Kevin Low

Karl Marx once argued that all value comes from human labour and that capital owners should not be allowed to profit from their ownership of capital. Perhaps that was a time when labour is often needed to operate capital, to work the land in order for capital to be ‘productive’. To that extent, it is probably right that labour always had a disadvantage in bargaining against capital because capital is often more concentrated in the hands of certain owners. Or that the dictates of capital can easily be reassigned and concentrated to maximise bargaining power.

This is much harder with labour, and that’s why there were periods in history where labour unions were important. And there are still many societies today, especially in Europe that ensures significant participation of unions in industrial decisions and even policy-making.

The truth is, we’ve been using human labour as a way to distribute economic gains to the broader masses. And it has worked as far as the economy transits towards being more and more knowledge-based as equipment got better and capital starts being able to produce goods and services without as much labour inputs. Yet we might be moving to a point where there’s insufficient jobs for everyone, including knowledge-based ones, as capital come to be able to produce goods and services for our economies independently without labour. And yes, I’m thinking about more automation, more data-driven operations that only require periodic human interventions, and so on.

We must start considering how to distribute capital and wealth better; and to allow the strata of the society commonly contributing to ‘labour’ side of the economic equation to start owning capital and learning how to use the capital to generate the returns sufficient for them to continue surviving without utilising their labour as much. Or that labour can be channeled towards greater social needs such as caring for the old and young; some of these which may have to be funded more and more on the taxes on capital and wealth.

What do you choose when you have aspirations? What you do, or who you are? When I was 9, I wanted to be a librarian. But it was because librarians get to be at the counter to see who borrows what books, and to put the date due stamp on the books. They get to change the date due slips on the books when they are full, and they work in a quiet environment.

I was thinking about what I want to doing rather than who want to be. Because what being a librarian is about organising information, about helping people to access to knowledge they want. It is also about safeguarding the ability for libraries to do so, by making sure people return the resources they borrowed on time so that others have access to it too. It is also about increasing public education and awareness of things that matter: culture, heritage, arts, science, and lots of common sense. The 9 year old me made no such connections nor cared that much about all that.

When we are younger, our parents explained professions and jobs in terms of what they ‘do’; very practical elements. A police catches thieves, the lawyer fights court cases, a doctor sees and diagnose, then treat patients. But in order for us to appreciate the greater purpose of these professions, to be able to aspire ‘to be’ rather than to aspire ‘to do’, we will have to develop greater appreciation of what these people are ‘being’ when they take on the roles. It will involve understanding what policing does to public security and now, to the cyber space. How the legal profession creates avenues to address justice on all sides, and means to ensure laws are applied properly. Or that doctors not just make people better but play a role in public health, confidence-building and psychological comfort to those who are unwell.

As we learn to train ourselves to develop visions for our role and professions, we become better professionals, and work with greater motivations.

Everyone needs a house; and places to do different things. And real estate is about really creating and providing spaces for people, for activities in an urban setting mostly. The thing is, for most part, there is a lot of matching activities going on. Because people don’t tear down houses when they move, they just sell it to someone else.

It is one of those things that are kind of completely unique (no two locations or houses are the same) so as long as people have strong emotional attachment to specific locations or sense of place, it is difficult for it to be commoditised. Hence the transaction costs involved are really high; and they are often tied to the underlying prices of the assets when they change hands

Another phenomena is that the prices of these assets will change based on the ability-to-pay of the ones buying them. This means that as the overall ability to pay of the economy rises, the prices rise. The value increases without the actual activity of building, searching, selling, incurring that much more costs. How can a society capture and share this value better without all becoming property agents? Henry George’s ideas and perception of land as a property is worth revisiting.

What is strength? More often than not, in the world of showiness and social media curation, strength shines forth in being more human, revealing your imperfections and failings, more than appearing strong. After all, what does appearing strong really mean?

Through my coaching I discover that we all tend to underestimate what we are physically capable of; which is why we are often so awed by athletes hitting benchmarks, breaking records, and just being ‘super human’. We celebrate all of these, and we then not to see or focus so much on the crazy amount of hard work, focus on techniques, and iteration between monitoring performance, brainstorming how to approach improvement, and then actually achieving those improvements.

But we also overestimate our mental strength; and we often think we are capable of handling stress that we aren’t able to. We overpromise our bosses on the work we can accomplish (especially in terms of deadlines) and fail to juggle everything eventually. We do not expect that the mental capacity it takes to juggle many things competes with the ability to actually execute and do them well.

Rebalancing this would be important.

The name of your high school matters. It matters even when you are in your 60s and speaking in parliament. It may seem silly that one can be defined that way but this is classic Singaporean. It’s because we celebrate a very narrow set of talents. That was critical at the nation-founding, nation-building phase where we needed to identify strong problem-solvers, and risk-takers who could be industry pioneers.

But it is also because of that, our ‘elite schools’ can serve as important socio-economic levellers by accepting students from a variety of backgrounds and wider variety of talents – not just academic ones. Demolishing the alumni priority system entirely helps; though what we are doing is a nice first step. Of course it’s nice to have our kid go to the same school as ourselves and share in that school pride. But it is non-essential and you should be giving back to the schools because of what it has given you, not what it is about to give your sons and daughters.

Education is an important opportunity for social mobility. Let us not destroy it. Let us not allow capital and private resources to further entrench its power over labour.

The conversations about good schools and elitism will never end for a society where academic credentials truly influence a lot of our subsequent lives. For me, entering Chinese High after attending an ‘ordinary’ neighbourhood elementary school made a huge difference. And I honestly wasn’t a star student even in elementary school. All I could say is I had teachers who believed in me and parents who did not pressure me to go one way or another. I made it to Chinese High potentially through sheer dumb luck.

But getting into the school showed me a different aspect of reality, where hard work matters a lot more; and I had friends from entirely different backgrounds who thought differently from I did. I begin also to see the difference in the education background of their parents and mine. I truly felt that positive impact of competition at that point – I won’t say I thrived in it, nor did it crush me with too much pressure. I just responded in a rather balanced way and made it through the system somewhat in the middle.

Yet even as a middle student in that school, I was easily already ahead of many others. And that is what every parent today in Singapore is trying to push their kids towards. They rather their kid be last in a good school sometimes, just perhaps for the opportunity to mix around with other ‘good kids’ and also be given the wider opportunities.

Until the ‘neighbourhood’ schools are given more resources than the ‘top’ schools, it’s going to be a tough sell to try and tell parents every school is a good school. Because the parents will think the school will be a good school for some kid out there, just not mine.