[Blog] Of Policies and Contradictions
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http://nabbedd.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/of-policies-contradictions/
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Of Policies & Contradictions
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I came across this foreign blog, and this comment by an expat made me ponder:
“I’ve been in Singapore, had built a large company there and to this day, am still a director and advisor to Singaporean businesses and institutions. Singapore is one of the most uncreative places in the world. Almost no innovations has come out of that island nation jewel. Now that I’ve attracted the frowns from all our Singaporean viewers, understand what it is I am saying. Stop and listen, and open your eyes.
I do not consider myself anti-Singaporean, it’s just that I have noticed and have pointed out to many Singaporeans that the price of civil order in their nation has been high – at the price of ‘outside the box thinking’.
Years ago, the Singaporean consulate organized a number of high-tech brain storming sessions in Canada. The consensus was that Singapore would never be able to develop a made-in-Singapore animation business because:
A. they lack innovation and creativity
B. their cost of labour is high
C. they’re too absorbed with themselves…with things like status
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photo by 1Happysnapper
Gees. I’d like to say that it’s a refreshing perspective, but it’s the painful truth.
A lot has been discussed of late about our ruling party’s policies with regards to immigration and building human capital. Here’s my take on it.
Contradiction Number 1: The use of civil service to spur innovation
As a country a size of an island, we desperately need to transform a labour intensive economy to a knowledge based one where human capital is the pillar of growth. Thus far, we have open many doors to attract the best brains in the pharmaceutical, bio sciences and the media industry. But here’s the irony. While attracting foreign brains, a high percentage of our local talents are emigrating to greener pastures which causes a brain drain. This poses a paradox that only our government can answer.
I always scoff whenever I read that our ministers are attempting to create a culture of innovation and start-ups. Our government is used to using power or its wealth to create the vision that they want.
Double tourism figures? Spend millions and build world-class casinos and resorts. Increase GDP figures? Open the floodgates via loose immigration policies to lower labour cost and increase competitiveness. Create a Silicon Valley? That my friend cannot be built overnight.
The very fact that the foundations of our island is built on a backbone of bureaucratic civil service of ruthless efficiency says it all. To think of it, our civil service is placed in the centre of everything. 80% of us live in such government housing, about 60% of our GDP is produced by Government Linked Companies (GLC)s like Singtel, Singapore Airlines and ST Engineering just to name a few.The critics and detractors of such a system have been silenced by the stellar and resilient economic figures of the past 2 decades. However when it comes to innovation and productivity, it is another story altogether. As a country that comes up tops in economic growth and wealth compared to other developed nations, it is surprising that we have few homegrown private corporations that have shaken the world. Besides Creative’s sound card, when was the last well-known patent produced by us? Oh yes, we have the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system, which is the first in the world, but even that is an invention from a government entity.
The government sees this problem and has diverted a significant amount of its funds to build innovative incubators like the biopolis and fusionpolis where it can house the best researchers and scientists in hope that knowledge can be harnessed and produce a breakthrough in sciences. Every corner of the building, down to the toilets are designed for the reason of promoting interaction so that knowledge can be shared. I’ve been on a study trip there as part of my Knowledge Management module back when I was in university and our professor pointed out that despite the infrastructure to promote interaction, the observation is that these researchers or scientist still tend to stick to their own ethnic group. That’s a challenge by itself. How typical of our ruling party I thought then. Always assuming it can use means to influence how it wants its people to think or act.
It is part of the culture shift that has to happen if we want to create a knowledge based economy and we all know that it takes shake ups of seismic proportions to change a culture that has been ingrained in us ever since we’ve gained independence. The culture of conformity and meritocracy, are culture traits that are not really conducive to a creative, innovative society. The worrying thing is, it cannot be changed overnight. Our general population, imprisoned by its education system, is already conditioned in terms of mindset and aspirations. Creative minds are not bounded by such society norms. They cannot let financial burden or the stress of society cloud their sense of freedom and individualism. This is also the basis on why our very own local doctors, musicians, researchers move overseas. These are people who are passionate about their work, value individualism and do not want to be burdened by the high cost of living here, so as to further pursue their line of work. Many who have children are also disenchanted with the one dimension education system here.
My take is this. Can imagination flourish in a society where people can’t openly criticize the government? Imagination means thinking outside the box, always asking, always probing. It is difficult to have odd ideas about technology, without having odd ideas about politics.
