Idea of ecosystem

The ecosystem is a brilliant analogy for an industry. And that is where we need to recognise that everyone within the market are basically winners – not all of them win the same way just as not every specie or creature survive the same way in the economy.

You need small businesses and large ones; at any one time there will be some facing lots of survival pressures and others enjoying their spoils. There is nothing wrong with either and one cannot conclude much from a single snapshot. At the same time, it is really hard to tell what can be a winning strategy because success, like failure, is often temporary as long as it is not terminal.

Well people tend to think failure is the one that can be terminal but one needs then to develop good strategies for failing so they are not terminal but almost instructive. And as with natural ecosystems, a healthy industry has its births and deaths. Capital and talent needs to be churned around and get to experience different things in order for the overall industry to grow stronger.

We need to appreciate this different story about market capitalism that is less vicious, less about active competition, more about coping with environments and contexts. Less about winning individual battles but more about staying in the game to continue participating. That itself, is a win.

Sustainability goals

So the post on incentives was probably an economics post disguised as a sustainability post. But honestly, it is difficult to get economics out of our daily lives. Even when I talk about career choices, I inadvertently try to perform some kind of cost-benefit analysis on it.

What is bad about economics as it is applied, is that a lot of intangibles or non-measurables get ignored. Yet that is just improper application of economics. The principles behind economics still allows us to make evaluations (in our very subjective human way) on the intangibles and urges us to account for all that.

For example, we can value the environment more than convenience when we bring our own bags, take the trouble to recycle stuff. The action reflects our subjective valuation even if we cannot put a price on it. And precisely because our valuation can change due to specific context, circumstances, psychological priming, that it is going to require a lot of that to make sure we tip the balance in favour of environment and align all the incentives. Not just monetary, but social, and psychological.

In other words, we focus more on our goals of achieving sustainability, having established at a higher level that it is worthwhile. Then we generate the incentive structures for every individual so that habits, actions and all gear towards that goal. Easier said than done.

High school never ends

Was introduced to this song by Bowling for Soup, a pop rock band popular in the 2000s and still active now. Ignoring the bits of somewhat vulgar lyrics, the song is profound in its critique of the superficial, materialistic world.

The essence of the song is that humans care about status roles. It is so primal and it affects us in all kinds of ways in the modern world. We care about who is popular, who we associating with, what we own, use and have – not necessarily because we want them. But because of what people are thinking about us when they see all that.

Are we sure we want a world where it’s just us? Where no objective, true view of each and everyone of us exist?

Aligning Incentives

How much should we price convenience? We should probably price it based on the damage it makes. If you’re picking up something on your way and that saves time for someone else, it does cost you that tad bit of time so it makes sense for that someone else to compensate you up to the cost you’re bearing.

These transactions can result in efficiency in the system. But the cost have to be identified easily. When we place the onus of providing a plastic carrier on the seller of wares/goods, we are getting them to price convenience to the buyer. Unfortunately it is usually mispriced because the material, production are not all the cost that goes into the lifecycle of the plastic bag.

So even though the individual marginal costs holding all else constant are rising slowly, the joint social marginal costs rises really quickly. As usual, when costs are dispersed and benefits are concentrated (just like tariffs on sugar in US), you have an issue. We cannot ignore the importance of aligning incentives here and if the government wants to pander to the market and take the microscopic view, we’re all doomed to fail.

Being helpful

Say your colleague approaches you for help and you offered some directions which he or she has tried. The colleague retorts “Hello, I’m not stupid”. How would you respond?

Not that it happened in my workplace but I brought up this question because I’m thinking about the spirit that drives us to be helpful. Whether it is about being able to solve a problem, provide the psychological comfort (“you’re not alone”) or just to be liked. Almost definitely a combination of all but the litmus test is probably whether you’ll help the colleague again in the above situation – if you’ve proven to be useless and unappreciated on all fronts.

On the other hand, when you ask for help, what are you expecting from the person you ask? Are you hoping for identification, for problem-solving or relationship-building?

Humans are such fascinating creatures.

Shiok

The Danes have “hygge”, the Finnish have “sisu”, the Japanese have “ikigai”, deep concepts that tend not to have linguistic equivalence in other languages, conveying something profound. I was wondering if there was any Singlish equivalent and the closest I came to one that had that kind of positive connotation is “shiok”.

Which makes me wonder about the quality of our culture and what truly we want to identify more with, and to celebrate. Of course, at the bicentennial experience in 2019 we explored traits of self-determination, multi-culturalism and open-ness; the self-determination part still won out eventually at the poll.

