the imagination of the common man means upward mobility. What Robert Wang has explained is that for HK, that's over. What readers will ask is whether it has also ended for SG. Not as bad as HK but the trend is egregious.
This Type 1 stupid government can defend meritocracy here till blue in the face, and it would not sell. Nobody cared for Koh Poh Koon because the voters know there is scant chance their children can walk the same path. To add insult to injury they even imagine it would be a FT that would get that chance. The people are losing hope and they are trying to understand better how and why things have taken such a turn.
I checked the NLB catalog this morning. Of the 13 copies available only three were out. I just checked before writing this and another seven were checked out in the mean time thanks to Li Xueying's story. I reserved a copy but all copies might be out before the NLB staff retrieve one for me.
The PAP, do they know they are accelerating toward working themselves out of office? But Type I stupid always misread the tea leaves. It's really simple. Why voters voted for them in the past and are those reasons still valid?
Update: Feb 7
Got this from my cousin. Hong Kong Cage Homes.
Simple Moral Philosophy on the PAP government
Rational people, reason, calculate and draw a logical conclusion. Eventually we would even be able to create software that achieve the same and along the timeline someone like Lt. Commander Data as in Star Trek.
Type 1 smart people listen, see and work out things rationally and also with their hearts. There is a larger group of Type 2 smart people who albeit more risky, listen and see with their hearts first and then struggle over working it out with their minds until they get a headache. But you if give them a chance to meet you, shake your hands as Lee Li Lian cleverly did, they are able to use the non verbal messages and clear their doubts and headache. These people understand but are quite poor at articulating how they feel. Thinking and feeling are inseparable. So how can they be smart? The secret is in their values. If they hold on to them, they are safe but for the moments they gave in to greed, that is when they get into trouble. They become victims of frauds conceived with higher intelligence than theirs.
In recent years we have seen evidence of Type 1 smart people, e.g., Lucky Tan who maintains the blog 'Diary of a Singaporean Mind'. I often disagree with him but he is smart. Andrew Loh is another Type 1 person and there is a growing number of them among the alternative political parties especially the WP. People who see the world as it is and not through the lens of dogma.
With Type 2 smart people we don't have a lab test to pick them up at will. If I be permitted to be a little cheeky, we depend on astrological events to find out, e.g., the last by election of Punggol East.
Now let's move to the stupid people. Type 1 stupid people don't know that they are stupid because they mistake their stupidity for some other virtue. E.g., the Population White Paper. The PAP leaders see it as political courage to push this but it is actually political stupidity. There is no need to discuss other types of stupidity. Type 1 stupid people can be the most intelligent but whatever they spin, Type 1 smart people can tell and Type 2 smart people can feel.
I can go on and on about Type 1 stupid people but another much better writer, Nassim Taleb have dissected them thoroughly. He has never made it clearer than ever in his latest book, "Antifragile". I recently read the book and I can see the way the PAP think and operate written all over inside it.
Stupid people whatever types they are eventually find the rope to hang themselves. It can take a very long time to happen and they might even look very smart for a while. Luck can keep stupid people alive for a while. Sometimes even longer than a lifetime!
The ancients understand stupidity more deeply than we do these days. Morality is allergic to stupidity but intelligence can reside with both smart and stupid people. Morality with intelligence produce wisdom and Type 1 smart people. Immorality and worse amorality with intelligence produce Type 1 stupidity with self deception as its crowning characteristic.
Fortunately it is easier to test for stupid people so that we can do something about them: they all traded their common sense for theories, dogmas and models. That was exactly what the young Goh Keng Swee noticed about his colonial bosses. Type 1 smart people use theories and models as tools and are keenly aware of their limits, but Type 1 stupid people take them as oracles and worse combine them to construct the ultimate idol for other type 1 stupid people near and far to admire and worship. That was how I felt when I read the former Civil Service Head Peter Ho speech delivered on Jan 15. Whatever happened to common sense? How did our former Type 1 smart people in government make way for Type 1 stupid people? I think we can borrow an analogue history from Economics: How Physics envy entered and destroyed Economics with Paul Samuelson as their high priest and a bastard form of Keynes ideas for scripture. Our problem in Singapore is government leaders suffered from private sector envy and apply shallow business philosophy to solve public service and governance problems. Philosophically that is why our model of privately run public transport do not work.
