Singapore Chocolate Factory

The National Integration Council announced plans for a $10m fund to facilitate efforts to help new immigrants integrate into the local community. The $10m fund can be used for co-funding of projects by private and public organizations or societies that promote social cohesion amongst citizens and new immigrants. In true Singapore fashion, the government wasted no time in packaging this initiative into a national media campaign and solicited the artistic community to lend a helping hand. Unexpectedly, the arts fraternity declined to take up the offer. The reasons given by the leaders of the community for declining the government's offer include the reluctance by the artists to engage in propaganda art as well as the basic difference in opinion for fostering social integration in Singapore. Many in the arts circle feel that the government's approach to try to create a common identity and culture amongst different community groups is the opposite of their vision of a celebration of diversity and promotion of healthy interaction and dialogue amongst the different groups. The artists' deliberate dissociation with the campaign seemed to me to be of an ideological and technical nature. For someone with little or no artistic talent or inclination, my concerns are much more prosaic and ordinary.

Let me begin with a story.

There is a factory that produces chocolates for sale. There are 20 bakers working in the factory and a manager to keep things running smoothly. Work is hot and stuffy but there is a big fan to keep things bearable and the bakers are satisfied with their jobs. As the factory is working well, orders for its chocolates started pouring in and the manager realizes that 20 bakers may not be enough to meet the orders. He wants to produce the numbers to present to higher management but is also worried about rising costs if he implements overtime pay for his bakers. He then sees some gardeners working outside the factory. He figures that chocolate-making isn't really a difficult art anyway and decides to employ the gardeners to be his new bakers. The gardeners, due to their inexperience, were much cheaper than the experienced bakers but they didn't mind since baking beats gardening anytime anyway. The manager got to meet his production numbers while keeping costs low. However, with the addition of the new bakers, the factory was getting more crowded and hotter and the bakers started complaining. The manager had to turn up the fan to its maximum speed to keep the temperature and tempers down. Some bakers warned that the fan was never meant to be operated at that speed for a prolonged period of time but the manager didn't listen. True enough, the fan soon broke down and the workers had to pool together a big sum of money out of their meagre pay to get the fan fixed since it is essential for their daily work. The manager did not contribute since he did not work directly with the bakers but spent most of his time in his air-conditioned office. He reminded the bakers that the fan was a luxury provided by the factory which should not be taken for granted and thus the factory should not be held liable for its repairs. The fan was nevertheless repaired with the bakers' money and the orders were met on time. For his leadership, the manager was awarded with an extra month of salary. Using the spare change from this his bonus, the manager bought a packet of sweets to be shared amongst his bakers for a job well done and encouraged them to take 5 minutes off to get to know each other better before starting work on the new orders.

Can anyone identify with the bakers in the story above? While $10m does sound like a lot of money, I consider this sum of money to be only the explicit cost of social integration of the new immigrants in Singapore. The implicit costs are way higher and I believe that the local populace, rather than the government, bears the bulk of this unintended burden. I feel that the roots of dissatisfaction of the local population with the new immigrants do not primarily lie in the cultural or racial differences. There will be undoubtedly small amounts of conflict arising from the differences in culture, race, language and religion between the local population and the new immigrants. Every now and then we will still have the minor disagreements with our neighbors and friends, regardless of their race, religion, sex or age. We have always been able to resolve these differences and I believe we will continue to do so if the differences are of this benign nature. The widespread discontent with new immigrants, spreading like wild fire within the media and cyberspace, is due to matters much more tangible and realistic; that of property, jobs and quality of life.

The effects that the influx of immigrants has had on property and jobs have been widely discussed. The strain the increasing population places on our transportation system is another no brainer which I do not wish to elaborate. What cannot be denied is that in more ways than one, the influx of immigrants does not seem to have caused a positive change in the lives of the majority of Singaporeans. In fact many will argue it is quite the opposite. The root causes of the social unrest remains unresolved. Furthermore these causes seems unlikely to be ratified any time soon. No amount of advertisements and posters protraying neighbours holding hands, exercising together or any other imagery of inter-racial harmony will change that. Some will argue that some improvement, no matter how insignificant and irrelevant, is still better than no improvement at all and I have to agree with that. One sweet is better than no sweets at all right? Years after the "Speak Good English" campaign, we still have a certain Miss Ris Low appearing on national TV to "boomz" the audience. This social integration effort by the council will follow a similar fate. Singaporeans will remember the campaign slogan, perhaps the campaign mascot as well. But the real healer to the social pains we are experiencing now will not be due to this initiative of the council. Instead it will be the uncanny ability of Singaporeans to endure, rationalize then accept the status quo. That is the true Singaporean virtue and that is how the immigrants will be accepted and integrated into Singapore.

