Friday, January 27, 2006
zhng the debate
eh... haha any of you got listen to "zhng my car?" damn funny lah (some episodes)
i managed to read all of that, eventually. no mean feat considering i'm sick of reading!
if you ask me whether i'm interested in politics i would have to confess i probably do not have the passion a lot of other people in my school seem to show. i am interested in issues, especially those that arouse very strong feelings (death penalty... etc), and i am clearly interested in social and individual choice, managing allocations and making everyone happy (which extends to rights) (majoring in economics after all). theorizing in politics is another matter, and i personally find it rather boring having attended some international relations and politics lectures.
today amartya sen (nobel economics, 1998) returned to the lse to give a memorial lecture. he managed to mention singapore twice in his lecture (well, once in the q&a, but i think it's because a friend from singapore did speak to him earlier in the day.) specifically he was addressing the question "does politics follow economics?" the obvious example brought up was china, where a communist party there is effectively managing a market system. usually, you would try to prove a logical chain or a causal link. maybe when everyone is well fed, happy, more free from want, can they then exercise or think about their democratic rights. democracy, after all, is hardly a natural state of human affairs, having been a progressive movement rooted in the twin revolutions of the 18th century.
sen is hardly a political demagogue, being more interested in ethical issues in welfare economics. he argues though that there is a constitutive link between politics and welfare, as opposed to a causal one. if you're familiar with his attempted definitions of welfare, he obviously enough thinks GNP per capita is insufficient, nor can any welfare measurement which takes material standards serve as a good enough proxy. after all, what is money for? it is to buy what you want, whether it is keeping you well fed, business class tickets or a new macbook. mm. money gives us the freedom to buy what we want. so if we are not free to spend it (the goods and services are not available), money is useless. he thus seeks to extend this argument to define welfare as the freedoms and capabilities which we are given. the chance for success (which makes us all feel good, and by that definition, removing gender inequality, for example, increases utility, and it is in fact a pareto improvement, and it will eventually show up in the GNP statistics as more output). So politics is also a component of welfare, because it gives us freedom and choice, so he argues. Thus outdated politics will prevent social development. He argues too from historical experience of his country, India, that when it was given control over its own destiny, although it did not alleviate poverty, the presence of democratic checks and balances ensured a famine never happened in India since the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 (which was under British rule), because democracy could not survive such failure.
That was the abstraction. What is the reality? Let us examine ourselves for a start. An educated, elite, if you will, borne from a rather succesful mass education system (there are critiques, let us take that as a working assumption for now, considering we can mostly kick ass at subjects, and i really think the brit basic education system is appalling, they even rely on student volunteers). I haven't done any surveys but I can assure you that there are definitely discontents among Singaporeans, some of them share a healthy skepticism of the government (but nothing more), and would probably not want to be part of the workings of it. Even among scholars, there are obviously discontents, maybe not at the political system per se, but on general cultural/social aspects of Singapore. And then there are people who make "zhng my car", clearly affluent enough to afford podcasting equipment and bored enough with their day jobs to have spare time to entertain singaporeans like me.
what is to happen next? is this generation that cuts and pastes political arguments and puts them on blogs, the generation which are exposed to ideas from all around the world really be so apathetic? we are not. the thoughts are there. the ideas are there. unexpressed maybe, but surely we have latent opinions (which may not be so longwinded)
so yes, less fear would be good. i must say the fear isn't overpowering though. but it does come tangibly in daily life. for example, you post something on your blog, and you see "proxy.tdb.gov.sg" as one of the viewers on blogpatrol. are they taking an interest in my life? that's nice. but you worry. would they take issue with something i write? well, i'm still here, so clearly that's not the case. and i guess you don't really have anything to be afraid of, not at this age. if you write within the bounds of reason and not say anything very stupid, you should be fine and you're free to disagree. my consolation would be that even if i am sued i guess i have limited liability, i have no kids to feed, no wife or pray girlfriend who'd get pissed at me (though my parents would certainly mind). and my writing really isn't like the economist's obituary for devan nair.
