The gods have landed

The Pacific Ocean has been dotted with many little islands with islanders that had not seen modern civilization and modern technology. Several decades back, they would not even have seen a ship or a helicopter. And as all civilizations behaved in a similar way, they looked to the sky or heaven for their gods. They prayed to anything that flew or came down from heaven.

These people were in a way happy with their own existence, self sufficient and without any worries of how to make ends meet. God has provided them well and they were quite contented. Then the day would come when modern civilization would dawn upon them. The White gods would land from the sky with all the roar and thunder and fire of their flying machine. And to the natives of these islands, these White men must be gods. And they looked up to them in fear and awe. They knelt and bowed to them, feasted them and let the gods to rule over them. And the gods knew that the natives were ignorant and simply took advantage of their simplicity and acted like gods and lived like gods to affirm the belief of the natives.

Today, in the 21st Century, history is repeating itself in another rich and prosperous island. The islanders were once very progressive and productive and had built a little paradise for themselves. But through the passage of time they were told that they were daft and lazy. And they believe, and other people from around the world also said so. Everyone is calling the inhabitants of the island stupid. And they believe too. How could they not when their leaders were a bunch of frogs. The frogs are the smartest and live in their ivory well. They have not seen much of the real world since they descended into the comfort zone of the well. And when they look up to the sky, it is as big as the well’s opening.

And sure enough, the gods came, descended from the sky. Every god is greeted with great admiration as some wonder beans, some super natural beans, definitely better than the local beans. And the gods were worshipped and prayed and feasted. The gods were elevated to all positions of importance to be the gods of the natives. And the natives cowered in awe and fear of these new gods. They felt inferior to the gods and accepted their new low down existence.

The gods knew how daft the natives were, including the frogs. So they acted and behaved like gods, walked like gods and lived like gods as expected by the natives. The more they acted as gods, the more impressive they became and the frogs were in high praises of these gods.

Without their knowledge, these new gods started to plot for their continued existence and dominance as the privileged gods, above the mortals, above the natives, to be served and ruled over the natives, including the frogs. Who knows when they would chop up the frogs to be served as frog leg stew when the day comes to rule over the natives and the frogs. And what's next when the frogs were gone?
The new gods have arrived and shall inherit the paradise from the natives. A new religion will be founded for the daft natives to believe in. The gods have found their willing and daft followers and believers.

In Love - A piece of RAR Art

This is an abstract black and white piece called In Love. Another creation of Mother Nature.

The children of Jessie and Bluebell

They were whisked away from Jessie and Bluebell when they were young. They were sent to special schools, mostly in the physical and martial kind, combat skills, rather than the soft skills of intellectual stimulation. Brawn was what they were meant to be, just like the cotton field niggers bred by the white Americans in the good old days, strong jaws, strong bones and strong teeth to endure the back breaking works in the farm and cotton fields.

The children of Jessie and Bluebell were more fortunate. They were trained less on martial and combat skills that needed brawn than brain. They were well kept, well bred and with internet skills to boot. They would appear whenever and wherever they are needed or told to be on duty. They possess this highly desired quality called dogged loyalty to their masters. They were carefully chosen from an elite pool of the brainless so that they don’t think or question too much or not at all, but just to obey and to do as they were told.

Such highly specialised professionals are prized items and like soldiers, to be used and also dispensable. Morals, rights and wrongs, principles, were not in their vocabulary. They only have one virtue, or two, absolute obedience and execute orders blindly but diligently.

They attack, they bite, ferociously at any one they were told to bite. No matter if one is an elite, old elite, ex elite, when one does not toe the line, when one crosses the line, the children of Jessie and Bluebell will be at their sides, barking and harassing them. Thankfully they have no need to answer to Jessie and Bluebell. Both were dead and gone and could not impart some good values of human decency. There is no need for conscience or the feeling of guilt. They did not know of such high falutin stuff. As long as they are well fed, they won’t even mind the lease on their brass studded collars. They put on their collars like medals of pride, not infamy.

Could the island survive a major economic crisis?

