Planning the next game for the nation

I refer to the Straits Time interview of outgoing EDB chief Mr Lim Siong Guan published on the 24 Jun 2009. In the interview, Mr Lim is said to have turned the table on his critics who accuse his bureau of being overly reliant on large MNCs for job creation and growth.

Mr Lim asks which MNC shouldn’t be here? A better question Mr Lim can ask is which MNC here could have been Singapore’s with the lion’s share of profits going to the republic? Mr. Lim asks which MNC is suppressing Singapore companies from coming up? A better question Mr. Lim can ask is what wonderful MNCs EDB might have come up with had it been earnest in developing them?

So by asking the wrong questions, Mr Lim sweeps away more important questions that are left unanswered. Mr Lim gives the example of oil refineries. This is a good example to support his case because you need to control the oil fields to control oil refining and Singapore doesn’t control any oil fields. However, he gives another not-so-good example of wafer fabrication which the Taiwanese have become very successful in. This is one example whereby Singapore may have had a fighitng chance but the EDB would rather be contented with receiving technology from other countries and hence playing second fiddle always.

Mr Lim refuses to believe that his agency has been wrong to gamble a sizeable share of the nation’s resources on biomedical science. Mr Lim says that his bureau talks to companies who then tell him what is good to invest in. If companies think that biomedical sciences is a sure bet winner, why would they bother to tell Mr Lim? Why not keep a good secret to themselves? If Steve Jobs relied on going around and asking people what kind of phones or walkmans they wanted, you can be sure that the world wouldn’t have seen the advent of the Ipod or the Iphone.

Mr Lim says he also talks to scholarship applicants. If scholarship applicants really had bright ideas and are entreprenuerial enough, they would have set up their own companies wouldn’t they? Finally, Mr Lim speaks to experts who supposedly can predict mega trends. Did any of these experts predict the recent worldwide financial crisis? So in the end, his agency is nothing but a call centre, making phone calls to strangers and saying “hi” to them. You wonder if you even need a degree to do that.

Mr Lim is right to say that we have to be at the forefront of this game so that others wouldn’t. But the question is: is this the best game we can play? How long can we play this game? Do we still play five stones when we are 40 years old? The game that we play has to change as we mature as a nation.

Mr Lim prides his agency for being the number one pleaser of MNCs. And so we remain a hostess forever, never a big boss.

Mr Lim rejects the argument that MNCs have hindered the development of local companies by saying that they are now highly interdependent. But being interdependent doesn’t say anything about the share of profits each gets from the value chain. The MNCs get to keep the lion’s share of profits in the value chain while the local companies get a measely fraction of those profits. Surely it would have been better for Singapore if the situation had been the other way round?

How can one possibly conclude that MNCs have staying power solely on the premise that 70% of new investments are from MNCs that are already here? If 90% of MNCs left Singapore, that means only 10% of MNCs stayed even if that 10% subsequently contributed 70% of new investments. So Mr Lim is giving a false impression of MNC loyalty by using a smoke screen measurement. What he is doing is akin to measuring the loyalty of new immigrants not by how many percent of them stay over time but by how much those who stayed contributed to our GDP.

Mr Lim asks where in the world can you hire a German, Chinese and Indian all in one office? I don’t see why that is such a big deal. I don’t see why you can’t have that elsewhere in the world. The German, Chinese and Indian can come together because they all speak English. But English is an International language spoken in many places. Since the whole world is learning Chinese now, very soon, the German, Chinese and Indian can all speak Chinese in any of the Chinese cities. So the concept of host to home is nothing but a namesake – cheap namesake.

Mr Lim says that the EDB should be judged on how well they draw in investments, which is the same game Singapore has been playing for the last 40 years or so. So do you judge a 40-year old on how well he plays five stones?

Mr Lim says that the day that Singapore doesn’t need EDB would be a good day for Singapore. I think it would be a better day if the EDB can finally create a truly world class MNC that we can truly call our own.

Pay, talent, government – take a look at Singapore

I refer to an article by Mr David Rothkopf that was carried by the Straits Times on 19 Jun 2009.

Mr. Rothkopf feels that America is not paying its government officials enough and is advocating that the country look to Singapore for answers.

