2/11/2007

A cram HDB flat or a spacious landed property

Greed is a very powerful motivating force to drive individual enterprise, for the good of self, and if lucky, a little sharing for others. Up to a point, greed is good and necessary for progress, for the accumulation of wealth and knowledge, and wisdom, and everything else. It only becomes a danger when it loses its focus and becomes an end in itself. It is like being choke to death by a mouthful of rice, or a bridge too far, over reached, and all came tumbling down. A nation is just like an individual. It is good to grow and grow and grow. But when growth is blindly pursued, it becomes like greed. It is going to cross a threshold when it will destroy everything that is being built. We have grown and prosper over the years, done very well in many things. But the last few years have seen the cracks appearing. In spite of the rapid growth and wealth all around us, why is it that there are so many miseries and pain? Are we pursuing growth for the sake of growth or for the wellbeing of the people? Now this new target of 6.5 million population. I believe the thinkers and planners have done their homework well and statistically and theoretically proven that this is the idea number for this island. The optimum level as the economic model will show. But economic models and optimum points are all dependent on a certain set of variables. When new variables appear, the whole model may collapse. Big is good. So is small. So is medium. Each has its strength and weaknesses. Every size has a place in this world, just like the animal kingdom, there is a place for all sizes. We should tread this new goal of 6.5 millions carefully. Is there a need to push our limited resources to breaking point? Our limited land and natural resources and geography will be a natural and physical barrier to how far we can stretch ourselves. Once over extended through our own greed, it is like digging our own grave. The financial crisis over the last decade has brought us down to earth and many prices, especially properties, down to earth as well. There must be a real reassessment of not pushing the limits and consolidate on building better quality life for more of our people. Should we continue to strive to push further so that our rich can be richer than the rich of the world while our lower and middle income groups are gasping for air to survive? Shall we stretch our limited physical and human resources to exhaust all our reserves in our frantic drive to hit the 6.5 million population which I can imagine must be the ideal paradise, and then call it a day. That’s it, we have hit the 6.5 million population and that is the end of life, and this nation will go on auto pilot and we can rest on our laurels? In the past, we had followed the wisdom of driving as fast as we could when relations with our neighbours were good and the world economy was good. But those building of infrastructure and reserves are very different from trying to almost doubling our population and stress our little piece of poor mother earth. I can hear mother earth crying. Say when we build and hit the 6.5 million and then the economy was revisited by another financial crisis with job losses everywhere. How are we going to cope with 6.5 million people and the properties that come with them, the high cost of super structures to be maintained? All the property prices will collapse with many left vacant, many unemployed, many unable to service their daily living cost. It is not simply asking the foreigners to go home or the locals to keep on paying. We should let our population grow naturally instead of grabbing everything that comes along just to be 6.5 million as fast as we can.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

The higher you are the heavier will be the fall. Mark my words, it will come. When it does I hope we are prepared for it.

Anonymous said...

the true bred have no qualms in leaving . needless to say, half breds are even more superficial. when the economic circumtstances no longer favor the individual or families, their exodus will be painful to many and the country. but assuming they can pull it off, which is an enormous task, and make this a great place to live, work and play, would it be less devastating compared to the last financial crisis?

i think the desires of most people is for great space( democratic space included) that can provide much greater and varied experiences. a frog hole, no matter how creatively enhanced, is still a small tiny hole. now that's a painful reality the rich technocrats and business community, the true beneficiaries of creative changes, will never want you to remember.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

we are all crying out for space. that's why the big countries like australia and even malaysia is a great attraction to many singaporeans.

but to cram 6.5 million people here, how much space will be left even if every inch is landscape. you can even drive your car if you still can afford one. of course for car hobbyists to admire cars in their hdb car parks that is still ok. but the price of parking will also skyrocketed for sure.

whose great idea that we must have 6.5 million? why can't we be content with 4 or 5 million for the next 20 years? the rich nations in europe may seen a dwindling of population and are worried. but they are not clamouring to quickly double their population. for what?

who wants to be weighing 120 kg and look prosperous when the arteries are fighting for their lives and the blood cells are all jammed up?

Abao said...

I'll love to see how they handle the less positive aspects of 3.5million foreigners in Singapore.

Anonymous said...

Easy, to hande 3.5 million foreigners in this country we will tell them if they do not behave we take away their citizenship, rotan them and put them in Hotel Changi. If they are really bad, like drugs and stuff, we always have the rope.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

with that kind of number, especially if concentrated in a few countries, and if they turn violent, either we have to shoot them down in the streets or we will be overran. any rioting will cause a big mess.

and add another couple hundreds of thousands of tourists at any one time and the number of foreigners will be even greater.

Anonymous said...

Hi all, as I said "they" are so greed to look for huge revenues. Look @ our little scare island can it allow 6.5 mils ( the most is 5 mils inorder to make this little city more virant), can our infrasturcture allow such a huge populations & do we have a space to breath, even now & then everywhere is scrammed with peolpes, our smrt, buses , shopping malls, town, foodcourt & our vehicles are travelled much slower than before. Where is our qualities of life in this small red dot city, I would rather stay @ home or find a bigger place to ease a stress scammed city.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

with singaporeans not reproducing to replace themselves, and at the current strength of 2.5 mil, it means the additional 4 million will be new citizens/foreigners.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

the less positive effects?

during the financial crisis we ran out of solution. can't do anything. just too bad that the world economy hit us badly. even the widening wage gap cannot be narrowed because of globalisation.

beyond our control.