Would PAP be remembered as the rogue Govt in the future for bringing about the collapse of the country through its high property price, high cost of living and high dependency on immigrants? The formula for a crash in the economy and property price need no guess work. The writing is on the wall that the international finance and the monetary systems are waiting to hit ground zero. There are so many frauds and corruption in the world’s financial institutions and systems that it is now being sustained by the continuing printing of paper money by most of the developed countries. And Singapore is in the thick of this hazy and corrupt financial system that when it collapses, there is no where to hide and no where to run. Every Singaporean is part of this money matrix, tied up in huge loans through housing and a disappearing CPF that is good only on paper.

When the world’s financial system stops functioning, it is as good as dysfunctional now at the rate it is going, cheating all the investors of their hard earned money to benefit a few crooks, it is simply unsustainable. When it goes down, the economies of most countries will go as well. Our Raffles Place and Shenton Way and the new financial centre in Marina Bay will become ghost towns. All the high salaried finance FTs will have to pack their bags and return home. With half a million to a million foreigners that are here because of jobs, and will flee when the jobs are gone, the population will shrink overnight. Instantly the whole property market will be like a house of cards. No tenants, owners unable to service the loans, everyone scrambling to get out by selling whatever they have, bank foreclosures…. The more properties one owns, the more heavily one is mortgaged and in debt.

This spiral will hit every sector of the economy and everyone, including HDB owners. FTs and FWs will be evacuating like locusts migrating to greener pastures after a feast and leaving waste behind. Construction companies and developers will all go bust. The whole economy will be in ruins and so will be the lives of a people depending solely on unproductive pursuits of churning properties and stocks and derivatives. Everything will burn like all papers will burn.

The highest risk and heavily leveraged industry today is the finance industry. And we are deeply in it. And the people are all highly geared in properties, private or HDB, all in big debt and needing more money to service the debt. When jobs are gone, when easy money from high finance is not there, where will it lead to? Our economy is too highly reliant on the finance industry and properties, and on more foreigners being here. They are intertwined like triplets, when one goes, the others go as well. With 40% or 2m transient workers here, their departure can be traumatising and financially crippling.

When that day comes, don’t worry, economic systems are designed for boom and doom, like the great depression, it is a matter of when. And the good thing, it seems so near. The Govt will have no more tricks to pull out from the bag. In fact it is living on one last trick, growing population to boost up property prices and the economy. How long can this trick last?

I know, this is a very pessimistic doomsday forecast. Pray it doesn’t happen.

Would Japan and China be better off with more immigrants/people?

LKY chided Japan and China for their presumingly flawed population policies. China’s problem is its one child policy to hold back a population explosion.It must be crazy to keep growing the population with 1.3b now. In the case of Japan, it is its homogenous society that did not take too kindly with immigrants of other origins. So, would these two countries be better off by abandoning their population control policies? The hyped fear is that the countries will age too rapidly and eventually ran out of stock of people. And leave it to the mathematicians, it is then possible theoretically, assuming that the human race is unthinking and as predictable as robots and both countries will be nothing, no people left.

Putting this argument aside, are these two countries progressing or regressing? One has just emerged as the second biggest economy in the world and threatening to over the USA as the biggest in 30 years or less. Japan is still the third largest economy in the world, having been overtaken by China which is impossible to stop given its physical size and population. But Japan is still unbeatable as the number three, ahead of all the developed European economies, ahead of Britain, France and Germany.

Though the Japanese were experiencing very little economic growth over the last 30 years, is the quality of life getting worst? Definitely not. They are still enjoying possibly the highest quality of life without growth, and also with little inflation while housing prices remained practically stagnant to mitigate against slower or no growth. The Japanese are still very wealthy as a country with plenty of reserves and industries and high productivity. Japan does not need the ponzi population growth to maintain a high quality of life without the apparent growth that is deemed desirable.

In both these countries, would they be better off or worst off if their populations were to shrink another 10% or 20%? Economists can argue either way but more population does not only bring growth alone but could bring along many more social and political problems that would negate the little benefits from economic growth. Would it be better to maintain a high quality of life with little economic growth and little population growth?