A full circle

Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Documentary; 2019) 

 Based on the book written by Thomas Piketty.

We started in the pre-Industrial Revolution with a significant disparity between the haves and have nots. Under the feudal system, there were the extremely wealthy landowners and the dirt poor peasants. The inequality between the two was phenomenal. The poor simply cannot work their way to become rich. It is humanly impossible. One has to be born with a silver spoon to own capital. Alternatively, one has to be married into one, like in the many fairytales and novels of the yesteryears. 1% of the world population owned 70% of the world's wealth.

The divide between the affluent and the impoverished became more apparent. This triggered the exodus of people from Europe to newer lands like Australia and the USA and took them over. The emigrants replicated their master's strategy of wealth acquisition. They used slaves, a form of movable property, as collateral and capital to generate more land and wealth.

When machines rolled in during the Industrial Revolution, people were just replaced, creating the same kind of impoverished people as they had before. Businesses flourished. Mass production of goods by machines needed a market. Fashion designing, haute culture, gift-giving, splurging during festivities was popularised. Businessmen accumulate wealth.

Nationalism reeked in as inequality reared its ugly head. People forgot about their poverty and stood steadfast behind the banner of nationhood. Industries fanned this by churning out weapons and starting military competition amongst nations to start wars. Now the elites are also the one who controls the narrative at the international level. Again, the same schism morphed between the rich and the poor, the 1% owning 70% of the wealth.

The world wars that came about were actually equalisers that jolted the inequality. Capitalism was held accountable for the catastrophe. It seems that on the cusp of death, humanity appeared more critical. Everyone is equal in fear of death. In rolled in heavy State involvement in nation-building. Cradle-to-tomb benefits were handed out to societies. The working class and women demand their place in society. For the first time in human history, an individual could climb up the social ladder through education and hard work.

Anti-capitalist protesters - St Paul's Cathedral, London, 2011. 
Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images Europe

Actually, during the wars, capital was only marginally lost. Some were used to finance the war, whilst some were retrieved later. With the euphoria of peace and the push to spur economies, many manoeuvres were put into place to help big corporations be in the role of what the aristocrats used to fill.
Resentment grew again. Wage did not expand in proportion to the increased cost of living. The increase in union strikes and demand for entitlement did not help either. Labour was no longer an asset but the expense of doing business. The welfare state was just too costly.

We are now in a world where greed is good. The poor are handout loans for which they are not creditworthy. The lust for luxurious, opulent and decadent lifestyles lure the ill-prepared to dream of the impossible to plunge them into more misery than mired in. On the other hand, the wealthy has the four corners of the world to hide their treasures. Using creative accounting and the intelligent use of international off-shore banking, 85% of the world's wealth is just floating around without generating any benefit to the needy.
On the other hand, it generates more income for them. Tax evasion manoeuvres are helped via cash-strapped tax havens in banana republics. The problem with these havens is that their local populace does not benefit from these transactions. They remain poor. They do not have to fear economic downturns as history has shown that bail-outs can be arranged.

Relationship between per capita national income
 and the degree of inequality in income distribution

Capitalism started out unequal, flattened inequality 

for much of the 20th century, but is now headed back

towards Dickensian levels of inequality worldwide.

Only 15% of the world wealth is spent to create a beneficial trickle-down effect to the not-so-wealthy 99%. The 'baby boomers' had it good. With the post-war prosperity and ability to acquire wealth, they can enjoy the fruit of their labour in their twilight years if they had done so. Meanwhile, the Millenials has it bad. With the rung of the social ladder getting wider and having had to finance their own education, they may spend their whole life in debt. They may not afford to own a roof over their head like their predecessors. The gig economy that they find satisfying puts them in a precarious position. They are not provided with a safety net against accidents, sickness and opportunity for holidays.
The author suggests that there should be a comprehensive tax revision. The ultra-rich needed to be taxed progressively the more they earn. Invasion of taxes by clandestine methods needs to be looked into. As inherited wealth will dominate wealth made form a lifetime's labour by an exorbitant margin, he propose an inheritance tax. His argument is that one cannot start the game of life with different terms, the have and have nots. His analogy is a game of monopoly of two players where one player starts the game with more money and has the chance to play with two dices. He will pass 'Go' more times and buy more properties and earlier in the game, hence collecting more rent. Well, one can say this is a Marxist or leftist view of the distribution of wealth.