I applaud the many assistance given by the government when it comes to funding and harnessing entrepreneurs through platforms like SPRING Singapore. However, it must understand it’s top down approach of running the country’s economy from its state-owned enterprises is stifling innovation. What’s the point of issuing scholarships to top local brains only to bond them to the public sector? And will the use of tax payer’s money to fund budding entrepreneurs be the best way forward? Certainly not for the long run. The basic hallmarks of the civil service are efficiency, discipline and execution. Whereas the entrepreneurial culture is about challenging the norms, being rebellious and being different. Thus, how is it possible for civil servants to lead the push for innovation? An entire contradiction in values. The impetus for economic growth must start coming more from the private sector and it’s good to see that we are attracting more venture capitalist and private equity firms to our shores. The government’s role should be limited to funding universities start-ups and allow the private sector to harness the potential from there on. It should also adopt a hands off approach to various industries to allow them to flourish by itself. The “nanny state” mentality has to go as it breeds complacency and reduces the incentive to innovate. Case in point, the many failed ventures and investments of our GLCs. ( Singtel-Virgin Mobile, Keppel Corp-Suzhou, ST Engineering-Micropolis just to name a few)
Contradiction Number 2: Competitiveness in expense of innovation and productivity
I am baffled by the recent lose immigration policies by our ruling party. We were on the right track, I thought, entering the 21st century, targeting to attract the top talents to our island as well as nurture and educate our citizens. Basically attempting to shift from exam meritocracy to talent meritocracy system. However, along the way, I kind of felt we got lost. None of us will ever know how they come up with decisions up there, but being too focus on competitiveness has left innovation and productivity very much wanting. We became addicted to GDP growth, the ruling party sensing that it’s citizens are not reproducing and working hard enough took the quick fix approach and open its floodgates to immigration. People from all walks of life seeking a modern retreat and a superior currency wage became one of us suddenly. It’s like Stalin’s five-year industrialization plan for USSR in the 1930s where the focus was on the mobilization of resources. Companies were soon found competing on labour cost savings rather than generic growth of intellectual capital internally. With no minimum wage set, many citizens find it impossible to compete with cheaper alternatives, despite going for the countless upgrading and re-learning courses. This abundance of cheap labour can be detrimental to productivity in the long run.
We are being led to think that Singapore is entering a golden era of being the pride of the east, with Swiss living standards and lifestyle of Monaco. However, my fear is whether we are able to achieve our productivity goals in years to come, before we hit a law of diminishing returns and cannot afford to immigrate our way to remain competitive any longer. Many developing countries share our same vision, aspiring to be global hubs and first world countries. If our growth story last decade was merely through accumulating of resources like labour, instead of the true essence of human capital, we are leaving ourselves very vulnerable in the near future, not having any competitive edge over other developing countries.
As quickly as they arrive in throngs to attain permanent residency and build a life in our island, they can just as easily relocate once they find greener pastures else where. It is naive to think that they are similar as immigrants of yesteryear, where they will stay put indefinitely. We are living in a globalized world mind you. By then, the truly talented breed of Singapore citizens have been jaded by the lack of opportunities and ventured overseas, and we will find ourselves alarmingly short of human capital to spur us in the future. At least now we know why our ruling party is so keen to integrate and appease our new residents… -
Interesting.
But common knowledge.
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Singapore is a terrorised society based on fear and repression.
How on earth can there be creativity and innovation from this type of society?
That is obvious.
The Intelligentsia is also suppressed.
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It seems obvious that under the sort of terrorised and dictatorial society of PAP, the state and society can only progress to a certain level.
The conclusion is that PAP can no longer move this country forward.
They are useless and their dictatorial type of rule based on a regimented society is a liability to all Singaporean citizens.
You can only squeeze out so much from a terrorised and regimented society.
As long as PAP continues to rule Singapore, there is no future for Singapore.
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�力�讨好的事是没有人会�的
Since when creativity and innovation is truly welcome by the society and by government?
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you are absolutely wrong, many great peoples do thing for no glory nor any return, it is only when they are long gone, that people realise that such people are indeed rare and special. And admired these people with full respect. The willingness to give for nothing is truly civilisation at it very best. Just one example will be Mother Theresa, the holy one.
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Yes, I agree that such people deserved utmost respect.
But look at the world now. Words and action must come together. There are so many news now that says people ignored cries of help of stranded people. May it be car accident, rape, kidnapping, fight, those people choose to watch then offer a helping hand.
When me and my friend saw a fainted man on the grass patch from far away, dozens of people passed by and walked away. We have to walk all the way there and call the ambulance. And from the start to end (30 minutes), no one approach us offering help. I'm not trying to say I'm good or what, but I'm speaking based on the reality I see now. If you say out of 100 people, 30 would go all out to help without any return then my theory is wrong. and I stand on what I said:
�力�讨好的事是没有人会�的
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There are billions of human living in hunger everyday, who is going to help? And on the other hand, there are people earning million per week or even day and throw away half eaten food like no body business. That is the real world, and it is not new, since the dawn of mankind, such inequality, unfairness and cruelty exist in the human species. The word Civilisation is a term created by human just to evade our savaging, indivdualistic, cunning, cruel, jealousy and killing instinct. It keep us on our toes by creating systems, religion and other ethical mindset leading to human being governed by laws, religion obedient and graciousness. In another words, human without a framework of all these, they careless each other problem, your trouble is not my trouble and your suffering is not going to be my suffering.
Therefore, when you help someone, you help full heartily, you should not care if anyone is helping or why no one is helping...voicing out your good deed here is seeking glory and empathy. However, is alway good to help someone, it bring about an instrinic happiness that no money can buy, but by getting frustrated that no one is helping and only you are helping serve no purpose in your good civil progression.
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�力�讨好的事是没有人会�的
You may not know, that there many peoples doing things not for glory or for themselves, but for the society as a whole. These few chinese character are wrongly put in a way it can mislead an innocent mind. Meaning that if one wish to help and read what you have written, one may retract his/her wants to help mentality and if everyone thinks that way, then, not only 100 peoples wouldn't help, even millions will not help.
Or the contrary, ask yourself, why u helped the fainted man, aren't you contradicting your words??
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I'm a stupid person =D