the real fear is not condemnation by authority, it's condemnation by peers or society. (which is one of the pertinent points raised by cat lim). how do i balance my enthusiasm for issues without pissing people off with my overenthusiasm? it happens a lot, especially when people don't share the same interests as you, and you can't force anyone to listen, try speaking to more evangelists. it's like speaking up to a teacher, or to a superior, or someone, if you don't say "fuck you" in front of their faces, it's fine, if it works you're a martyr, worse come to worse kena knock it down. unfortunately it's more insidious than that. it's hearing voices in your head thinking that people around you are thinking "oh no, are they going to go on about politics again" we are, as a whole, i think not used to disruptive noises and view them as an irritation, and we really don't spend enough time listening. that's why approaches are rarely as consultative as they should be. it is the fear that no one will listen. and that is important enough in killing debate. because politics is something you can free-load off. if someone bothers to research and vote and makes an informed decision, he probably will not be able to change the outcome of the election by his vote. rationally, then there is no incentive for him to do his research at all, or even to read politics (unless he really likes it), and he can depend on the other few million people who have a say. but the other few million will think like that too... so unless the incentive structure of our society changes, politics will not follow. if no one is going to listen to what you say, why bother speaking?
If our society is structured like that, why should we try to change its structure to suit some liberal/westphalian interpretation of what a state should be? i don't think it's a question of suiting styles, we did do well "our way", and i don't think any imitation can be good. japan did pretty well with a single-party democracy. but the challenge is to keep thinking, so that we do not remain stagnant. and questions are the best aid to thinking.
i managed to read all of that, eventually. no mean feat considering i'm sick of reading!
if you ask me whether i'm interested in politics i would have to confess i probably do not have the passion a lot of other people in my school seem to show. i am interested in issues, especially those that arouse very strong feelings (death penalty... etc), and i am clearly interested in social and individual choice, managing allocations and making everyone happy (which extends to rights) (majoring in economics after all). theorizing in politics is another matter, and i personally find it rather boring having attended some international relations and politics lectures.
today amartya sen (nobel economics, 1998) returned to the lse to give a memorial lecture. he managed to mention singapore twice in his lecture (well, once in the q&a, but i think it's because a friend from singapore did speak to him earlier in the day.) specifically he was addressing the question "does politics follow economics?" the obvious example brought up was china, where a communist party there is effectively managing a market system. usually, you would try to prove a logical chain or a causal link. maybe when everyone is well fed, happy, more free from want, can they then exercise or think about their democratic rights. democracy, after all, is hardly a natural state of human affairs, having been a progressive movement rooted in the twin revolutions of the 18th century.
sen is hardly a political demagogue, being more interested in ethical issues in welfare economics. he argues though that there is a constitutive link between politics and welfare, as opposed to a causal one. if you're familiar with his attempted definitions of welfare, he obviously enough thinks GNP per capita is insufficient, nor can any welfare measurement which takes material standards serve as a good enough proxy. after all, what is money for? it is to buy what you want, whether it is keeping you well fed, business class tickets or a new macbook. mm. money gives us the freedom to buy what we want. so if we are not free to spend it (the goods and services are not available), money is useless. he thus seeks to extend this argument to define welfare as the freedoms and capabilities which we are given. the chance for success (which makes us all feel good, and by that definition, removing gender inequality, for example, increases utility, and it is in fact a pareto improvement, and it will eventually show up in the GNP statistics as more output). So politics is also a component of welfare, because it gives us freedom and choice, so he argues. Thus outdated politics will prevent social development. He argues too from historical experience of his country, India, that when it was given control over its own destiny, although it did not alleviate poverty, the presence of democratic checks and balances ensured a famine never happened in India since the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 (which was under British rule), because democracy could not survive such failure.
That was the abstraction. What is the reality? Let us examine ourselves for a start. An educated, elite, if you will, borne from a rather succesful mass education system (there are critiques, let us take that as a working assumption for now, considering we can mostly kick ass at subjects, and i really think the brit basic education system is appalling, they even rely on student volunteers). I haven't done any surveys but I can assure you that there are definitely discontents among Singaporeans, some of them share a healthy skepticism of the government (but nothing more), and would probably not want to be part of the workings of it. Even among scholars, there are obviously discontents, maybe not at the political system per se, but on general cultural/social aspects of Singapore. And then there are people who make "zhng my car", clearly affluent enough to afford podcasting equipment and bored enough with their day jobs to have spare time to entertain singaporeans like me.