Update: 12:40pm
My friend living outside Vancouver just emailed me a whole lot of animal photos and this was the one at the top.
Update: 5:30pm
Thanks to Bertha Henson for providing the latest example of a Type 2 smart family: the Yaps who recently lost their two wonderful boys in "the bedrock of Singapore". See how perfectly it matched the definition I gave this group earlier. Sure some Singaporeans are spoilt but most are not.
Update: Feb 4, 1:20pm
Quoting the very shrewd Type 1 smart former chief economist of GIC Yeoh Lam Kheong which I found at Yahoo News.
"The problem I have with the white paper is that the tradeoffs considered between good jobs and economic dynamism, and population and workforce growth are overly mechanistic, economically simplistic and astonishingly sociologically and politically naive," Yeoh said.
You can see the consequences of Type 1 stupid vs Type 1 smart from Yeoh from the adjectives he had used and where I can tell they came from.
overly mechanistic, economically simplistic - This can only come from theory directed and/or model based computed outcomes. Theories are always simplified and abstracted.
astonishingly sociologically and politically naive - This the consequence of people working on it who are specialists and know very little of what is beyond their box. A smart economist go outside his area of expertise to enrich the deeper thinking and modeling inside his craft. Wasn't it Yeoh who explained why population projection tend to overshoot? It is an insight completely lost in the White Paper. The quality of thinking of this government has fallen and its practice cannot be far behind.
Ah, I found the bit where Yeoh explained why population tend to exceed forecast. A good example of more holistic thinking which the White Paper failed to display. I quote him from the Today Online.
What Yeoh didn't explain is that the strategy in the White Paper will also increase our risk of boom and bust but I can tell this is hidden in Yahoo News quoting him in "astonishingly sociologically and politically naive".
I think the guy personally in charge of this report, DPM Teo is clearly under performing in this role. I have always found him predictable and intellectually boring.
Type 1 smart people listen, see and work out things rationally and also with their hearts. There is a larger group of Type 2 smart people who albeit more risky, listen and see with their hearts first and then struggle over working it out with their minds until they get a headache. But you if give them a chance to meet you, shake your hands as Lee Li Lian cleverly did, they are able to use the non verbal messages and clear their doubts and headache. These people understand but are quite poor at articulating how they feel. Thinking and feeling are inseparable. So how can they be smart? The secret is in their values. If they hold on to them, they are safe but for the moments they gave in to greed, that is when they get into trouble. They become victims of frauds conceived with higher intelligence than theirs.
In recent years we have seen evidence of Type 1 smart people, e.g., Lucky Tan who maintains the blog 'Diary of a Singaporean Mind'. I often disagree with him but he is smart. Andrew Loh is another Type 1 person and there is a growing number of them among the alternative political parties especially the WP. People who see the world as it is and not through the lens of dogma.
With Type 2 smart people we don't have a lab test to pick them up at will. If I be permitted to be a little cheeky, we depend on astrological events to find out, e.g., the last by election of Punggol East.
Now let's move to the stupid people. Type 1 stupid people don't know that they are stupid because they mistake their stupidity for some other virtue. E.g., the Population White Paper. The PAP leaders see it as political courage to push this but it is actually political stupidity. There is no need to discuss other types of stupidity. Type 1 stupid people can be the most intelligent but whatever they spin, Type 1 smart people can tell and Type 2 smart people can feel.
I can go on and on about Type 1 stupid people but another much better writer, Nassim Taleb have dissected them thoroughly. He has never made it clearer than ever in his latest book, "Antifragile". I recently read the book and I can see the way the PAP think and operate written all over inside it.
Stupid people whatever types they are eventually find the rope to hang themselves. It can take a very long time to happen and they might even look very smart for a while. Luck can keep stupid people alive for a while. Sometimes even longer than a lifetime!