A friend once told me this. Even if all the world's wealth is equally divided among the world's inhabitants right to the last penny, creating an ideal egalitarian society, we just have to give ten years. After ten years, wealth distribution and inequality will revert to their previous pattern. Some people are just good with money. Others have different priorities. One glaring thing that is not taken into all these systems is the human innard qualities. As quoted by Gandhi, the Earth has everything to fill our needs, but not our greed.

History has shown that everything in life happens cyclically. Man will create an economic model. It will be a good, best thing since forever. Then slowly, one by one, its shortcomings will surface. Then more. Suddenly it will be the worst thing Man ever thought of. Then more calls for reform, a revolution maybe. A new system will be proposed - the best thing since sliced bread. And the cycle will continue.

Whatever said and done, the idea of utopia on Earth is a piped dream. The dream of eternal fairness and equality is as real as seeing a pink unicorn. Even the Universe is not kind to its dwellers. They have to endure thunders, typhoons, volcanic eruptions and asteroid collisions and their devastating effects. The presence of a large middle class is essential to form a buffer between the haves and have nots, to narrow the division in wealth inequality. Transformation and modification will happen, but we will keep on looking for the ideal elusive economic model.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Robin Hood complex?

Hustlers (2019)


Look around you. It is no brainer that the divisions between the haves and the have nots are increasing as we speak. The price of essential goods only goes one way - up. There will be many justifications to raise the price of a commodity. It could be the weather, artificial shortage, the hike in petrol price, the value of our currency, you name it. Interestingly, when the offending factor is relieved, the price stays the same. Minimum wage barely changes but the lure to buy, purchase and spend never ends. 

The members at the lower end of the economic spectrum always seem the target of these baits via subliminal advertisements in the media or movies. In this cruel world of punishing the poor for being poor, it appears like the wealthy have it all too easy. We get to keep their cake and eat it.

A case in point is the 2008 and the many similar economic meltdowns that the world frequently experiences. The poor need to tighten their belts and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The big conglomerates, investment bankers and the Wall Street hotshots instead get fat bonuses and a chance to run away with their obscene stash even though they singlehandedly were the cause of the mishap.

The law seems impotent to be dealing with all these shenanigans. It takes a lifetime to get the legal system to mete acceptable justice. The only beneficiary of this exercise is the legal fraternity itself. It pats itself as it assumes a demigod status displaying pristine honesty, laughing all the way to the bank.

Hence, the alternative strategy would be an ala 'Robin Hood' method, to rob from the rich to feed one's own lifelong desires. Unfortunately, society does not receive this kindly. Perhaps, they want a piece of the action. They want a share of the loot in the form of taxes. Robin Hood becomes the bad guy while the greedy wealthy bankers become the victim.

In a nutshell, this film tells how a group of exotic dancers (in everyday language, striptease) during the 2008 economic downturn, use their entrepreneurial skills to outwit the members of the financial market. The effort is nothing more than to live the high life that they always dreamt and to improve the lives of those around them. It is based on a real-life story where high-flying executives were cajoled into partying with them. They were drugged with a concoction of ketamine and MDMA (date drug) to max out their credit card and not having any recollection of it the day after.

The story is not new, but the moviemakers sex it up with the continuous flow of naked ladies in different stages of undress engaged in various unlady-like postures. Understandably, it proved too raunchy for screening in many Asian countries. Meanwhile, the media, parroting the voice of liberalism and freedom of expression, screams praises of the story and the acting. They even suggest it as one of the best offerings of the year to be churned out from Hollywood.  

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Swing at the New Leftist

Fools, Frauds and Firebrands, Thinkers of the New Left
Roger Scruton (2015, reprint)

I was always under the impression that the input from the academics and intellectuals is the one that is propelling the world forward in the right direction; averts hegemony by a certain group and tries to create a sort of utopia where fairness and justice is handed to all. With a single stroke of his pen, the author puts all these thoughts to the bin. He paints them all as troublemakers, who promised utopia but what they offer instead is dystopia, mayhem and destruction.