what is to happen next? is this generation that cuts and pastes political arguments and puts them on blogs, the generation which are exposed to ideas from all around the world really be so apathetic? we are not. the thoughts are there. the ideas are there. unexpressed maybe, but surely we have latent opinions (which may not be so longwinded)
so yes, less fear would be good. i must say the fear isn't overpowering though. but it does come tangibly in daily life. for example, you post something on your blog, and you see "proxy.tdb.gov.sg" as one of the viewers on blogpatrol. are they taking an interest in my life? that's nice. but you worry. would they take issue with something i write? well, i'm still here, so clearly that's not the case. and i guess you don't really have anything to be afraid of, not at this age. if you write within the bounds of reason and not say anything very stupid, you should be fine and you're free to disagree. my consolation would be that even if i am sued i guess i have limited liability, i have no kids to feed, no wife or pray girlfriend who'd get pissed at me (though my parents would certainly mind). and my writing really isn't like the economist's obituary for devan nair.
the real fear is not condemnation by authority, it's condemnation by peers or society. (which is one of the pertinent points raised by cat lim). how do i balance my enthusiasm for issues without pissing people off with my overenthusiasm? it happens a lot, especially when people don't share the same interests as you, and you can't force anyone to listen, try speaking to more evangelists. it's like speaking up to a teacher, or to a superior, or someone, if you don't say "fuck you" in front of their faces, it's fine, if it works you're a martyr, worse come to worse kena knock it down. unfortunately it's more insidious than that. it's hearing voices in your head thinking that people around you are thinking "oh no, are they going to go on about politics again" we are, as a whole, i think not used to disruptive noises and view them as an irritation, and we really don't spend enough time listening. that's why approaches are rarely as consultative as they should be. it is the fear that no one will listen. and that is important enough in killing debate. because politics is something you can free-load off. if someone bothers to research and vote and makes an informed decision, he probably will not be able to change the outcome of the election by his vote. rationally, then there is no incentive for him to do his research at all, or even to read politics (unless he really likes it), and he can depend on the other few million people who have a say. but the other few million will think like that too... so unless the incentive structure of our society changes, politics will not follow. if no one is going to listen to what you say, why bother speaking?
If our society is structured like that, why should we try to change its structure to suit some liberal/westphalian interpretation of what a state should be? i don't think it's a question of suiting styles, we did do well "our way", and i don't think any imitation can be good. japan did pretty well with a single-party democracy. but the challenge is to keep thinking, so that we do not remain stagnant. and questions are the best aid to thinking.
# posted by Jesse @ 8:56 AM 
Comments:
<< Home
I think it is interesting how you lump political view points as public goods.. If that is the case, perhaps, the government is the best person to provide for it economically. haha
You should read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, part social, part political commentary recounting the tale of Jurgis, a Lithuanian immigrant to Chicago in the late 1890s, who became enslaved, like millions of others, into abject poverty by the Chicago meatpacking industry.
My favorite quote from the book:
"[Jurgis] now lived in a free country, and shared in its privileges; and if he did not like the way they did things at Smith's, he was perfectly at liberty to leave whenever he felt like it. He might go, let us say, to Anderson's; and when he found that Smith and Anderson, together with all the other packers in Chicago, had gotten together and agreed to treat all their hands alike, it was his privilege to take his family and pay one or two hundred dollars railroad fare and go to New York, or St. Louis, or Kansas City, or Omaha, where there were more packing-houses. And when he had discovered that these, too, were owned by Smith and by Anderson, and conducted in the same unsatisfactory manner, he was permitted to take himself out upon the broad, snow-covered prairies of this land of liberty, and lie down and die there, as a witness to the fact that he was no man's slave. That he did not do this, but stayed and worked on for Smith, and took whatever part of his pay Smith chose to give him, was probably because he was not a free-born American, but a low-down and ignorant foreigner."
My favorite quote from the book:
"[Jurgis] now lived in a free country, and shared in its privileges; and if he did not like the way they did things at Smith's, he was perfectly at liberty to leave whenever he felt like it. He might go, let us say, to Anderson's; and when he found that Smith and Anderson, together with all the other packers in Chicago, had gotten together and agreed to treat all their hands alike, it was his privilege to take his family and pay one or two hundred dollars railroad fare and go to New York, or St. Louis, or Kansas City, or Omaha, where there were more packing-houses. And when he had discovered that these, too, were owned by Smith and by Anderson, and conducted in the same unsatisfactory manner, he was permitted to take himself out upon the broad, snow-covered prairies of this land of liberty, and lie down and die there, as a witness to the fact that he was no man's slave. That he did not do this, but stayed and worked on for Smith, and took whatever part of his pay Smith chose to give him, was probably because he was not a free-born American, but a low-down and ignorant foreigner."
yep, although if you believe in markets, you'd think that a system of government where alternative parties compete for votes would lead to more consumer surplus than a monopoly.
Post a Comment
<< Home