But just take a moment to consider. If Singapore is indeed like a chocolate factory, are common Singaporean like the bakers? If the bakers paid for a fan they did not break, are Singaporeans paying for the effects of asset inflation and crushing debts which they were not responsible for? If the cheap sweets were scant consolation to the bakers, would a $10m sweetener from a multi-billion GDP (thus bonus) windfall make any difference to the common Singaporeans? We need to ask ourselves if the common Singaporean is indeed a baker and if benefits for the factory equates just rewards for the bakers. What is the rationale in what we are doing as a country and can there be a better way out? There are the questions we need to ask ourselves if we do not want to end up like a typical baker in the Singapore Chocolate Factory.

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Deceptive Statistics

In a review article in the Straits Times last Saturday, a certain Professor Ivan Png argued that the “foreign worker buffer” was working as intended. Prime Minister Lee had also reiterated this in his speech to NTU students in his forum (see above) in NTU. Similar as the two views may seem to be, they were in fact different and I will explain why.

Many have assumed that Prof Png’s article was just another unmitigated attempt by the media to drum up support for the government’s labor policies. Actually I think that is not the case here. The professor’s article was a simplified version of a more technical consideration. Like all scholars, his view is that of an unbiased nature, stating the facts as what it is. There is no moral right or wrong in argument, instead it is simply a matter of facts and accuracy. Using foreign labor as a buffering mechanism to prop up the unemployment figures is an established method utilized by many governments to “enhance” that statistic. Singapore is not alone in doing so. The only difference is that perhaps only in Singapore, the touch-up work done to the unemployment statistic was not shamefully grossed over in the media but printed in bold as if to represent some kind of righteous justification. Let me illustrate with a simple example.

Take for example there are 7 unemployed Singaporeans for every 100 Singaporeans. That is 7% unemployment. Say we are in good times and the industries need to recruit 8 of every 100 people more. Because we only have 5 suitable local workers for this employment, we need to import 3 foreign workers. The unemployment ratio would have dropped from 7% to 1.9% (2/103). If there wasn’t foreign workers import, the unemployment rate would be 2%. Therefore in a booming economy, foreign labor help reduce the unemployment rate more quickly. Now, say the economy turned southwards and the industries are laying off 4 of every 100 people which we can reasonably assume will be 50% local Singaporeans and 50% foreigners. The unemployment ratio would have risen from 1.9% to 4% (4/100). Without foreign workers, the unemployment rate would be 6%. The foreign workers would have returned back to their country and do not contribute to the ratio’s denominator here. Therefore in a lagging economy, foreign labor help cushion the rise in unemployment rate.

This is the “buffer” effect the professor was talking about in his article. Whether such mechanism does indeed benefit the host country as a whole is debatable and personally I think it is nothing but a statistical disguise. But its efficacy of suppressing the unemployment rate cannot be denied.

Now, once we understand how this buffering mechanism is supposed to work, we must then think deeper into its exact usefulness and relevance to the country and its citizens. As seen from the simple example above, regardless of the overall unemployment figure, the number of Singaporeans employed during good times and laid off during bad times remains constant. If that is the case, the unemployment figure is but another test score on our government’s report card which it will use to pat itself on it pat for a job “well done”. The statistic means little if it doesn’t translate into actual effects for the people of Singapore.

More and more, national statistics are like playthings of the rich and powerful, used to justify the whims and fancies of the decision-makers. We have politicians that use statistical cosmetic surgery as an advertisement for the government’s labor policies instead of being red-faced and embarrassed for data manipulation. Either they do not understand what they are saying or they think we don’t. With a majority of the local population that takes every at face value and forgets to read between the lines after glancing through the headlines, such nonsensical and erroneous usage of statistics will continue to be tolerated and increasingly, accepted as the biblical truth. The people who blasted Prof Png’s article as well as the people praising the labor policies of our government are but 2 sides of the same coin, people deceived by the deceptiveness of local national statistics.

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Frenching

French president Nicolas Sarkozy had announced a revolutionary plan to include joy and well-being of his people as 2 of the key indicators of growth, in addition to traditional yardsticks like GDP. Together with Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz (2001, economics) and Armatya Sen (1998, economics), Sarkozy proposed that statistics on work-life balance, recycling, household chores and even levels of traffic congestion be taken into consideration when assessing the new indicators of growth.