For a start, he defines the leftist as the group of people traditionally seated to the left to King Louis XVI, the despotic monarch whose reign ended with the 1789 French Revolution. The members of the Estate and Generals usually were placed to the left while the nobelties occupied the right. Of course, it is all perspective which is right or left depending on whether you are an audience in apalace or looking from the monarch's end.

It is a tough book to read. With the many name dropping and verbosity of the writer, he steamrolls most modern thinkers, if not all, as frauds. They speak in unintelligible speeches using meaningless jargon like in Orwell's 1984 Newspeak. They justify their assertions with absurd mathematic formulas.

The author systematically destroys intelligensias from France (Lacan, Deleuze, Badiou, Foucault, Sartre, Camus) Germany (Hegel, Heidegger, Habermas, Althusser), USA (Galbraith, Dworkin), Italy (Gramsci), British (Thompson, the Fabians) and the representatives from the former communist block (Lukás, Žižek). Even though communism has proven to have failed, these people are actually promoting communist ideology in a new approach where capitalism (the burgeious ideology) is portrayed as the bad guy out to destroy man's freedom and liberty. They failed to realise that these are very same idea as the right wingers (read: democratic process) have been trying to do over the centuries - to find law and order in society, to propel the human race to a higher level and the promise of a better future.

He praises the philosophers of the yesteryears, the Greeks thinkers and later  ones like Spinoza and Kant. The conservative side of politics has had something going. Unfortunately many misfortunes happened along the way and Man wanting to look at other ways of doing things have embarked on the leftist agenda. Even though, their economic models have repeatedly shown dismal results, they are hellbent to come out with yet other strategies to put forward their scheme!

A nice perspective of view from the other side.

Excerpt From: Roger Scruton. “Fools, Frauds and Firebrands.” iBooks.

“Whether it be the Palestinian intifada, the IRA, the Venezuelan Chavistas, the French sans-papiers, or the Occupy movement – whatever the radical cause, it is the attack on the ‘System’ that matters. The alternative is ‘unnameable in the language of the system’. Didn’t Paul Cohen prove the point?

As in 1789, as in 1917, as in the Long March of Mao, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, the work of destruction feeds on itself. The Event is ‘the void at the heart of the actual’. Fidelity to the Event means commitment to nothing. The windbaggery of Žižek and the nonsemes of Badiou serve one purpose, which is to turn attention away from the actual world, from real people and from ordinary moral and political reasoning. They exist in order to promote a single and absolute cause, the cause that admits of no criticism and no compromise, and which offers redemption to all who espouse it. And what is that cause? The answer is there on every page of these fatuous writings: Nothing. ”

“Leftist Newspeak is a powerful tool, not only because it wipes away the face of our social world, but also because it describes a supposed reality that underlies the genial appearance and also explains that appearance away as a deception. ”

“That feature of ideology has long been apparent. But exactly the same goal of hiding reality behind inviolable screens of words can be found in the mathemes of Lacan and Badiou, in the litanies of Deleuze and Guattari, and in the rhetorical questions of Žižek as he patrols the world in search of those who still possess the risible belief in the Big Other and who have not yet discovered that they don’t ex-sist.”

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson

In no one we trust

HyperNormalisation (2016)
Written and Directed by Adam Curtis

Before the infamous 2004 tsunami hit Phi Phi Island in Thailand, there was a kind of an eerie silence. The shoreline receded and thousands of fishes were washed ashore. The cockle collectors had a windfall. Everyone was in a quandary on the bizarre turns of events. Then it hit them, the towering waves and destruction.

www.spectator.co.uk

That is what is happening in our world. Many strange and damaging thinks are happening right before our eyes. Our leaders are telling us that everything is okay and it is business as usual or rather life goes on. However, everybody knows it is not alright but still nobody wants to do anything because things are too complicated. This, in simpler terms, is the essence of the meaning of the word 'hyper normalisation', a term coined by a Russian writer (Alexei Yurchak  in 2006 book, 'Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation') referring to the time during Soviet Russia when everything was not right but everyone was given the impression that everything was hunky dory when it was not. The collapse, it was crystal clear and inevitable. Everyone knew but nobody would and could do anything about it.