The ancients understand stupidity more deeply than we do these days. Morality is allergic to stupidity but intelligence can reside with both smart and stupid people. Morality with intelligence produce wisdom and Type 1 smart people. Immorality and worse amorality with intelligence produce Type 1 stupidity with self deception as its crowning characteristic.
Fortunately it is easier to test for stupid people so that we can do something about them: they all traded their common sense for theories, dogmas and models. That was exactly what the young Goh Keng Swee noticed about his colonial bosses. Type 1 smart people use theories and models as tools and are keenly aware of their limits, but Type 1 stupid people take them as oracles and worse combine them to construct the ultimate idol for other type 1 stupid people near and far to admire and worship. That was how I felt when I read the former Civil Service Head Peter Ho speech delivered on Jan 15. Whatever happened to common sense? How did our former Type 1 smart people in government make way for Type 1 stupid people? I think we can borrow an analogue history from Economics: How Physics envy entered and destroyed Economics with Paul Samuelson as their high priest and a bastard form of Keynes ideas for scripture. Our problem in Singapore is government leaders suffered from private sector envy and apply shallow business philosophy to solve public service and governance problems. Philosophically that is why our model of privately run public transport do not work.
Update: 12:40pm
My friend living outside Vancouver just emailed me a whole lot of animal photos and this was the one at the top.
Update: 5:30pm
Thanks to Bertha Henson for providing the latest example of a Type 2 smart family: the Yaps who recently lost their two wonderful boys in "the bedrock of Singapore". See how perfectly it matched the definition I gave this group earlier. Sure some Singaporeans are spoilt but most are not.
Update: Feb 4, 1:20pm
Quoting the very shrewd Type 1 smart former chief economist of GIC Yeoh Lam Kheong which I found at Yahoo News.
"The problem I have with the white paper is that the tradeoffs considered between good jobs and economic dynamism, and population and workforce growth are overly mechanistic, economically simplistic and astonishingly sociologically and politically naive," Yeoh said.
You can see the consequences of Type 1 stupid vs Type 1 smart from Yeoh from the adjectives he had used and where I can tell they came from.
overly mechanistic, economically simplistic - This can only come from theory directed and/or model based computed outcomes. Theories are always simplified and abstracted.
astonishingly sociologically and politically naive - This the consequence of people working on it who are specialists and know very little of what is beyond their box. A smart economist go outside his area of expertise to enrich the deeper thinking and modeling inside his craft. Wasn't it Yeoh who explained why population projection tend to overshoot? It is an insight completely lost in the White Paper. The quality of thinking of this government has fallen and its practice cannot be far behind.
Ah, I found the bit where Yeoh explained why population tend to exceed forecast. A good example of more holistic thinking which the White Paper failed to display. I quote him from the Today Online.
But Economic Society of Singapore Vice-President Yeoh Lam Keong reiterated that population growth “always tends to exceed projected forecast”.
“Because, firstly, there is very strong demand for labour from existing labour-intensive industries, and industry has a strong influence on immigration policy,” he said.
“Secondly, given economic uncertainty, during the times when we have growth, the Government tends to err on the side of caution and go for more growth. Given these two tendencies, we tend to systematically overshoot population growth, not intentionally, but because of circumstance and current institutional practice.”
What Yeoh didn't explain is that the strategy in the White Paper will also increase our risk of boom and bust but I can tell this is hidden in Yahoo News quoting him in "astonishingly sociologically and politically naive".
I think the guy personally in charge of this report, DPM Teo is clearly under performing in this role. I have always found him predictable and intellectually boring.
"I've forgiven the driver"
I had thought I was among the few who mourn with the family, but soon enough I realized the whole nation mourned with them.
Then I found out that we shared the faith and I wondered if he is able to forgive the driver. Now we are told he has but to be realistic it has to be painted as "I've forgiven the driver". Because there will be moments the couple will feel the loss acutely, the anger and grief will boil to the surface from nowhere inside. It would be easier if you could say somewhere and at least go find and deal with it. Yes, it wasn't typo to say nowhere.
Just as we love because He first loved us; so we forgive because he first forgave us.
What might it feel like to be forgiven. John Newton who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace put it well. Forgiving and forgiveness is given once is good enough but yet in real life is given and received daily!