The thing about self-determination is there is very little as a collective that we can really latch on to celebrate as a cultural identity. Likewise, shiok seemed to be about common experiences of pleasure but can still be highly subjective (“shiok meh?”). Within the notion of self-determination, there can also be elements of resilience in face of adversity, and some quiet strength. Yet these things don’t feature much in Singlish.

If we continue to just think about “kiasu” and “kiasee” as Singaporean traits, tell ourselves stories about fear, losing, anxiety and death, we are just perpetuating a very negative narrative that no doubt drives us in the direction of a mental health crisis. We need a positive Singlish term embedded in our culture to identify with.

Curing meats

I left about 1 kg of marinated chicken breast in the fridge for almost a week – having forgotten about it. It was closed in an air-tight container and I thought I’d try roasting it anyways. It turned out to be pretty good! In fact better and crispier than what I’ve previously done.

It was time and the ingredients which helped to draw moisture out of the chicken to the right level such that the roasting brought out a better texture and flavour. And it dawned on me how many things in life do take time and a combination of things to get better. In the modern world where everything seems rushed for time, I’d seek out these things that takes time and become exponentially better because things that compound non-linearly are usually undervalued.

Which is probably why marinated meats while often having been kept longer, actually fetch a higher price. Well actually there’s more to it than that but I’m just pointing out an arbitrage opportunity that our modern lives seem to produce.

Public or Private Sector

I once had a lunch at a friend’s place and her Dad simultaneously praised public service jobs for being good, stable places to be (he tries to get her daughters to join) while being critical about the work of public servants (“what do they do?”). I cannot be sure when he was being serious but one thing for sure, our views of public sector work is muddled and often confused.

Likewise I have someone in my family who used to think private sector is bad. Because it’s all about the bottom line and profits. I often say, well, you could also see that public service is often about meeting KPIs, which isn’t that different even if those KPIs are to drive some underlying good for the public. The chase for numbers and quantifiables is evident and taken as a natural product of “scientific management”.

Having been in both I think it is important to see that a large bureacratic private organisation can be not so different from a ministry while a newly set up statutory board can be not so different from a start-up. Often the skillsets valued would not be too different even when they place different weights on the specifics.

So it boils down to what you want to grow in. Public sector work will be more big picture from day 1 while private sector may involve greater dive into details and big picture work only later in your career. These generalisations are not super helpful and as I already made it clear, there’s a need to look at a specific job role and organisation in order to make the decision. Public or private itself is more of a label that tells very little to someone who has not any experience of either.

Feedback & Criticism

Being candid without reproaching people is a skill – it is subtle but somewhere along our upbringing we come to associate people with their actions and/routines as much as we allow those things to be part of our identities.

Habits can be changed, personalities can be transformed. It’s not just about believing in yourself but appreciating how the environment you allow yourself to be in, the things you read or watch, the people you interact with have an impact on you. That means when someone criticise your work or actions you can simultaneously take responsibility (knowing you can change and improve), whilst also not letting it assault your identity (seeing that your work is not actually a direct reflection of your whole self).

I think the something along our upbringing is when we try to nudge our children, peers or friends to change by giving the warning about their identity (rather than a perception of it). For example, we say to children don’t be a smoker rather than don’t take up smoking. We say people are geniuses rather than saying they have a genius (which by the way, is the original way of expressing the concept).

Seen in that light, our inability to give honest negative feedback without feeling/acting like we’re assaulting someone is the same thing as when we receive those sort of feedback. We think we’re assaulting because we feel assaulted. We think it’s being judgmental because we feel judged. Being able to do these well are not “soft skills” – they are life skills.

Perfectionism the enemy

Bought something from Shopee which arrived after I needed it so I gave it a 4-star review but was hustled by the seller to change it to 5-star on account there was nothing wrong with the product. Left a Carousell review for a very kind and nice seller but on the punctuality point I put 4-star (good, rather than very good), which resulted in him getting only 4.7 stars from me. He deleted his “Thank you” message which he left after I said I reviewed (it was requested by him).

I have nothing against star ratings for review systems and I’ve personally benefitted from kind reviews by previous buyers. But I think the system is broken because it pushes people to desire perfect scores which is not practical nor useful at the system level. Engaging in this mutual pleasing defeats the whole reviews system just like how people in most US restaurants expect a tip and it is no longer tied to service quality.

Of course, the platform gains in short run by attracting more sellers on it but in long run if the review system is broken or perceived as just a pack of lies, they lose their value.