This is the story
Do people have serious issues or are they just attention seekers?
Yes, i do conclude that there are many attention-seekers lyding in our midst. I am mean seriously childish ones. And one of the ways they do this is to assume a faux-iconoclastic slant, mixed with doses of pseudo-cynicism.. not the brand of anti-establishment epitomised by Bart Simpson, but something which reeks of pretension...just trying to be different for the sake of itself. I mean Bart Simpson is COOL...i worship him. Look at how he thumbs his nose at authority and survives to tell everyone a story. The latter part makes all of the difference, because he does have a lesson to teach. As for the rest of them? They manifest themselves in many forms, but one of which i find particularly irked by is through blogs. Haha..yes blogs..bloggers who
think they write really well, and try to champion particular issues with their seemingly impeccable handle of english. I despise them, because they're not really trying to champion anything. They are just show-offs, cloaked in a sheep's skin of altruism and sensibility. They "lament", they "resign" themselves to the fatalistic inevitablity of their predicament, they "acknowledge" their cynicism, but they do not truely believe in all these. What they do believe in is that by taking this route, they can impress people, position themselves on a higher intellectual platform, and therefore mandate themselves the right to teach others a lesson.
It is rather unfortunate that many of these people i see come from my ex JC. Yes, indeed, they are just a bunch of show-offs and attention-seekers. I can't help but feel cynical about this...haha...am i one of them?
Does time slow to a crawl when you’re on the plane? Time assumes a type of constancy, just like dimensions do. You can’t stretch it, nor could you shrink it. Like the way we acknowledge our own 3-dimensional existence, time is the measure of movement of objects within a 3-dimensional space, where stillness springs into life. While the rate of time can be taken as an absolute measure, in seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, decades, or centuries, as a universal benchmark, individual perception of time inevitably varies from situation to situation, and err..time to time.
Back to where I began, time always almost seems to slow to a crawl when one is consumed with anticipation, where he is in a state he can’t “wait” for something to happen. Speaking of which, waiting is a concept intrinsically defined by an individual’s temporal proximity to something that he is looking forward to. Naturally, one’s view of time is biased towards to extent which he would like the rate of time to pass relative to its conventional universal measure. As it always the case, I have asked a pretty dumb question, and answered it for myself. I feel that time has slow to a crawled obviously because I greatly look forward to going back home and meeting all the people I’ve missed for quite a while.
Some things just whimsically came to mind while I was on the plane. In 10 years’ time, I seriously think we should have broadband internet connection on the plane so that we can surf the net on long-haul flights. Secondly, power sockets should be made a standard feature, instead of being exclusive only to Business and First Class. Thirdly, we should be able to use our mobile phones when we’re on the plane. On a side note, shouldn’t the reception be clearer since we’re so high up?!??! Can’t imagine my phone on roaming, and as i see my line switching careers from Vodafone to Turkish mobile, to Indian telecoms, to Thai and Malaysian careers as the plane flys across borders…hmm..
Krisworld is showing a series of movies which I’ve missed since I left for London. These are movies I would have enthusiastically whipped up, but somehow I preferred to give them a miss because Tracy wants to watch them as well, and I would very much prefer to leave the movie till the chance to watch it with her comes.. I would enjoy it much more! Haha…
What is wrong with Argentina (Or is it Argentina)?
When troubled or sad, and one feels the need to get his mind off things, just write. Impulsively, Hammer the keyboard. Let the words race across the screen. And narrate the first thign that comes to mind. Oh yes, the Econs Tutorial i had today. It was a non-event, save for the couple of careless mistakes i made in my previous exercises. Sometimes, u just wonder...what were u thinking?
However, the interesting part came after the class concluded. While walking down the stairs, I had a short, albeit interesting, conversation with my econs tutor, Juan Pablo Rud, who hails from Argentina. Whimsically, i broached the topic of Argentina's sovereign debt default (again). However there was nothign malicious about the topic of conversation. It wasn't even an attempt to make a slant at his country's poor debt control...Ahh...now here we're talking.
