The farce of going green

Save Gaia, save the environment, protect the earth, go green. All these beautiful slogans are good only as slogans. Many people are crazy enough to use less water, save on a piece of plastic bag, a few empty cans, and think they could save the earth while on the other hand the big boys, the industries, the govts, are wasting precious resources without battling an eyelid in the name of growth and progress.

How many cars are scrapped in good working conditions daily? And think, how many plastic bags or tin cans needed to be saved to replace a good working car that is being scrapped?

How many handphones are being dumped or thrown away daily? Again, how many plastic bags and paper bags and tin cans are needed to produce one of these handphones that are thrown away? How much water and electricity needed to be saved to manufacture one handphone?

Look at the number of high capacity engine cars running around and burning fuel when a smaller engine car would do the same trick. How much resources and petrol are consumed unnecessarily to produce such high power cars? Are they necessary except to be toys of the rich?

Think, how many good condition blocks of flats that could last another 100 years are being pulled down only to be rebuilt? How much resources and energy are needed to build, destroyed and rebuild when it was unnecessary?

Think, how much food and resources would be needed for consumption if another 1m people are brought into the island for growth? Want to save some more plastic bags, paper bags and tin cans?

In order to really save the world, one main thing to do is to control population growth. Each person brought into this world is going to consume lots of energy and raw material, much more than to produce millions of plastic bags. The main destroyer of mother earth is population growth. And a corollary to this is economic growth and wasteful production for economic growth. A lot of economic activities are wasteful and unnecessary, even the new botanic garden.

Who is kidding who about saving the world? If this island stops importing more people, it will save many thousand or million times more than what it needs to do to cut on savings of plastic bags or tin cans or other equivalents.

The baby thing is in the air again

Looks like all the policies to encourage the reproduction of more workers did not work. Singapore will be ruined if it cannot find more workers to feed the system. And the people are increasingly getting angrier with the influx of foreigners into this piece of rock. What can the govt do to induce more babies from our women who don’t think it is their responsibility to produce more digits to please the statisticians and the govt?

The babies are not for sale. They are not another piece of machine to be bought for an inanimate purpose call the economy or growth. They are human lives, to be cared for, to be loved, to be given a good life, not to become slaves to an economic system.

What is happening today is that both parents are busy trying to feed the economy, to pay endless mortgages for homes and cars, to save to pay the hospitals when the time comes, to put aside money for the sovereign funds to invest, to keep paying and paying ahead for the time when they could not work anymore even when they are designed to work till they drop dead.

Many just do not have time for babies, to love and care for, and enjoy them. Babies will be farmed to the maids who would see them as another chore, another machine that generates jobs for them. What kind of babies will they be and how would they turn out when they become adults? And the maids are essential not only to the parents but also to the economic system as they generate a lot of revenue for the govt. Maybe that is the reason why the govt refuses to offer incentives to the grandparents to care for the babies, a much more healthy, safe and secure, and desirable for bringing up children when parents have to live an existence like worker bees. But incentivizing grandparents would undermine the needs for maids and remove a major source of income.

With the maids playing an important role in the lives of babies and their upbringing, it may be a good thing as they will imbibe the values, cultures and philosophies of life from these foreign talents. There will be more diversities and creativities among the future generations which will be good for the workforce and economy.

Who still wants to do national service and produce more babies to work the system, to feed the demand for goods and services, to pay for all the taxes, direct, indirect, disguised, so that the state can continue to exist as a glorious state? What is the baby for other than becoming another economic tool? NS men!

What about the monetary cost of bringing up a baby to adulthood? This is easily $1m till completion of tertiary education. Another million to buy a home, another million to buy a car during his useful life, another million to set aside for medical and hospitalization, another half a million for all kinds of minimum sums in savings. And these did not include his daily living expenses and things needed to amuse himself while being alive. Maybe another million for litigation.

A human life will easily feed at least $5m into the economic system. That is a lot of money counting another 5m or 10m people in ballpark figures. Now you see why a baby is so important for the survival of the state and the economy.

Demise of the stockbroking industry is imminent

With the trading volume petering off other than non commission generating computer trades, broking houses are finding it tough going to cover their overheads. Remisiers too are sleeping on their jobs literary with hardly a phone call daily. Many would have qualified as low wage earners going forward and should be entitled to workfare subsidies.

Someone would have to bear the operating costs of brokerages and pressure has been put on remisiers to push their clients to trade more or they would have to cough up the difference in operating cost. Some houses are dangling the carrot to induce sleeping clients to start trading.

All these are meant well measures but failing to understand the real cause of the dying market and are futile efforts, grasping at shadows. Not many investors have much money left to feed the big funds and their gambling computers. When entering the market is a certain loss, who would want to trade even if it is for free? Unless the real cause of the systemic flaws in the market are recognized and removed, the stock market will collapse in increasing speed.

Within a matter of months there could be an exodus of remisiers out of the industry. More would be applying for taxi driving licence as the last resort. Employees of brokerages are bracing up for the red letters as retrenchment is on the card when revenue fails to match operating cost.

How could a healthy and lucrative industry reach such a pathetic plight? Actually the writings were on the wall several years back when all the changes were introduced into the market. Anyone in the industry would know what is happening but no one would want to do anything, and the slide to the bottom and self destruct is only a matter of time.

The white mice syndrome

The famous white mice lab experiment is turning into reality in jam packed Sinkie land. This was an experiment on communal living and how a crammed environment could lead to the inevitable violence and mice eating mice.

A number of mice were introduced into a caged environment. They got along well when there were lesser mice and more space to move around, and more food available. As the population of mice increases, personal space for each mouse gets smaller, and food gets scarcer. At a point when living together becomes a competition for food and space, the mice became violent and even started to eat one another.

The increasing violence in the trains and buses is testimony to the findings of this experiment. The Sinkies are getting more irritated and agitated in the crammed environment and would grow increasingly intolerant and violent. Fighting for seats and space in buses and trains will become a more common daily encounter. Thanks but not thanks to this unthinking drive for growth through the addition of more people into this piece of rock.

Is there no other better solution than this ‘one and only’ solution of increasing population for growth? Is this why the people pay out of this world salary for this out of this world solution? Is this the solution that the people want or reject? Should it be time to find better talented people to run the country with alternative solutions? If there are no better people to lead, and no better solutions other than this ONE solution to solve all problems, this is the beginning of a downward spiral into the abyss.

There are definitely many more talented Sinkies available in this island.

My Holy Order

This is my Church, this is my Holy Order. I run my Church the way I run my Church. I spend my Church’s money the way I spend my Church’s money. Who dares challenge or question what I do with my Holy Order?

Apparently this appears to be the way the Holy Order was run and who dares challenge will be sued and disgraced. One did, was sued and was disgraced.

But time vindicates the righteous. Or is it that there is a bigger God who will take his time to deal with the abusers of power? When time is ripe, Holy Order or whatever, time to go. Time waits for no man.

Which Holy Order will be next to face the maker, the final arbiter of righteousness? Only God knows.

My apologies for the sermon. I am not religious and do not subscribe to any Holy Order.