In Curtis' normal hypnotising narration and documentary making techniques, he tries to make sense of current political climate we are in. He, in his conspiracy theorists' manner, tells us that that Man is stuck with this method of administration even though it is not the best where other ways have failed and how many of our manoeuvres have blown right in our faces, giving just the opposite of the intended desire.

The real world is complicated and our leaders have made it simpler for us, maybe far too simple to stay in power.

Although presented in nine somewhat disjointed parts, the whole narration may make sense at the end. In 1975, when New York City was having a crisis in its administration, it was soon realised that what it needs was not political leaders who would make policies but bankers who could provide finances. Money was needed to rule the world, not ideologies. Radical minded social reformers who used to dictate the scene during the times when factories workers and unions controlled their bosses, being out of money, fled to indulge in appreciation of abstract arts and music.

Over on the other side of the globe, in Damascus, Hafez al-Assad was trying to splurge Americans out of Middle East. Unfortunately, things only got worse with the Lebanon War in 1982. That is when Syria's liaison with Iran brought together Shia freedom fighters Hezbollah and Hamas, Palestinian freedom fighters. Their modus operandi of using suicide bombers, which by all accounts, is not sanctioned by Islam, seem to be the turning point. Americans left Syria in a huff in 1984 with their tails between their hind legs due to 'paralysis caused by the complexity of the situation'. It is funny this same life-saver has come to haunt Syria once again, now Arab solidarity and Syria is in shambles.

Here, again political intervention by Henry Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy proved futile. His plan was to create constructive ambiguity to destabilise the Middle East to keep each other in check without solving the real issue at hand.

Libya's cartoonish leader Colonel Gaddafi became the lame dog accused of all of the atrocities around the world. Even though the Lockerbie downing of PanAm flight and other bombings were done by Syria, according to intelligence sources, Gaddafi did not mind being branded as the villain. He like the fear factor. Americans knew that attacking Syria is too risky. Hence, Libya was bombed instead.

With the advent of technology and creation of cyberspace, many things happened. People toyed the idea that perhaps the collection of data of Man, their likes and dislikes could be used to predict their predictability. The technocrats thought, maybe, science could be used to improve chances of winning bets, gambling and making money. It proved not successful. What it created was a group of narcissistic people, who found pleasure in trivialities and create an artificial environment to reinforce their self-reassurance. They heard and saw what they wanted to hear and see. It became a tool of perception management.

Many sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects became a common occurrence. There was talk that these were nothing more than the Army's attempt at developing stealth and more advanced killing machines. People became more distrustful of their leaders. This is when social media became a device to gather people against a common enemy - their Government. Demonstrations started the world over- the Arab Springs, the Tahrir Square and Occupy Movement. Even the cyberspace was good at getting together for a single cause, the upheaval did not progress. There was no future long term plan. The public loss of confidence in those in power is the main reason for the unexpected turn of events in Brexit and Donald Trump's appointment as the President of USA.

Karma bites back?

Death by China: How America lost its Manufacturing Base (2012)
Writer, Director, Narrator: Peter Navarro

As the world and the economic punters go on double guessing what President-Elect Donald J Trump and his team may bring to the table, this documentary, made by one of his financial advisors, Peter Navarro, may give an insight into what is in store for the next four years.

Twenty years ago, Singapore, one of the up and coming Tigers of the East roared itself to build cordial economic relationships with the then newly open economy of the New China. Pretty soon, Singapore had to retreat, licking its wounds with a bitter aftertaste.

Near home, under the guise reliving and recreating a time beaten era when Chinese ships graced our shores, and into our cosmopolitan ports, China is making big inroads into our space, our land and even salvaging our bad debts. This documentary will drive the adage that there is no such thing of a free lunch. Like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, all the feeding could just be a ploy to fatten up for the big kill!

After watching this presentation, it would appear crystal clear why Trump won the elections, and it would be unthinkable to assume otherwise.