Argentina of course was naturally severely rebuked by the creditors for itws inability to pay its debt which they condemn as irresponsible. This is esp so since they are also victims of Argentina's debt interest default. Argentina did make an offer for these bonds (which i think have since been downgraded to junk status) in the region of 25 cents for the dollar. Of course after this 25 cents have been claimed, the debt is subsequently written off. Creditors felt shortchanged and demanded retributive actions to be enforced on Argentina by the IMF through the embargo of a series of projected loans to be meted to it. Now to look back in history.
Back in the good old days (prior even to the rolling 90s), Argentina was championed by economic superpowers as a economic growth model for all developing nations to emulate. Backed massively by G7's economic aid, and of course their implicit endorsement, the economy was on a roll, despite severe structural deficiencies, which according to Juan Pablo Rud, even the econs students back home in his days were well aware of. To finance Argentinian debt to various International Financial Institutions (IFIs, like IMF, World Bank etc), sovereign bonds were actively issued under the "encouragement" of the IMF, which international investors whipped up greedily based purely on that article of faith. There was little risk in these high yield bonds, since Argentina was essentially backed by the generous economic foreign policy of the G7. Such growth was inevitably unsustainable, the bubble burst, the economy collapsed, and superpowers no longer saw it in their interest to "prop up a foreign economy using the taxes paid by the dentist in Germany, or the butcher in USA". Left to its own devices, Argentina defaulted on its bond repayments. The rest, they say, is history.
Argentina, in fact is currently experiencing phenomenal growth (again). 8.4 %, second only to China. In fact the governemtn is generating budget surpluses, a part of which is set aside for debt repayment. Creditors therefore contest the claim that Argentina is "unable" to serve it debts. On closer scrutiny, one starts to wonder who the bad guy really is. A large part of debt repayment ins currently in fact being made by Argentina to who else, but the IFIs. The very instititutions who instigated Argentina's fall, and engineered a red herring to trap innocent investors, have now become the sole beneficiaries of Argentina's recovery. Institutional investors are left out in the cold, and therefore, they are complaining.
However, Juan Pablo Rud brought up a highly pertinent point, which i could not help but agree with. As an investor, you do not come asking for your money back when your investment has gone sour. Institutional investors are individually responsible for assessing the risk of their investments. The rose-tinted glasses through which they made these bad calls, in the belief that the support of G7 being extended into pertuity, is both naive and insanely optimistic. Self-interested states are at no liberty to offer unconditional assistance anyway. Also there are also economic limits to the political aims these big states seek to achieve, in the purely realist and world capitalist view. We should foresee that the policies of IFIs like the IMF are always subject to dramatic uturns, since they are dominated by the capricous interests of large economic powers.
In short, don't bet on faith. Don't bet on the impossible. God's will is illusionary. As is a free lunch. Oh yes. Trust no one.
HAHA! Just when i am nicely settled into doing some serious work, some quirky character upped the volume of his television to reveal the scandalous contents of the programme he is watching. Hall life...how interesting...The woman in the programme just kept on going..."awhhh.........sssssssssssssssss......oh.........ssssssssssss........ohhh.."
About compulsory medical insurance
Lately, i had a spirited debate with one of my ex-classmates about the merits of a compulsory medical insurance imposed on members of a society. This topic was apparently broached by one of the columnists in the Straits Times in response to Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan's suggestions that medical coverage should be privatised in the sense that individuals take up the responsiblity to purchase personal medical insurance previous undertaken by the State under broad medical subsidies like medisave and medishield. Its aims are highly obvious - primarily to prevent the governemtn from being burdened by crippling medical costs as population demography shifts into the preponderance of pensioners. This would avoid the predicaments faced by many European governemnts, where escalating medical costs associated with an aging population threaten to plunge the government budget into deficit annually.
The thrust of the writer's argument is that if medical insurance were not mandatory, individual buyers of the insurance would not enjoy the necessary economies of scale to make the premiums affordable or worth its true value to be truely beneficial. As such, making medical insurance purchases compulsory will actually rectify this problem, since buyers of insurance can leverage on their numbers to increase their bargaining power. Besides, there is an element of risk faced by each individual of possible illnesses in the future which would require large sums of money, thus making medical insurance a necessity.