Mr. Rothkopf claims that he hasn’t met anyone in Singapore who complains about the grossly unfair and astronomical government pay. This is unsurprising considering that Mr. Rothkopf was probably surrounded by govt officials in his short stay here. He should ask any average Singaporean or a taxi driver or go to Singapore Internet forums to find out deep seated anger and resentment at the obscene pay our ministers has been getting.

Mr. Rothkopf mistakenly believes that the extraordinary success of Singapore has everything to do with our govt, which is a falsehood. Singapore is not the only extraordinary success on the face of this earth. It is merely one of four East Asian dragons who have all been extraordinary compared to other third world countries struggling to achieve prosperity over the last four decades. Now what is common amongst the East Asian dragons? Simply said, they are East Asians. How else can we explain why of the hundreds of developing countries around the world, only four achieved extraordinary success and somehow miraculously, all four happen to be in East Asia? The growing success of China and the already successful Japan further support this thesis.

Mr. Rothkopf thinks that the US has been underpaying its government officials which led to talent flocking to the private sector, thus overcrowding it. If he can think that way, then he should understand that it is precisely because our govt has been paying themselves too well that top brains can afford to rot themselves in the ministries so much so that our private enterprise has suffered. Apart from the SIA, we have no technological big names like those of Korea and Taiwan to boast of. Here in Singapore, we have the opposite of the problem Mr. Rothkopf described. Our ministries are over crowded and lowering compensations would be a good way to lessen the crowd. Just as lessening executive pay in the US would help to alleviate over crowding in private enterprise too.

Mr, Rothkopf is also a fervent admirer of Singapore’s Changi airport which is understandable because it is indeed an excellent airport, one that its people can be proud of. But in case he doesn’t already know, this year’s airport rankings have seen both Korea and Hong Kong overtake Singapore. So in the case of airports, once again we see that excellence is not a uniquely Singaporean trait, it runs in the other East Asian dragons too, further supporting the thesis that it is who we are as a nation of people that makes the difference.

Mr. Rothkopf sees Singapore as the best run political entity. But the best run political entity is a mere facade. Behind that beautiful facade is untold suffering that he as a foreigner would find hard to see. It is hidden in small pigeon holes in HDB estates and surfaces every now and then when people commit suicide by getting themselves run over by the train.

Mr. Rothkopf thinks that Singapore was led from the start by Lee Kuan Yew which is untrue because Lee Kuan Yew inherited Singapore from the British so before him, Singapore was led by the British. He labels Singapore politics as ‘constrained democracy’ which sounds nice for what is virtually absolutism and dictatorship.

He was also wrong to say that Singapore had to trade freedom for prosperity. The other three East Asian dragons – Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea achieved prosperity without compromising freedom. So the need to trade freedom for prosperity is a mere myth that is being perpetuated by people like Mr. Rothkopf to lock the Singaporean mentality into perpetual slavery. Singapore, like the other East Asian dragons achieved prosperity because of who we are as a people, not because of the govt. In fact, as a British colony way before Lee Kuan Yew was born, Singapore was already a prosperous city in Southeast Asia and it still is.

Mr. Rothkopf was told by a Singapore state representative that the state was the entrepreneur right from the beginning. What do you expect a state representative to say Mr. Rothkopf? That the state is a good-for-nothing leech sucking on its citizens to grow fat? If only he had a cursory understanding of Singapore’s history, he would know that some of the most successful early enterpreneurs in Singapore like Tan Kah Kee and Lee Kong Chian have made their mark perhaps even before Lee Kuan Yew was born. So this is again nothing but another falsehood that govt officials would be most pleased to serve him.

Mr. Rothkopf finds the Singapore government unique in paying astronomical sums to government officials. But uniqueness in government compensation does not mean it is necessarily right or acceptable. The people are frustrated but have no say. Only in an autocratic country would you find such a situation. So uniqueness in this case simply means autocracy. I bet General Tan Shwe of Myanmar and Kim II Sung of North Korea are paying themselves very well too in their respective kingdoms.

Mr. Rothkopf also mistakenly sees that mulit-million dollar salaries led to zero corruption in Singapore. There was little or no corruption in Singapore right from the start when there were no multi-million dollar salaries. If there was no corruption to begin with, it would be false to say that money helped to eliminate corruption. Furthermore, what is the difference between using money to fight corruption and corruption itself? In both cases, money is taken isn’t it?

