Category Archives: Life

No I have not read the book by David Graeber though I’ve been told by friends more than once to read it. I did take a read of the essay he published in 2013, which was the precursor to the book and I think right at the point of identification of the phenomena, he already struck at the heart of some of the source of it. It is deep and it entangles a whole host of complexity.

I think getting people to accept the phenomena is a good start; tracing it to our socio-economic systems is a good next step. But we ultimately need to work on moving forward, changing this toxic culture. David Graeber of course was pushing for Universal Basic Income ultimately to deal with the problem but I think there’s a huge narrative around our lives, around the world that supports this whole culture of bullshit jobs that we need to work around. If we fail to change this narrative, then bullshit jobs are here to stay, and to perpetuate.

Given the mess our world is now in, there’s a whole lot of problem-solving, of cleaning up, of undoing the old system that our new generation have to do. And we need to construct the right narrative around creating a future that can contain the solution to these problems, or avert the disaster that awaits. If we continue adopting the narrative of the generations coming before us who fail to appreciate the oncoming disaster, then we are just going to repeat the same results.

There are so many problems we need to solve – we need to get people talking about these problems. Whether it is climate change, the massive inequality, the ills of financialisation of the economies and the world. We need to get the attention of people who might eventually commit themselves to the cause, to spend their own resources dealing with it so they can make a difference as opposed to just making money.

And when we realised how we are spending our time at jobs just targeted at helping people save ‘face’ or to free up their time so that they can do more things that stoke their own egos, we know that we ought to be going out there and creating that new future that we envision, not the one that our boss had that is blurry in our eyes but that we still conform to.

I really love how Seth Godin thinks about marketing as ‘changing a culture’ and how he defines culture as ‘people like us, do things like this’. And in light of that, every startup, every ‘disruption’ is about changing the culture. We ought to recognise that culture is temporary, and regardless of how you think they are entrenched, they are continuously being assaulted, dislodged by various forces in the world.

Every single startup trying to enter a marketplace is trying to change a culture to some extent; and those successful ones managed that change so well we are quick to forget that it happened. More importantly, sometimes the change is so gradual that it is almost imperceptible. Think about Grab and what they did to quite a few different cultural norms that are supposedly so entrenched:

• Flagging taxis on the streets or queuing at taxi stands
• Not wanting to call private hire cars for fear of untrustworthy drivers or companies
• Having to call cab by ringing a number and then getting to the operator and trying to describe where you are, get the license plate number from the operator and looking out for the taxi
• Having different numbers to call different brands of cab because they all have different call centers
• Not being able to call the taxi driver you’ve booked directly to ask him where he is when he is on the way to you

How many of these ‘norms’ still exists today and how much have we taken Grab for granted? The new behaviours they introduced includes:

• Calling for grab even when there is taxis waiting for passengers at the taxi stand
• Going down from the building only when your grab has arrived or about to arrive
• ‘Grabbing’ as a verb to mean you’re using grab to call a cab to get to your next destination

And the list goes on; you get my point.

Likewise Alibaba changed the culture of the Chinese internet where online merchants were not seen as trustworthy and scams seem to abound. They convinced users to buy from listed merchants, and persuaded merchants to use them as a trusted intermediary, then introduced escrow services to hold on to payments so that both sides can trust each other, effectively mastering the two-sided market in China.

When we think about a startup in terms of the culture they are seeking to change, the norms they are looking to dislodge, we discover how difficult a challenge they have. Yet it is also a way of thinking about their marketing, the story they tell themselves and everyone else, as well as the manner they design their products. All of these will feed somehow into the forces gradually dislodging the current power structures and cultural norms.

On a separate note, if you’re a startup that is just following the culture or feeding off the norms, it is quite likely there can be a dozen of you around to do minor variations of the same things. Of course, it need not always be about making big bucks; and as Seth Godin would say, it’s about making the difference.

Wasn’t quite sure if the journalist suffered a writers’ block when penning this poorly written coverage, which provided hardly any context for which the views he was trying to bring across was spoken. Which NUS forum, what was it for, where was it, slowly trickled in through the article and different terms were used (how did the ‘Tembusu Forum’ name suddenly got into this NUS forum?) And was it held in NUS – it mentioned participants watched it online, so were the speakers also speaking over some video conference or was it live – how did the photo of the speakers in mask get on the article?