With Nixon's 1972 seminal visit to China, the trade gates with the USA opened. Bill Clinton ushered China in the World Trade Organisation (WTA) to increase bilateral commerce. Unfortunately, over the years, the US may notice that the arrangement was lopsided. The Chinese flooded the American market with substandard, cheap and potentially unhealthy products. The currency manipulation by the Chinese gave them an unfair advantage. The multinational companies are also guilty of putting national interest aside in favour of profit to relocate factories in China. Small and medium enterprises had no choice but to relocate, unable to stay afloat with lower production cost in China. This robbed jobs from the American plant and factory workers. Pictures of abandoned factories in America soon became a familiar landscape.

The US of A, over the decades after the World War 2, have been instrumental in orchestrating political directions in many third world countries the world over to suit business climate in their favour. When the tide turns around, when karma bites back, they cry like babies. They whine and allege foul play. They say the Chinese do not care about the environment. They pollute the world with their the unabated toxic waste. The Chinese towns are most polluted cities in the world. They contribute vastly to carbon emission and environmental degradation. They have no respect for human rights and do not have labour laws. They force prisoners in labour camps with long hours of work to increase the country's productivity. They do not respect intellectual property. They promote piracy and counterfeits.

Another bone of contention with the Americans is how the production of military sensitive equipment and software are outsourced to China. It puts the US in a precarious situation as their national security may come under threat. The Chinese are known to copy and mass produce, even military hardware, putting the USA at the mercy of the increasing Chinese military might.

The filmmaker accuses the American multinational companies of selling out on its citizens. They did not use their resources to keep jobs for the Americans. The smaller industries could not compete anyway. He suggests that the trade reform is reviewed to balance trade. Research and development should go in tandem with production. The unholy union between politicians and entrepreneurs need to be nipped. Navarro emphasises that the criticism that he hurls is made against the Communist Party of China, not to the people of China, as they just want to survive and are oppressed. It is not the People's Republic of China but the Communist Party of China who called the shots.

He also tries to wake the patriotism of the Americans to resist the temptation to purchase the cheaper Chinese product which would increase US deficit but to buy American. It is easier said than done as it appears that there no more American products in the market.

It is all just a big boys' club

In the high life; Bing Cosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra.

Just the other day, I overheard a conversation at a party. No, there was no eavesdropping. It was plain for all to hear. Anyway, that is why parties are organised; for parties to be feted to meet to engage in small talks that would perhaps start the cogwheel of something big like a big money churning business venture. It is naivety to think that it is anything else but about economics. You thought it was to reap blessings from well-filled bellies and that nature would return in abundance what you offer upon others, a square meal and satiety? On the contrary, it is a case of throwing a small fish to bait a bigger one.

There was this guy who so pleased to have met his old physician who had fixed his heart ailment many years previously when he was employed in a public hospital. After purging his problems of so many years, the patient was at a crossroads as he was receiving conflicting advice from his current caregivers. After patiently listening to the patient's dilemma, the good doctor had only one question to ask when the hopeful cardiac patient wanted to have an appointment with him - do you have insurance coverage!

Then another friend whose mother still receives VIP treatment from a certain private medical entity. You see, my friend's mother is a living encyclopaedia of diseases. She has all the lifestyle diseases known to man, and all her organs need to be regularly assessed for routine 'servicing'. My friend soon could not help but to notice that the mother's admission usually drew the same team of specialists to her bedside. They would ask the usual cursory questions and pleasantries, just to charge the same as when she had been admitted earlier with an acute condition. He is not complaining as he is not the paymaster. His mother's bills are at the courtesy of his late father's employers. I could not blame my friend when he told me that the team of doctors would plan their next holiday every time the mother gets admitted.

So that is what it has come to now. It is just a big boys' club with a secret pact to share their daily kill and help each when the necessity arises. Out of the window went the oath to serve humanity and the pledge of service above self! When economics comes into the equation, humanity goes out of the window. One man's misery is another man's sumptuous meal and finance to support his bourgeois lifestyle. Hippocrates oath can be confined to the museums and annals of history books.

Once a Free, always a Free.