Mr Rothkopf calls the recent one-fifth pay cut by our ministers an innovation. Doesn’t he know, that a tiny dot of a country where leaders command 600% the salary of the leader of the world’s most prosperous country is an even bigger innovation?

Willing buyer, willing seller – the myth of the HDB resale market

The notion that HDB resale prices are market driven and therefore not determined by the govt is a widely held but rarely questioned belief. Even in a willing buyer, willing seller environment, there is a need to fully understand all the forces operating on the housing market and influencing the equilibrium price.

Let’s talk about willing buyer first. Basic economics tells us that when demand increases, equilibrium price increases too. A fundamental determinant of housing demand is people. More people means more demand for housing. Who determines people? Who controls the flood gates to immigration? The answer is invariably the govt. There has been a sharp increase in the number of immigrants and foreign workers in recent years. The govt’s ‘economic strategy’ of mindlessly importing ‘foreign talent’ not only puts untold pressure on space and housing prices, it also reveals their lack of better alternatives to grow the economy.

What about willing seller? Can a HDB reseller price his flat at half a million dollars if the govt builds a new one right next door at half the price? Certainly not. It is precisely because not enough new flats are being built where they are wanted that existing flats can command a premium. The lack of land in mature estates is one such reason, the sale of such land to private condominium developers is another. But even where land is available and is used to build new flats, the govt doesn’t price the flats at a level that discourages price escalation. The new flats are pegged to the ‘open’ market flats. When the ‘open’ market price shoots up, the new flat prices also shoots up, which in turn keeps the ‘open’ market price up in a positive feedback mechanism that accentuates the already unhealthily high flat prices.

Then there are those who appeal to MPs for a third flat and hope to make a quick buck out of it. The HDB is first and foremost a roof over the commoners’ heads and shouldn’t be used as a tool to make money. Such speculative behaviour will only put more pressure on housing prices.

The fact that there are many buyers in the open market doesn’t necessarily mean that resale flats are within the people’s affordability. Because people do not normally pay up the entire price of the HDB upfront, the question of affordability becomes obscured. What is true is that people can afford the monthly HDB mortgages but whether they can afford the entire flat is a different story altogether. First we are assuming they can keep their jobs for the rest of their lives but many are being retrenched now. Next we are assumming that they have enough left for old age but many would probably spend their entire lives slogging to pay off their HDB leaving little money for retirement. Lastly, having spent so much on the HDB, people have little left over to tide over difficult times and to improve the quality of their lives.

The fact that HDB resale transactions are active doesn’t imply that people are necessarily happy about it. Many have no choice. Newly weds whose parents’ homes are over crowded and can’t wait three years for new flats have no choice but to buy from the resale market. The fact that the waiting time for new flats is 3 to 4 years simply means that the govt is not building enough to satisfy demand so much so that people have no choice but to turn to the resale market.

So by not building enough new HDBs fast enough to cater to the rapid influx of people into this island, and by not pricing them at a level that discourages price escalation, the govt has in fact driven up the price of the HDB.

So we can see the many intricacies of HDB price determination and how the final arbiter of housing prices in Singapore is ultimately the country’s supreme landlord – the govt.

Singapore needs to raise its game

I refer to the report “Singapore needs to raise its game” by Ms Clarissa Oon (Straits Times, 30 May 2009). In the report, Mr Lim Swee Say urged Singapore engineers to be the best engineers in the world.

What can the best engineer amount to without the best company? Nothing much really. The best companies attract the best engineers and the best engineers go to the best companies. So it is not about becoming the best engineers, it is about nurturing the best companies, something that the PAP government has neglected all this while.

The over-reliance on foreign multinationals has meant that Singapore never really outgrew its manufacturing role. The foreign multinational tells us what to make and how to make them and we make them. We never learnt to make things for ourselves. That’s why we have always been stuck at first gear. Our so-called moving up the value chain is nothing more than doing more of the same thing. Who to blame but the PAP?

Mr Lim says that China is politically stable despite not having any elections. What about North Korea? No elections, politically unchanging yet a time bomb nonetheless to all its neighbours. So political monopoly does not imply stability. Political monopoly means that the country can be easily dragged down by a selfish despot.