Sorry for going a little off-tangent to lament the state of writing and journalism in Singapore but I was intending to comment on this bit of the article:

Prof Koh said that the issue of rented housing versus homeownership was a “mental block” for Singapore. He recounted how he had moderated a question-and-answer session with founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew at the 50th anniversary of the Housing and Development Board in 2010, and had asked the veteran politician then to acknowledge whether there may be some young people in self-employment or in contractual jobs that face difficulties becoming a homeowner. “Mr Lee’s answer was no. (Home ownership) has become an ideology in Singapore that it is a mental block to building better rental housing for the poor, and good rental housing for the young middle class,” Prof Koh said.

Prof Koh just recounted a comment from then Minister Mentor Lee and it was 10 years ago. That was the pre-Grab era, where the gig economy was more on the fringe, where food delivery was primarily in the domain of fast food companies with their own delivery fleets or the logistics company dealing in the frozen variety. And MM Lee had good reasons to say ‘no’ – unemployment was a whooping 5.86% in 2009 and had come down to 4.12% in 2010. It would continue to fall over the next 3 years and continue to stay below 4% for the next 5 years. And I believe HDB itself would allow for financing facilities to support homeownership even for those self-employed or in contractual jobs.

The context of today is so completely different. The economy shifted and perhaps more importantly, home prices have increased perhaps by about 1.2-1.5 times (residential private property index now stands at 150% that of 2010; while that for HDB stands at 120%). Meanwhile, rental rates for both HDB (up 12% from 2010) and non-landed private property (up 3% from 2010) have not increased all that much. The culture and the economy co-evolves and influence each other.

In the past, the direction towards home-ownership was clear from the government perspective; and therefore home prices were kept low and affordable, criteria for allocation was stringent. The culture was aligned with the policy and reinforced by economic factors. In 2010, the attention of the government might be to create more stable jobs and to keep people employed so that they would eventually be able to become home owners. If you ‘deviate’ from the archetypical Singaporean that the government is seeking to serve, things might be a little harder for you.

10 years on, it would be unfair to use the words and perspective of MM Lee then to claim that the government has a mental block. The question is whether the government of the day is responsive in the right manner to the cultural context and the situation now. Is the leadership team overall working towards a general vision or having their own silo mission and stepping over the toes of one another? With the gig economy a reality and the willingness to keep ‘success stories’ like Grab in our economy, we must contend with the fact that transient sort of employment arrangements are here to stay. And if that is the case, where does the story about home-ownership really lie? Does it continue to fit into the economic realities of today? Are the prices in line with our goals and ideals (forget the nonsense about market setting the price – our market is small enough for the government to corner and control based on our policy objectives)? Is that still the story that HDB wants to continue perpetrating?

Note: The unemployment figures are from Statista while the property index figures cited here are obtained from SRX.

In 2010, when I emerged from National Service, I started the discipline of writing extremely frequently, to the extent of having even 2 blog posts on some days. It was a chance for me to ramp up and improve my writing especially during a period whilst I was doing a lot of freelance writing on Economics. I kept up with the discipline of writing also to keep me thinking about the materials I read, mainly from The Economist.

I’ve just loaded all of these older blog posts that used to be on ERPZ.net (it’s now defunct). The intention is to basically collect all of my blog posts, even earlier writings from more than 10 years ago into this personal website. The entries are using the old WordPress classic formatting and so I’ll progressively alter the style and bring it more up to date especially since some of the old photos that were used/linked are now broken. So please pardon me while the formatting looks a bit strange.

Now I want to warn you that most of these writings were from an age where I was commenting on somewhat controversial stuff and perhaps a bit less positive. Those writings might not reflect my current views on various topics and I just want to put this on record that the blog really is about chronicling the development of my thought and maturing process of my thinking. I would really encourage all of you to take up the habit of writing as well in this manner. Doesn’t matter that no one is reading because ultimately, you’re writing for yourself, for the craft.

I was a teaching assistant in New York University for a year with the College of Arts and Science, teaching mainly economics to undergraduates. And there is a certain annoyance I get when students raise their hands (or even ask me during office hours) to ask “Will this be on the test?” in response to something I was teaching. It was hard to place a finger on the discomfort I felt; after all, isn’t it good that the students are concerned about their grades? Won’t it be worse if students didn’t bother at all?

I think that tension I felt was one where someone seems to be trying to cheat on the game. And inviting me to be an accomplice. But what is the game? What are we trying to honour here?