France is the first amongst the developed world to adopt such a policy of economic measurement. Currently, only the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan puts happiness and well-being at the heart of the government’s policy. In Bhutan, before any major fiscal or economic policies are implemented, the government must convene to evaluate how such new proposals will impact the country’s “Gross National Happiness” (I am not joking; this is an official statistic in this little enlightened nation). Sarkozy is going to present his plan in the next United Nations meeting.

Naturally, I started to compare France to Singapore upon hearing this piece of news. France’s official working week is 35 hours long and that is strictly enforced through the French employment law. Singapore’s working week is 45 hours or more with little or no avenue for recourse. Yet it is the French who are proposing to put more emphasis on the quality of life. The irony of it all makes me cringe. However I do think this is a very enlightened move by the sometimes controversial French president and the rest of the world’s leaders should take heed in this matter. Singapore, like many other countries, employs the increasingly irrelevant statistic of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the main measurement of progress. I am not talking simply about economic progress as many governments, including ours, have irrationally extended GDP improvement to imply overall improvement in the lives of its citizens. There has long been other statistics like the GINI index proposed to complement GDP figure but thus far, none of the leaders are listening. I suspect none of the leaders wanted to start appearing inept if they are re-evaluated on a more comprehensive basis. Most of them had gotten straight A’s for their governance through the GDP measurement and subsequently reaping the rewards of it. No one is about to give that up and stop the party.

Singapore, to me, is more of a corporation then a democracy. Like any big corporation, Singapore naturally seeks the simplest and most efficient way to move forward. More sophisticated and intricate mechanisms are often discarded in favor of simple, direct methods which the leaders (in their ivory towers) can quickly see and easily understand. However, a country should not be run like a profit-seeking machine. Its people should never be treated like mere employees, much less a good or commodity, like instruments the company uses to realize its profit ambitions before discarding after use. In a true democracy, which many of today’s countries profess to be, the power of the people, instead of the government, should be absolute. The people will in turn exercise and express that power through the democratic processes of elections and protests. The resources of a nation should naturally be employed in benefit of its citizens instead of being locked up in chains behind opaque governmental institutions where it makes little or no difference to the everyday man. In Singapore and many other countries, how many people will say that true democracy exists or that government policies are driven primarily for the benefit of the common people, rather than the leaders?

The French invented many wonderful things. Amongst many things, they gave the world the croissant, the 2-piece bikini, the modern cinematography and the french kiss. President Sarkozy’s proposal may turn out to be the next gem. I am not sure if the French president’s commitment to improving the quality of life of his people can help bring about a fundamental shift from the failings of today’s “GDP-centric” governments. But anyhow, I would like to say a big “Merci” to Monsieur Sarkozy for at least trying to make a difference.

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A picture says a thousand words

Came across this gem of a video from one of the blogs. In busy Singapore where lots of us stare mindlessly at a computer screen throughout the day, little surprises may happen if we just take the time to look out of our window, into this big miraculous world.

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Water is a right, not a property

We live in an inperfect world. For all our collective intelligence and innovation, quality of life on this planet of ours have not improved for the better, particularly for the poor and under-privileged of the world. I hope you can take a moment of your time to view this clip and sign-up for the petition online to the United Nations to make water a basic human right. Water, like the air we breathe or the sunlight that warms us, is not a property to be owned and sold by any one or any organization. Hopefully the next time you pick up a bottle of mineral water, we can stop and think a little about what is its true cost instead of the $1 you have just paid.

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Faustian Pact

Imagine that you are in one of the capsules on our magnificent Singapore Flyer. The devil is standing beside you and he hands you a rifle and makes you an offer. He points to the people below and offers you $10,000 for every person you gun down with the rifle. The people seemed like tiny black ants from your vantage point and barely appeared to move. The devil promises that you will not have to bear any consequences for your actions. He guarantees that you will never have to see the faces or that of his/her families of the people you shot. There is no need for provide any compensation in return for his generous offer. A few snaps of the trigger and you will become the rich man that you have worked so hard to be. Do you reject his offer or start counting the black little dots to calculate how rich you can become? What will you do?