Mr Lim says that India is politically less stable despite elections. Changes in political leadership does not imply that the country is politically less stable. The fact that the country and its economy can continue unaffected shows that there is political stability despite political changes, much like that in America, Japan and elsewhere.

While it appears that Singapore may have the best of both worlds, the truth may be otherwise. Myanmmar has elections too. But after elections, Aung Sang Su Ki is still locked away and the military junta is still running the country. What is the point of such elections? As good as no elections.

Opposition is best check against graft? MPs rebut Low’s claim

I refer to the Straits Times report (27 May 2009) by Mr Zakir Hussain “Opposition is best check against graft? MPs rebut Low’s claim.”

In it, Ms Indranee Rajah asked why so many countries with multi-party systems still see deep seated and endemic corruption. If she is truly objective and unbiased, she should also ask the question why, with the exception of Singapore, all the least corrupt countries in this world have multi-party systems.

So while she is right in saying that it doesn’t mean that every country which has an opposition will be squeaky clean, it is true that nearly all the countries that are respectably clean have an effective opposition. The fact that Singapore doesn’t follow the norm doesn’t detract from the fact that an effective opposition is a key feature in nearly all clean nations today.

When she says that the PAP expects the highest standards of integrity, she must not forget to add that the PAP cabinet ministers and its MPs are paid the highest salaries in this world. Seems like when you pay the highest salaries, you get the highest standards of integrity. We should ask ourselves, if we are paid such high salaries, why do we even need to risk corruption? If the money is already served to us on a silver platter over the dining table, why is there a need to take money from under the table?

The value system from the time of internal self government is no longer the value system now. Now, the value system is about million dollar salaries and constantly asking for more millions each and every year. I really don’t know what has that got to do with integrity and honesty.

She says that the people has the liberty to vote out the PAP. But when you allow each minister to contest for five or six seats that leads to massive walkovers, what chance is there? Furthermore, isn’t the PAP policy of tying lift upgrading to voting a form of vote buying too? Is that her so-called example of honesty and integrity?

She says that the possibility of future PAP corruption is mere speculation and that people shouldn’t vote on the basis of speculation. But the PAP just withdrew a large sum of money from our reserves on the possibility that this recession could get worse. Is that speculation? So we shouldn’t draw from our reserves based on speculation? Surely, speculation is a mere word that she and I use for our own purposes that does not necessarily mean anything.

The fact that the CPIB reports to the PM means it cannot be above any possible corruption by the PM can it, Ms Rajah?

She says that the opposition should earn their constituencies. Does she mean that all those vitrually unknown PAP candidates that have since become MPs have earned their contituencies? Surely she must be joking? Did she earn her constituency? Or did she merely ride on someone else’s coat tail?

Is it too much to ask to be fair Ms Rajah? In the first place, why would one need to ask for fairness if one is dealing with a gentleman? Only when one is dealing with a ruffian or a bully does one seek fairness.

Mrs Josephine Teo says that very often an opposition wins against corruption and becomes corrupt itself. Has she seen Mr Obama becoming corrupt? He just won back the USA from the Republicans, has he become corrupt?

Mrs Teo champions the need to make the PAP the strongest team so that it does not fail Singaporeans. What has that PAP strength brought to Singaporeans? ERP, COE, the world’s most expensive public housing. Sadam Hussein was the strongest man in Iraq, a fact that helped him extract the most from his fellow countrymen.

Govt help is not first port of call

I refer to Mr Sam Tan’s speech in parliament that was reported by Ms Lee Siew Hua on 26 May 2009. In that speech, he likened the current recession cushioning by the Government to a father lining the streets with cushions so that a falling child will not hurt himself.

The analogy is inappropriate as it does not adequately describe the full relationship between father and son. The situation we have here is akin to a son working for his father for little or no pay much like what is happening in rural India where child labour is rampant. So the father enriches himself tremendously with all the child labour that he has been getting but the child remains impoverished. Worse still, the enriched father doesn’t take care that the streets are well paved and that pot holes are filled up. Now we have roads that are but dirt roads filled with rocks and stones that are out to trip a child and make him fall.