OFA – Be a little foolish, be a little different
PFS to celebrate its 200th year – from The Star newspaper

When I left Penang for university in the US, I also left Penang Free School before the school year ended. I felt I did so without disrupting much the life of the School: I wasn’t editor of the School magazine. I wasn’t Break Monitor, Class Monitor, Traffic Warden, House Prefect, or School Prefect. I didn’t captain any School sports team. In some subjects, I would usually get close to failing marks — ok, not in “some subjects” but in Art, specifically. Fellow students who were my seniors would routinely reject my writing submissions to school publications for my being too flippant (I had to look up what “flippant” meant the first time I heard back from one editor). School teachers would openly warn me in class for being disruptive, every so often. Fellow students who were my seniors and who trained with me in gymnastics would ask me why I kept coming back as I never seemed to get any stronger, faster, or better.

Prof Danny Quah

At PFS I hadn’t failed at everything. But I wasn’t a remarkable student at PFS. In the eyes of people in charge, I was in the middle of the pack. That felt about right to me as that’s where most people are, generally. Where I’d not done well at School, I figured perhaps those things didn’t matter.

I’m now Professor of Economics at the LSE. My CV makes plain what that involves. But compared to when I was a PFS student, I have also had to do a few things where I have felt a little more exposed — no longer so much middle of the pack — and that are less obviously associated with my job but perhaps more interesting. These are not typically things that come with being a Professor. So I undertake added risks when I take them on.

Before thousands of graduating university students and their families, for three years as Head of Department for Economics at LSE, I announced the names of fresh graduates and congratulated them as they undertook the last of their university rites. Over decades of teaching and travelling, I lectured to tens of thousands of people — in New Zealand, Beijing, Southeast Asia, the Gulf, and nations in between all the way through to North and South America. CNN, Reuters, Bloomberg, and the BBC tell me they broadcast to hundreds of millions of people worldwide — so I could potentially have spoken to some reasonable fraction of that many people each time I’ve appeared on TV or radio from London.

My research has, over the years, varied from the extremely mathematical and obscure on the one hand, to the politically more visible on the other. As a consequence, I’ve gotten feedback on what I do from many different segments of society. Some of my writings have been translated into 18 different languages. What I work on now, the rise of the East in the global economy, gets more than usually varied reactions. Some tell me to hide away this work:

‘Americans, as is, are already paranoid enough, just short of trumping up a shooting war with China. Can you please tone down your “research”, and better yet file it in your basement and wait for 50 years before publishing them? Please let the world be a more peaceful place.’

counts among the gentler of messages I regularly receive. Other feedback can be slightly more encouraging.

Not that I think I have to be ready for my own shooting war, but I also train regularly in taekwon-do, now as a second-dan blackbelt. Five years after I started taekwon-do here in the UK, I managed to fight my way to being runner-up in sparring at the British championships and I managed to become British champion in patterns.

When I correlate the things I do now that draw for me the greatest sense of achievement with what I’d previously done well at PFS, I’m struck by how orthogonal these two sets of attributes are. At PFS I’d excelled in mathematics and science, but that is now only a small part of what I need to do to be a productive contributing member of the community. What matters more instead? A good sense of of what is artistically compelling and linguistically convincing. A political awareness of what ought to matter to people in international society. Articulateness in writing and speaking, and an ability to debate effectively. Physical acuity and a feeling of confidence and security in my own skin.

What is strange is that those characteristics I now find most valuable are the same as those where PFS had challenged me most and found me most wanting, exactly those areas I’d been most dismissive of when I’d been at PFS (they were only “soft skills”).

Perhaps PFS does this to everyone, although in different ways. PFS is an educational institution of such deep and profound historical achievement, it ferrets out those areas where you the student need most to build, and then it challenges you there. How you respond — do you turn your back and say it’s all meaningless; do you say, let me learn so I can be better — is up to you.

At PFS, as in most of life, you only get one go-round. You can make that one pass-through be everything to you, or you can make it mean much less. On the one hand, this lesson I’ve learnt about PFS as an institution is awesomely frightening: no one there is going to give you easy answers but you can be sure they’ll be there to ask you the hard questions. On the other hand, this realization is staggeringly optimistic: PFS challenges each of us to leave as better people than when we began at the School. And by being a little foolish — admitting we don’t know everything even as we don’t pander to everything old people say they want us to be — we can each indeed end up a little better.

(This appears in FIDELIS, the 200th anniversary commemorative book of the Old Frees Association.)