For a teacher who thought that the game was to get the students to perform in the tests, to get brilliant grades so they can please their parents, impress their peers and get the certificate eventually, I think there should be no tension. But for me, I think the real game was different. It was one where students get inspired to learn, where they recognise the value of acquiring knowledge and developing the skills through their engagement and participation in class. And this is important because we are preparing for them to be self-reliant, to be able to navigate and thrive in the world after they graduate. And we know that the grades, the certificates and exams are all but signals attempting to reverberate the precious truths about your capacity, capability, of who you are. But no matter what, these signals are never accurate, and worst, they can be dishonest, they can be gamed.

When we become teachers who think that grades are the game, when we try to lift up the grades of the students rather than lifting up their capabilities, we are being dishonest to the world. And we are also being dishonest to ourselves, about the state of preparedness the student have to take on the world. It is like being lenient to the driving test candidate during the test and shirking responsibility for the accidents he/she caused subsequently by his/her bad driving.

I’m trying to undo the damage our systems and culture have created in the new generation of young adults, and young professionals. Find out how I’m working on this. And join the community I’m trying to create.

I’ve been thinking about the imposter syndrome. We all have it. We all think and even continue to think we are imposters of some kind. The question posed in our undisciplined moments of thinking is ‘am I good enough to be here?’ We want to somehow be chosen by someone else, something else beyond us that gives us the validation, who will say ‘you’re good enough’; and we prefer to think that humility is when we play the devil’s advocate to their recognition and find excuses where we are not. And we mistake imposter syndrome for some sort of extreme humility.

But really, who did we think is a imposter? What kind of person is he? And how are we really comparing to him rather than comparing to the ‘others in the group’.

You can pretend to care, but you can’t pretend to show up.

George L. Bell

I think an imposter is one who pretends to care about the work; but who doesn’t show up for the work that he’s supposed to do. He’s the one who claims to be making sacrifices for the work but if he does turn up, he is unprepared and shows no commitment.

The non-imposter, or if I may call, ‘the professional’, is the one who cares about the work, shows up for the work, makes sacrifice to prepare for his/her delivery and continues to show up regardless of what the critics says or what his/her performance may be for that one moment, or the few instances. He is not an imposter because he shows up again and again for the work that he is supposed to do.

So instead of sitting around letting your mind dwell on how you might not be good enough, why don’t you discipline your thinking into considering how you can be, or how you already are, the professional. What is the next thing you’re going to do to prepare yourself, to show up for the work, to commit to the work?

You blew into the straw and bubbles emerge from the other end which is placed within a solution – what we commonly call ‘limewater’ (essentially a diluted aqueous solution of calcium hydroxide). And some powdery substance seem to appear in the solution, making it rather cloudy. Your teacher says the right description is ‘chalky’ and if you say it’s ‘cloudy’, you’ll get half the score and if you write ‘milky’ as the answer for a question asking you what happens when you blow into limewater, you’ll score zero.

And so it seemed not that important that you know what happened – at least within the context of education, which is such a waste. What exactly happened was that the carbon dioxide from your breath reacted with the calcium hydroxide and that produces calcium carbonate. But since calcium carbonate is insoluble, it floats around in powder form. And that brings us to the question, what if we described the solution as turning ‘powdery’ or what if we wrote that we will observe “a powdery substance emerging within the solution”. Your teacher might say, “Don’t try to test the system”. And so there you have it, the system rewards you for compliance, for getting the “understanding of knowledge”, in the right way. In fact, you are penalised for not following the way, for trying something new, for “testing the system”.

Fast forward so many more years when we graduate; having compounded such incidents several years and mastered the art of ‘compliance’, we enter the workforce and we wait around for instructions. We are rewarded for doing the things the boss wants us to do, we are given tasks that we have to do ourselves or ask those under us to do. And we keep on learning how to read the bosses’ mind and figuring out how he wants things done.

A compliant society works well when it is clear what is the solution to problems and when there are paths that are ‘right’ without a doubt. Now what if we make progress and suddenly chipping in is about pulling our own weight, doing our part, making our contribution, without being told how. There will bound to be a point when we need to figure out how we can contribute, by observing, by being present with issues, problems, challenges, and then giving our best shot at it. The issue with an education system that focuses on compliance and not contribution is that we train humans who wait around for instructions. Who wouldn’t ‘try’ new things; who wants to know simply ‘what is the normal way or the right way of doing something’.