Such incredible situations do not happen in real life. Many will point out that there is no such thing as a devil. But there is a point to this ridiculous story I have just described. Over the past few months, I have came across several documentaries, shot and produced by activists and other passionate film-makers, regarding a variety of subjects, ranging from the Sudan civil war to animal abuses to environmental issues. I have no particular interest in most of the issues that were so fervently portrayed within these films but I have always liked the humbling effect it has on me when, through these documentaries, I see what a big wide world we have out there and how little I know and feel about so many things.

The diversity of our world is not the topic of my post. I want to write about something closer to home. In all the documentaries that I have watched, there is a central theme that is common across all of them. The root cause of almost all of our problems in the world today, I think, stems from the greed of man. It may not sound like a lot today since the economic recession of the past couple of years had made a poster-child of the greedy Wall Street banker. But to go beyond the cliché notion of greed, which is typically portrayed as intentional and deliberate, I am suggesting that an alternative kind of greed is more prevalent. One that is more naïve and unpremeditated but nevertheless, just as caustic and destructive as the former. There is a difference between knowingly greedy and unknowingly greedy. Let me explain with an example.

In one of the documentaries I watched regarding the evils of privatization of the water industry in poor African countries, the film-maker interviewed one of the former executives of one of the biggest water company worldwide. He revealed that the World Bank pushed Bolivia into accepting the privatization of their national water supply when Bolivia could not afford to repay the loans to the World Bank. The president of the ruling council of the World Water Committee used to work as a vice-CEO for the giant water company and the 2 vice-presidents of the council are currently working for the same company. For getting the company the water contract for Bolivia, the president of the committee as well as other members got generous kickbacks as well as guaranteed future employment with the company. It was a paltry sum of money to pay for a multi-billion dollar contract. The result of this illicit affair? The privatization effort caused widespread water shortage in almost all parts of rural Bolivia which in turn sparked a civil war that forced the Bolivian government to renounce their decision to privatize the water industry. More than 100,000 Bolivians died from water contamination in the years preceding the war. Children mortality rates in Bolivia still stands at more than 10%, one of the highest in the world, primarily due to the lack of clean water. The interviewed executive admitted to playing a part in this arrangement between the water company and World Bank and confessed to have received better bonuses (in the region of $50,000-$60,000) for his role. Only after retiring from his job and a chance encounter that exposed him to the tragedy in Bolivia that he helped to create, did he realize the horror of his action, the true legacy of his greed. Before that, he simply assumed he was part of an organization that provided a better, albeit more expensive, water solution to the developing country and didn't think much else of the downstream effects after that.

It almost always starts out that way. What harm can there be if one gets an extra bite of the pie if at the end of the day, everyone gets to benefit anyway. That justification sets one down that slippery slope where it becomes so easy to lose sight of the original kind intention and quickly become mired in internal conflicts between his greed and conscience. This is what I mean by unknowingly greed and I think this form of greed has struck closer to home, in a bigger and more pervasive way that people care to admit. People deserve the basic right to eat, drink and sleep. While other countries around the world struggle with satisfying the first 2 of these basic needs in the form of pollution and contamination of their food and water resources, we in Singapore struggle with the third, the right to sleep, which translates into the right to own a decent, comfortable home to live in and start a family.

I have no doubt in my mind that there is no grand conspiracy between the property developers and relevant authorities to continue to fan the property bubble that is threatening to make even public housing unaffordable to the common man on the street. There had been many posts regarding this issue and I am not about to start another. But surely of the multitude of causes for the housing problems, one of them has to be that of greed. An escalating property market aids GDP growth which is the ultimate barometer for the government's performance (and pay packet) in our country. Someone somewhere must be thinking that not only is he/she getting some sweeteners from this property boom, existing property owners are getting richer so why not? But she does not see the downstream effects his/her unknowing greed has caused in terms of lower birthrates, crippling mortgage payments etc.

This phenomenon is not only true for property. We can argue the same for other issues like the rich-poor divide, freedom of speech, unfettered foreign immigration etc. The political hegemony casts a blanket of ignorance over the ruling elite where they cannot see or hear the cries of discontent from the common man. It is hypocritical to suggest that they are not the beneficiaries of their policies when their annual compensation exceeds 40 times that of the common citizen. What is particularly scary is the self-righteousness stemming from the belief that they are doing only what is right for the people despite being the direct beneficiaries from their decisions. I believe that they think they are doing the right thing but I worry that they do not know if they are not. The awful truth is that when the devil whispers his seductions of power and fortune besides your ear, he is often harder to resist than you think. When you don't have to look the person in the eye and see the horror of what you are doing, it is easy to pull the trigger on that faraway little black dot below.

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