"You told me that you live in the company of twenty thousand ghosts...slaves..."
"...there is still blood on my hands"
Friday, February 1, 2013
What to do about the Pop. White Paper
I almost wanted to leave an abbreviated form of what I am going to write here at the PM's facebook page but changed my mind after a bit of research.
I think the smart thing to do is for the PM to withdraw the White Paper for the purpose of reworking it in view of citizens' worry and fear. Completely legitimate.
There is no point trying to claim that 6.9 million is the worst case scenario. Most people wouldn't believe him or KBW. Now the PM and his ministers, how they have carried this issue appear like that just joined politics yesterday! Looks pretty bad.
There is a useful example they can learn from Margaret Thatcher fiasco with the poll tax.
Don't cross the Rubicon. Withdraw it before the window to do so closes. Don't even let it get debated in parliament. It would be humiliating. I fear at this rate his Cabinet may not even need to be tested in 2016 over this. Down the road his MPs might revolt. Then what? What is the point of a plan if you cannot be around to implement it? Even if the PAP could be returned to power then, the PM would only be having his job because he promised to abandon it.
George Yeo recommended that the government should rebuild trust with the people first. I think he is right on this score. It is very hard work but guess who tore it down first?
Update: Feb 4, 10am
I only learned over the weekend that parliament sits today. Too late. Anyway this was my version of hope for the best but prepare for the worst. This rule should be used sparingly and best illustrated by my own family's example. We knew our mom have scant chance of beating her Glioblastoma, so we prepared for the worst with an attitude that we would be happy to waste all the money and effort. Similarly I took the same attitude with how this White Paper would hopefully be rejected. On the other hand KBW suggestion that the White Paper is the government best effort to hope for the best but prepare for the worst shows a lack of effort and sincerity because there are so many alternatives.
Those who live by this dictum do not mind being dealt with the worst they have prepared for, which is exactly what we do not want. Eve in nature, our body naturally reject transplanted organs and this government is mad enough to suggest that half of our organs would be transplanted ones when effectively more than half the residents here could be foreign in time to come. No nation can survive this. Might as well quit investing in the SAF now and throw the money to have more kids....
Yes the common sense rule of hoping for the best, getting ready for the worst are for situations where you have no resources, time and choice. Most of our Type 1 smart people are not so stupid to not understand this.
I think the smart thing to do is for the PM to withdraw the White Paper for the purpose of reworking it in view of citizens' worry and fear. Completely legitimate.
There is no point trying to claim that 6.9 million is the worst case scenario. Most people wouldn't believe him or KBW. Now the PM and his ministers, how they have carried this issue appear like that just joined politics yesterday! Looks pretty bad.
There is a useful example they can learn from Margaret Thatcher fiasco with the poll tax.
Don't cross the Rubicon. Withdraw it before the window to do so closes. Don't even let it get debated in parliament. It would be humiliating. I fear at this rate his Cabinet may not even need to be tested in 2016 over this. Down the road his MPs might revolt. Then what? What is the point of a plan if you cannot be around to implement it? Even if the PAP could be returned to power then, the PM would only be having his job because he promised to abandon it.
George Yeo recommended that the government should rebuild trust with the people first. I think he is right on this score. It is very hard work but guess who tore it down first?
Update: Feb 4, 10am
I only learned over the weekend that parliament sits today. Too late. Anyway this was my version of hope for the best but prepare for the worst. This rule should be used sparingly and best illustrated by my own family's example. We knew our mom have scant chance of beating her Glioblastoma, so we prepared for the worst with an attitude that we would be happy to waste all the money and effort. Similarly I took the same attitude with how this White Paper would hopefully be rejected. On the other hand KBW suggestion that the White Paper is the government best effort to hope for the best but prepare for the worst shows a lack of effort and sincerity because there are so many alternatives.
Those who live by this dictum do not mind being dealt with the worst they have prepared for, which is exactly what we do not want. Eve in nature, our body naturally reject transplanted organs and this government is mad enough to suggest that half of our organs would be transplanted ones when effectively more than half the residents here could be foreign in time to come. No nation can survive this. Might as well quit investing in the SAF now and throw the money to have more kids....