That is why the father is now paving the road properly so that the son can ride safely. The father is doing what he is supposed to have done right from the beginning, something he failed to do all along.

To bring the analogy back to reality. The roads are the cost of living that we the citizens of Singapore have to negotiate and overcome everyday. With the influx of immigrants, housing prices have skyrockected. HDB prices have gone up by a at least a hundred thousand dollars overnight. This time round, it does not seem that the price will ever come down again. This permanent increase in housing cost is a real burden to the people of Singapore that weighs heaviliy on them.

So you see, our roads are not that cushiony after all. The increase in housing prices all over Singapore goes ultimately to state coffers. All that we worked for all our lives goes ultimately to state coffers. We the citizens are threading on a very bare line. There is very little cushion we can afford for ourselves. What the government is doing is to give back a little bit of what the child labour deserves in the first place.

Ask yourself, can you even find a handful of nations in this world with more expensive public housing than Singapore? We have the most expensive public housing in this world but we don’t have the world’s highest salaries. Are we being treated fairly?

They say that in times of famine, humans turn cannibals. When the citizens are threading on such a thin line, with barely sufficient resources to support themselves, where to find extra resources to fund others?

Remember everything here is calculated to extract the maximum from each citizen. We have very little left to share and to give.

Teaching core values is good. That means teaching the government too. That the citizens deserve a decent cost of living and not squeezed till they have absolutely nothing to spare.

So don’t blame us for having little to spare. Ask the government why we have little to spare please.

Only an A-Team will do

Straits Times, 25 Oct 2008

MM Lee said he chose to invest in Suzhou because Suzhou has a lot of extremely smart people and that’s why Suzhou succeeded. Yes, Suzhou people are so smart that a large chunk of our investment got makan by them. So much for being successful. Who is he kidding?

He says the younger generation doesn’t know how we got here and how it rested on discipline and tough minded leadership. How can the younger generation not know when they are required to study it in secondary school? What the younger generation doesn’t know is how the success of our nation has little to do with tough minded leadership but the quality of its people.

MM likes to emphasize that without his tough minded leadership, Singapore will go back to square one and never rise again. You look at Taiwan and Korea both of which have gone from tough minded leadership to liberty for the people and they still stand tall. Hong Kong too has never had tough minded leadership but never fell too. So you have to suspect that Lee’s talk is all hot air but no substance.

Lee emphasized connection to the world. But Singapore was founded back in 1819 by Sir Stamford Raffles to connect to the world. So it is a credit to Raffles, not LKY. Similarly, traits like rule of law, transparency, fair play and meritocracy are inheritances from our British colonial past, evident in Hong Kong too. So again, the credit goes to the British, not LKY.

Lee says he trained people not to litter and other social habits. But we still have so many litter bugs today and we spend millions every year to clean up the streets. Even he conceded that he will never see a gracious Singapore in his lifetime. So he seems to have amnesia because one moment he says one thing, next moment he says another thing. Perhaps it’s time for him to retire?

He says that if a Chinese or Indian goes to America, he becomes Americanised. But if an American goes to China or India, he cannot Americanise China or India. How silly his logic is. It is reasonable to say that the individual adapts to the country he is in, it is silly to suggest that the country adapts to the individual. MM cites the infinitesimal numbers of Christian converts in China and India as proof. But historically, how was Christianity spread in large numbers? Through mass murders. Christianity spread through Europe because Christian Europeans slaughtered their Pagan neighbours. Similarly Christianity spread through the Americas because the indigenous people were slaughtered. MM Lee doesn’t seem to understand history vey well and so makes silly conclusions.

Finally MM says that it’s ok for the top tier migrants to be mostly foreigners but in the middle tier, Singaporeans should outnumber migrants. In other words, MM believes in a Singapore that is predominantly run by migrants with Singaporeans doing all the leg work for them. That’s our MM, ever a firm believer of Singaporean slaves working for foreigner masters.

The successful must care about the less well off

Sunday Times, 14 Sept 2008

MM Lee asked Michael Blooberg what he intended to do with his billion dollar wealth. Bloomberg said his children will not need it except perhaps enough to get them started so the rest is going to charity.

With this, MM Lee urges the successful here to practise more philantrophy.