My friend's grouse is that this is not a economically efficient solution, since if the population is going to broadly segmented according to age groups to determine their premiums, essentially, members with a lower risk of contracting illnesses are likely to be subsidising the ones with a higher risk of contracting illnesses since they are essentially paying the same premiums. In fact, this is well-documented insurance problem, where assymetry in information between buyers and sellers of insurance with regards to the buyers' health status may render the determination of their premiums unfair. This is also known as Adverse Selection.
I disagreed with what my friend had said, because adverse selection assumes assymetry of information. It happens when in most cases, buyers of insurrances, esp those with a higher risk of contracting major illnesses, wilfully withhold critical information on their health status in order to exact lower premiums. By this definition, i feel that the assymetry of information will only converage over time, given advances in medical technology which will allow insurance companies to more accurately assess the health status of its customers. The ability of wilful buyers of insurance to be dishonest will therefore be severely curtailed over time.
Further to that, for the assessment of risks that are not verifiable through medical checks, comes the core basis of medical insurance. In the situation where the buyer of the insurance does not know he is a high-risk member because there are no known tests to predict this nor symptoms he displays to foreshadow its impending arrival, it would be unfair to classify him at the point in time he buys the insurance as a high-risk member. At the present level of risk verification, there is no benefit of hindsight to assume that he is more likely to contract a disease than another person. As such, the problem of adverse selection becomes irrelevant. Going back to basis of insurance, this is essentially the purpose it serves. Insurance is meant to insure people against risks. Risks are defined through the probability that something bad would happen. It is a measurement of likeliness, not certainty. As such, insurance serves its purpose in spreading the risk amongst the population at large, where with the benefit of hindsight, we can say that people who are free from diseases are in fact subsidising people who contract diseasese with the premiums they pay. However, at any point in time, no individual, nor the insurance company, is able to tell on a micro level who is GOING to contract a disease. As far as the insurance company is concerned, premiums are calculated based on the probability of payouts such that they would not incur losses, or exact a minimum level of profits. For the individual, he is satisfied that the insurnace coverage provided will insure him against the risk of contracting a debilitating illness which would rack up huge unaffordable medical costs. Personally, i think this is a pareto optimal outcome. By devolving the responsiblity of healthcare to the individual, the government is better able to channel its resources towards public service, instead of battling annual budget deficits.
Besides, i believe adverse selection is rectifiable to the extent that even within population demographics, each category can be further segmented. Individuals with family histories of major illnesses will have to pay higher premiums, etc etc. Between population demographies, naturally older people will have to pay higher premiums, or your premiums will onlyincrease with age. Furthermore, up to a certain age, the premiums you pay will be sufficinet to cover your potential medical costs, if you've never tapped into it. These are all mechanisms put in place to encourage medical insurance's proliferation.
My friend did mention how the Present Value of premiums a younger person pays currently is prohibitively high if calculated till the time he dies, thus reducing his incentives to buy the insurance. Again, i think this is a moot point. If you're talking about a premium of about 50 dollars a month to insure against coverage of say $100000 if u suffer from a serious illness, i think it is something that a worthy investment. Naturally there are sections of people who prefer to ride on their confidence of having a perpetual clean bill of health, but if they ultimately fall ill, are unablet o afford the costs. To avoid having to subsidise these irresponsible people, i think it is only fair that the govt makes purchase of medical insruance compulsory. Ultimately any subsidy made by the govt to these people, come at the expense of the taxpayers.
I do acknowledge my friend's point that older people also have less incentive to buy medical insurance since they have to pay higher premiums. Forcing them to pay these higher premiums may also be unnecessarily unfair since it was not anticipated from their younger days. In this respect, i think it is also fair for the government to mete out subsidies to those who are not able to afford the high premiums, if for the sake of insuring their healths which was previously provided by the government.
After having said so much, i think you get my point.
Troubled definitions of civil society.