But what if, making the society better is about contribution, more than compliance? Who would envision that better society?

So we have to choose what we want in life; what if we chose wrongly? What if things we choose turned out to be not as great as we expected? Do we still want to take ownership of that choice?

But if the choice I make is just a product of my upbringing, of what the society encourages me to do, then it’s someone else’s fault. And I’m happy to take that choice that my family and the society kind of gradually box me into. Then I don’t have to take ownership, I can blame someone else for the life I’m living. Because that’s not my fault.

I wrote previously about tanking in school, where we decide to ‘opt out of effort’ in school because we are creating psychological distance with our failures, running away from the responsibility of the performance of the moment. In life, we sometimes ‘give up’ our real choice and decide to follow the script of the society because we are really afraid of taking ownership of the full consequences of that choice. We are running from that responsibility of the potential performance. We prefer ‘fake knowns’ rather than ‘unknowns’. And when I say ‘fake knowns’, I’m referring to the sense of prestige, the glamour that you perceive in certain jobs or roles that the society is nudging you towards. I’m referring to the happiness you think you’ll get in making the money you’ll make from a high-paying job.

All that is fine. Because, maybe you really don’t know what you want and so money is a placeholder for all that. At least, money can buy most things. The question is, when you make money the placeholder for all that you want in your life, do the behaviours you adopt, the habits you form, the work you do everyday, bring you closer or further from the person you want to be? Are you really getting closer to what you might want?

I have written about productivity pretty extensively in the past (here and here). And one of the emerging themes that have been featured in my writing is that we are not exactly measuring and trying to target the right areas for our society. Allow me to rewrite the story: it’s not that we are measuring the wrong things but that we have already exhausted the improvements in productivity that can be gained from the ‘hard stuff’ and that we really have to start looking at the ‘softer’ stuff.

And I’d like to expand on the idea that culture is an input to productivity; and this is through the impact that social connection have on people, on the way they think, work and play. More importantly, in the knowledge-based economy, it has a huge impact on the way people come up with ideas.

Companies don’t have ideas; only people do. And what motivates people are the bonds and loyalty and trust they develop between each other. What matters is the mortar, not just the bricks. 

Margaret Heffernan

But ideas seem to be such a non-concrete output and is refined over time that we find it hard to properly quantify. That does not mean we should not try. Often we know that speaking to one another spark ideas; and that is because the social connection motivates and stimulates us.

In fact, organisations probably need to be good at ideas-management more than people-management because people should generally be able to manage themselves as long as they have that social glue that pulls them together. When everyone matters, the group as a whole delivers more; because that social capital ‘compounds’ powerfully.

Here is the full TED talk that Margaret Heffernan gave in 2015, with the opening story of the Super Chicken experiment that I referred to in the previous blog post.

In 1990s, Dr William Muir from Purdue University did an experiment with Chickens. You can read more of the details here but suffice to say, he compared 2 groups of 9 chickens – one of which he bred 6 successive generation of the chickens which produced the highest quantity of eggs, and the other being just regular chickens left to reproduce for 6 generations. The 2 chickens were held in 2 separate groups and left alone.

In the second group at the end of the experiment, the chickens were plump, healthy and producing more eggs than they were at the start of the experiment. Yet in the first group, only 3 out of the 9 initial chickens were left alive. The rest were apparently pecked to death by their fellow ‘super chickens’.

So beyond thinking about the level we are getting our people to be striving at, we ought to be considering the adverse impact on our organisations and societies for breeding ‘elites’ who are drunk on the Kool-aid that competition is good for the society. Because what happened with the chickens was that the most productive chickens merely got their success through suppressing the productivity of the rest. In other words, the win-win nature of competition can quickly be exhausted and zero-sum starts to reign.

Then, it comes to our personal choice, to choose to be competing chickens, or the ones who foster a safe, segregated community of cooperators who grow together and have energy channeled towards developing and growing one another rather than just oneself. At the same time, do we also choose to tell ourselves the story of competition being the way to get better outcomes collectively, or to agree to a more nuanced picture of our reality?

Fun fact: Chickens probably have a long history in academic research and goes beyond biology. My economics masters research was also somewhat related to chickens in that we used the prices of broiler chickens to examine the extent of price convergence in the EU following the adoption of Euros.