Yes the common sense rule of hoping for the best, getting ready for the worst are for situations where you have no resources, time and choice. Most of our Type 1 smart people are not so stupid to not understand this.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
SG Land Use: The End of US
I got this from ST '5,600 hectares more land for bigger population: Land Use Plan'
As I moved my mouse pointer over those circles, it dawn on me that we are going to become one big construction site in a hurry. I find the prospect revolting.
I am not bothering to explain the reasons from Chaos and Complexity Science here but I know they are going to screw up. There will not be congestion everywhere but there will be bad and surprising jams ambushing us, i.e., poor quality of living. Everyone will have to carry a GPS or use the unit in their smart phone to constantly check traffic and prepare to re-route. Good luck if you are riding a bus, only cars have re-routing options. Now I am only foreseeing what's like with a limited imagination. It would be worse. Meanwhile the elites (riding in cars that re-route around congestions) will enjoy the lion share of the fruits but the hoi polloi will pay the price.
By the way, who is studying the water and energy needs of such an enlarged population?
I think the PAP government could be voted out mid way before this become reality. Also like I had written in an earlier post, what make them so sure if you build the FTs will come? We might, damn it, have to price ourselves down to get them in. The trouble with all these plans is that it extrapolates into the future. It is a sure way to get it wrong as over time there are bound to be discontinuities. There is no flexibility or wisdom behind the thinking that produce these plans.
This is a terrible plan that rewards and entrenches the bad low quality economic policies of the PAP government. It is an industrial age mindset of pumping more and more inputs to get growth instead of counting on innovation and creativity. This is the result of their long years of tight top down control of the economy. Innovation and creativity is bottom up.
This government doesn't understand any alternative strategy beyond first world goods and services at third world prices - Didn't I just say we might have to price down earlier on and aren't we already doing so now and depressing wages as a result? You can forget about work life balance. We will get the big population but the three promises of the Population White Paper will only be a mirage. Because if they try to pass on first world wages, like SIA we can't compete. Why should citizens support this?
This government will promise the sky but have us end up in tears and chanting the mantra of better, cheaper and faster or starve. Then we will get high growth (easily 6% or more because of the building works) better than their projection in the White Paper till 2030 but our best and brightest will leave faster than ever. Quitters will re-enter our lexicon eh? But they are smart to leave before it is too late. You don't get quality and vibrancy when you are competing on price.
Update: 2:15pm
Just found this on CNA, "2 new commercial belts to bring jobs closer to homes"
Sounds good on paper but in real life it doesn't work well unless the commercial belts are separated far enough to discourage executives, couriers on motorbikes etc., moving between belts and contributing immensely to off peak vehicular traffic. In bigger countries, you don't on a whim drive or fly from NY to Chicago. But we our small island people will be driving to and fro between these commercial belts. Sometimes the same people do more than one round trip even in a business day.
Also with our years of town planning experience to imagine that people will live near where they work is naive. You go where there is a suitable job and what is the chance that it would be near where you live? Secondary school students very often can't walk to their schools unlike primary ones because their PSLE T-scores invariably send them much farther away. Our planners are so wishful and theoretical. More likely just like AIMgate they never bother to think through this thoroughly. It is like some say, they have made up their mind to grow the population and are now looking for justifications. That's why their arguments look so weak. They have hidden nefarious motives?
Update: 9:30pm
I talked about congestion in my main post and here is a concrete example. 6.9 million people will occasionally have a large proportion of them congregate at a spot....
- Roy Tay Higher per capita GDP does NOT equate higher standard of living, if overcrowding & high cost of living persist...
One very good example: I can't bear to see the day when I can't even step foot into Chinatown during CNY festive season by 2030... No matter how many flats & railways the Govt build, it cannot channel crowds away from certain public places during festive, public holidays. Then what's the point of building Garden by the Bay, isn't it? Wake up before its too late, this immigration-led model is politically suicide for PAP.
Also look at how dishonest the picture from the PM's facebook page is. Can you imagine that there will be so few people? I think you can get his sometimes in 2030 as the occasional exception.
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