10m population – Crossing the line of diminishing return

Liu Thai Ker’s keynote address at a forum organised by the Business Times of SPH in collaboration with Singapore Institute of Building Limited yesterday (31 Jul) is drawing unusual flaks in the social media. He is singing the same sick mantra of growing population for economic growth and wanting more immigrants in the little island. More than 160 comments (in TRE) have been posted in the thread about the 10m population that Liu Thai Ker said was needed for Singapore to be a sustainable country. If this belief is true, Singapore would have perished long ago and all the small countries should not exist.

The netizens were not angry with Liu Thai Ker personally. But for him to repeat this folly is just unbearable. And they are looking for a scapegoat to vent their anger. Liu Thai Ker was in the right place to take the blows. To have 6.9m or 10m or 20m is just a matter of adjusting to a life in a more dense piece of rock. Can, sure can. The people would also become denser or be condensed.

It is not a matter of can or cannot. It is a matter of whether the people want to go down that road. It is not even a matter of being sustainable or not sustainable. There are many schools of thoughts on this and no one is wiser. It is not an absolute solution that we go this way or we will perish. Come on, is there a genius out there that can be sure of this, that there is no other ways?

By the same belief, I would not even grant it the privilege of calling it a logic, the Australians must be dumb to have so few people in a continent bigger than China, India or the USA and with a population of about 20m. The economists for growth will be screaming ‘fools’. The architects and property developers will be shaking their heads for the lost opportunities to build more buildings and fill up the land with more people. Wonder who is crazy?

Why do we want to keep building and building and to add more and more people into this piece of rock? What for? Oh, economic growth!  We have gone pass the law of diminishing return when every extra effort will give smaller and smaller returns. We are in a new level, a level when every extra effort, or increase in population, will lead to an increase in pain. The more people we put into the island, the higher will be the cost of living, the stress on the socio eco system, the infrastructure and the demands on the people. It will lead to more stress and more pain, on the people and on the systems and structures.

Those who are living in the confines of 50,000 sq ft properties would not know or feel that this is happening. Some wise crackpots are even telling the people that living in 600 sq ft flat for a family of 4 or 6 is fine, no drop in the quality of life. We used to have that kind of environment in the 50s and 60s, 8 or 10 people living in a cubicle. That was the quality of life. They escaped the squeeze by spending time outside the cubicles. Today the people are better off with aircon comfort in shopping centres and the great pubs and nightspots.

The people are saying they did not want this kind of squeeze. Why should their lives be screwed by a few people who want to push this belief through, even got it rubber stamped in Parliament? The govt has heard the cries and the felt the anger. But it seems to choose the deaf frog way, not wanting to listen and now we have a line up of snake oil sellers paraded to sell this koyok of more population. Who is the crazy one? The people must decide on this. The people have rejected the PWP. If the govt wants the moral authority to carry this through, it must call for a referendum before destroying this island for the Singaporeans and their children. Turning a deaf ear is not a solution. This is the people’s call, not the call of a handful of individuals, and definitely not the call of snake oil sellers.

Kopi Level - Red again.