IR Class lately has become less of an enjoyment - very much. Somehow it has become a personality struggle, with some dominant characters pushing their own agendas which threatens to render the entire discussion irrelevant. It comes as a great source of disturbance, when the crux of the issue today had not even been broached during the hour long discussion about "Civil Society". Apparently these quirky characters could not even agree on the basic operating definition of "Civil Society" on which further discussion could be built upon. As such, what i thought was highly important - as to whether civil society, as represented by Non-state actors - could serve as a vehicle to project the influence of western powers endowed with greater monetary resources, and therefore renege on the idealisms which informed their rise, which is the sharing of some common values which do not fall under the purview of teh state, and perpetuate their cause. In any case, it has since become a moot point. It's their loss, not mine...
Bouts of raw energy surging within me...i can't wait to lay my hands on all the books surrounding me, rip them apart with my prying eyes, and devour their insidious hunger for my attention, to satisfy my own. Lately, i've been inspired by many people around me to view my life with greater circumspect and devise a more worldly and meaningful existence. I would like to race to the top, say to speak. I would be according too much respect to myself to claim that i was "inspired"..in fact i feel challenged, threatened by the pulse of activity beating furiously around me, that my inner senses resonate with furious urgency. I want to win...i really do. And there is nothing i cannot possibly not find out if i take enough time, and enough trouble. Carpe Diem.
My views on ethical capitalism.
Secons yahoogroups still interests me somewhat. Recently one of the secons teachers posed a seemingly innocuous question as to whether profit-making by a firm can be an end in itself, with reference to a speech made by labour chief Mr Lim Boon Heng, that obviously it can't. That was when Mr Lim Boon Heng proposed the framework of "ethical capitalism", where firms can see profits as a means to serve the people it employs better. I find this suggestion immensely idealistic at best. Even somewhat naive.
ethical capitalism sounds almost like an oxymoron in itself. because capitalism as an economic system by definition works to the benefit of some indibiduals, states, and societies, but at the xpense of others. Thedivision of income between capital and labour always exists as a perennial problemm especially for MNCS operating in host economies. Businesses pay wages for labour because they need to, not because they want to. Asking anamoral establishment to fulfil an ethical dimension by modifying some fundamental business principles will only distort its ability to perform a
highly "specialised" function grounded on minimum costs, maximum revenue.
There is nothing inherently wrong with adopting the attitude that "making profits cannot be an end in itself", espcially from the perspective on a union leader championing the cause of the employees he represents (with
inherent socialist values...if possible they probably want all income of businesses to be distributed in favour of labour). In fact, the role of unions is very important in protect the interests of employees from "greedy" businesses. However this should not be confused with the adoption of "common values"...between what? Businesses and Labour Unions? Both operate on such fundamentally opposing premises, how could common values actually be
possible? If the State, through the unions, are trying to offer a moral lesson to businesses, i seriously doubt it will be taken seriously.
Going back, the issue of division of labour between capital and labour ismore realistically resolved through bargaining and negotiation, not the establishment of "common ethical values". The equilibrium position is reached as far as the limits of each party's concessions would allow. Concessions involves compromises - it essentially means that businesses have
not departed from their profit-driven motives. They still decide on the premise on giving up as little as possible in return for maximum profits. Labour unions and businesses should stick to what they each best at doing,
and not assimilate more features into their decision making. If any ethicalaspect of capitalism should be engendered, it should come purely from the restrictive mechanisms at the disposal of the labour unions.
Someone mentioned that the true motives of the firm is a moot point. It is not. It determines if altruistic corporate behaviour is truely attainable, or if it is merely a means to something else. To put it in other words, it addresses the question if making profits can truely be only a means to someting much more noble from a corporate perspective. If firms display altruistic coporate behaviour because constraints have been imposed to reward businesses for socially-acceptable behaviour and punish them for unacceptable behaviour, it does not necessarily mean, in embracing ethical standards, it has detracted from its profit-driven motives. In fact, such a response is evidence that it has in fact adapted to prevailing conditions imposed to maximise it profits.If such is the case, is there really a need to label such behaviour as the engenderment of a new "ethical capitalism", when nothing fundamentally different in the mechanisms of traditional capitalism has changed in any way? i think there are serious limits to how far the "ethical capitalism" mumbo jumbo can actually go before it gets stopped dead in its tracks.