What hypocrisy? Has MM Lee ever donated any significant sum of money to any charity despite his enormous wealth? The least he could do is to donate his $90,000 a month salary to the charity since neither he nor his children will need it.

Foreign workers in Serangoon Gardens

See how Balestier residents cope – 11 Oct 2008

Dr Edmund Lam wrote to the Straits Times forum on 11 Oct 2008 to express his bewiderment at the furore over the foreign workers dormitories in Serangoon Gardens. He sites his own experience of living along Balestier Road as proof that foreign workers and residents can co-exist amicable side by side.

My brother too lives in the Balestier area and he too finds the neighbourhood peaceful and lovely. However, whenever he brings his children to visit their granny, he never fails to curse and swear at the thickness of the foreign worker crowd in Little India. Perhaps herein lies the truth behind Dr Lam’s perceived state of peace in his neighbourhood, Balestier is near to Little India and so workers in Balestier all flock to Little India.

So unless Dr Lam experiences what my brother or myself experiences day after day, year after year, he is in absolutely no position to comment on the liveability amongst throngs of foreign workers.

Dr Lam also said that his property price went up despite the foreign workers. Flat prices in Little India also went up over time. The problem is, when the flats in Little India were first launched, it set record prices but Little India wasn’t called Little India then. Now, with Little India firmly entrenched, Little India flats no longer commands a premium over less central estates like Bishan or Toa Payoh. So the foreign worker environment has indeed dampened property prices.

Voice of reason amid sound and fury – 17 Oct 2008

In an interview with the Straits Times, Mrs Lim Hwee Hua wondered if the original occupants of Singapore had held anti-foreigner views, what would we have become? That is like asking what would America have become had the red Indians been hostile to the first White immigrants or what would Australia have become if the Aborigines didn’t welcome them too.

The truth of course was that neither the American Indians nor the Australian aborigines had any choice because their lands were taken over by the might of European guns. Similarly, I doubt the original occupants of Singapore were any less anti-foreigner but who had little choice but to accept British rule. Therefore, contrary to what Mrs Lim suggests, Singapore is what it is today not by grace of its original inhabitants but by the might of the British Empire.

Mrs Lim also highlights the need to not stereotype foreign workers with certain behaviours. But these behaviours are real and not stereotypes. A flat in the heart of Little India typically reaks of urine. A colleague once suggested to me that perhaps it isn’t urine smell but Indian smell. How can I not tell urine smell from Indian smell? In any case, I am not the only one who is affected, my wife complains of the same thing because we always go out together.

Not only do they urine, they do it right in front of you. Once while walking home, my wife counted a total of three incidences where the worker literally unzipped right in front of us and urinated on the spot. Urine is not the only thing, you sometimes find shit and vomit too. Unless one personally experiences 50 to a 100 foreign workers crowded in one’s void deck every Sunday, one is in no position to blame another of being xenophobic. There is also the occasional shouting and fighting with glass bottles being smashed. The police do take their time to come even though the police station is nearby.

Sacrifice votes or economy? No contest – 19 Oct 2008

Finally, George Yeo tried to confound the issue by saying this is an economic prerogative and so dominates over the social issue of foreign workers. If Singaporeans can be housed in the far flung corners of Singapore, why can’t the foreign workers? This is clearly a question of where to house the workers, which is never an economic question. So that’s how the government confuses the issue to make their decisions appear more justifiable than they really are.

Suggestions not welcome

I belong to a strange department. We pride ourselves with a very thorough cycle of quality control and so we are convinced that our final product is flawless, unchallengeable and to be defended till death. So when our users spot issues here and there, instead of being gratuitous and improving on our product, we ask them to post their suggestions to www.trash.com. We are not interested in their suggestions to the product, we are only interested in how best they can make use of the product to do their job.

The root of the problem stems from the fact that the product is shown to the users only one week before its scheduled launch so there’s really no time to make changes whatsover. What needs to be done is for the product to be shown to the users one month in advance so that there is sufficient time to gather feedback and improve. It just doesn’t seem wise that the well intention and collective wisdom of so many good users are simply ignored. When the users’ suggestions get brushed aside once too often, they will end up switching off and choose not to say anything anymore. And yet our department wonders why the users are so quiet these days.