Sandbagging the opposition

448 thoughts on “Sandbagging the opposition”

1. Bencard,

   I’m a social scientist by profession and abhor vague tags. We have a culture of “mediocrity,” aka “smallness” of mind. What are those? Nigeria is a mess. Do they have a culture of what? Have you seen East Timor lately, it’s a nasty place to be in. Do they have a culture of “stupidity?”

   My point is this – we use “culture” as a rug to sweep things under. As if once we say, culture, then it explains a lot. It doesn’t. Culture is a combination of values, actions and behavior. Break each of those down. As I explained, the “tingi” behavior is caused by lack of income, which is in turn caused by poverty and its causes. In fact, some people say the tingi behavior is due to weak consumer protection standards. Would you buy a new product in a large amount knowing that your ability to seek redress is almost zero. So people, even some rich ones, buy tingi because they want to try it out first. And weak consumer enforcement is caused by several things.
   Combine these two types of behavior and you have tingi behavior all around.

   It would take several pages, but I hope you get the way we should all be dissassembling these “culture” arguments. They are nothing more than aggregates of behavior where we have to determine motives and incentives, instead of sweeping everything under the rug of hand-wringing “culture” explanations as Nick Joaquin did.

   Let me give you another example — lechon manok behavior. People will just wring their hands and say it is an example of Filipinos being unimaginative. But Lechon manok behavior is understandable in some industries the context of a country with a relatively small market, where barriers of entry arelow, R&D is expensive or difficult, and experiences occasional macroeconomic crises that undermines ability to secure long-term capital. Lechon manok culture is based on people wanting to enter an industry where profitability has been established. I can go into detail on this, but in other words, there are empirically verifiable arguments, rather than just simply sweeping it under the rug of culture.

2. Bencard,

   Sorry, message got cut off. But my point is when we identify these real causes then we can then work on real answers. Some people believe behavior can be changed through exhortation (Let’s all do this, let’s all rally around that, et. al.) I believe behavior, whether individual or of societies, is changed by the chaning the structure of incentives for certain actions. And to change the structure of incentives, you have to go to the verificable causes.

3. lechon manok behavior. People will just wring their hands and say it is an example of Filipinos being unimaginative.

   Lechon manok is a good example of being imaginative of Filipinos.

   There was a time when export of chicken to Japan was haulted due to some problems in the contract.

   The exporter was left with a huge inventory of dressed chicken.

   Thus lechon manok was born. Business creativity, new packaging of a product. Call it in another name, the grilled chicken became leachong manok. Lechong manok machine flourished during that time.

4. duckvader, it’s nice to be able to look at the pinoy “problems” from the perspective of a social scientist such as you. i thought we were using the term “culture” in this discussion in the context of the degree of sophistication, advancement, or development, that our people has attained in comparison with others in the family of man. rizal spoke of this “culture of mediocrity” that he theorized could be remedied by education. we came a long way, but have we changed? have we ever become “great” other than in our own ethnocentric eyes? have we ever progressed beyond defining excellence as the ability to replicate other people’s style from manner of speech to singing a song, from playing western-style basketball to whitening our brown skin (sometimes resulting in whiter than white).

   for every effect, there’s a cause. for every symptom, there’s an ailment. it’s an unbroken chain from a single cause. tingi syndrome and lechong manok mentality are but minor effects among so many (see my 11:14 post re: how filipinos stand in the world community, particularly western).

5. When he moved to Australia, he suffered discrimination that he has to deny he’s a Filipino by painting himself white and dyeing his hair blonde.”

   Uy, MLQ3, walang personalan, db? Hehehe.

   You should have raised that comment when he was calling me tililing.

   I am just telling you the reason why Benigno hates Filipinos.

   As to the dyeing of hair,it’s the way we describe the brown Filipinos who think they become Caucasian by assuming their citizenship.

6. Cat,

   Hayaan mo at ira-raise ko sa susunod at ni raise mo na ngayon. Bakit tililing kaba? Di naman yata.

   —————

   “one wonders why the filipinos (in the words of the late roger dangerfield) “don’t get no respect”.”

   bencard, dahil sa iyo.

7. realist, you are a classic example of a “simple mind”.

8. bencard, thanks! comparado sa iyo, complicated ba o wala naman talgang sinasabi? buti na simple and original kesa a wanabe like you.

9. The things most call “cultures” just habits developed by most or majority because of the prevailing conditions in a certain place and time. In the country the “Tingi” or smallness is not a culture but reality. People can’t just afford to go “jumbo”, for lack of resources and the reason why there are no resources is because of the smallness of the imagination to create them and that is the Culture.

   Also part of it is the weakness of the overall institution that can not correct these “bad habits” that they get imbedded in the mentality of the majority, and perceived as cultures.

   Cultures are inherent to a group of people, unaffected by the economic conditions..

10. I also notice a certain assymetry in Benign0’s analysis. When he describes what he believes to be dysfunctional behavior, he attributes it to the Filipino as a collective. When he recognizes achievement (as when he cited the example of Lea Salonga), he attributes it to the particular individual. In Lea Salonga’s case, this is plainly not true as her excellence was nurtured in local theater (in Repertory Philippines).

    Bencard, to each his own. I have also lived in foreign soil for sometime now and, unlike you, it did not cause me to find anything that is ‘amiss’ in being Filipino. That mindset is peculiar to your generation and/or Fil-Ams which betrays an inferiority complex. My generation has less of that baggage as it seems that we are more comfortable in our skin. Just like other peoples, we have our own combination of strengths and weaknesses, but these neither makes us superior nor inferior to the others.

11. Again my dear academician,
    I was wrong again in my C(ompetion) counterpart to your p(romotion).

    When you narrated the Chinese sari sari store and the pinoy sari sari store naisip ko its more on competition rather than promotion…..

    The 4cs by the way are:: category, customers, competition and channel.

    Which was supposedly to reinforce the 4ps (product,place,promotion and price),or define the cs first,then deploy the ps. Pero if you say,they are used to asses one the ps,then I humbly submit,to the knowledge of the dear professor.

12. Duck Vader,
    Thank you for solving the mystery of why even the rich buy in tingi, I raised it here ,without knowing the answer to it.So its consumer protectionism and trying it out first.

13. peculiar to my generation, cvj? what about the burgeoning vicky belo’s clientle, and not only show biz people of your “generation”, but ordinary young wage earners who try to “makeover” their appearance at cost that their ofw cousins would probably cringe. you have no inferiority complex? how come you have a penchant for quoting foreign authors to buttress you arguments on every topic of discussion here – hoping thereby to gain vicarious authority and credibility.
    you are living in singapore, i understand. try living in the western world, if you can. then tell me if you are any more comfortable with yourself as we are.

14. Cat,
    Me correction ka pala,like you I multitask and resarch while discussing.

    so they are:Positioning,Packaging,Persuassion and performance.

    These works more for the service sector..madami sa Pinas nyan while the 4ps work more for entrepreneurs.

    Speaking of service sector…

    Our gameplan for the interim is increase the outsourcing service sector….
    Where is the gameplan for the return of manufacturing(wala na given the China factor)

    What about agriculture…

    We can make use of this biofuels,without sacrificing food by concentrating on cocodiesel.

    Kung kasing dami lang ng palm trees at coconut trees,pati yun sana,kaya lang 60% of palm trees are already in Malaysia,only Indonesia can match malaysia’s resources in Palm Trees/palm oil

    About ethnanol,magulo yan dahil ang dami nating sugar barons sa negros and another hindrance is our failed implementation of land reform na sa tingin ko na kalimutan na natin ng tuluyan.

15. By the way on the first point of the now famous benigno…

    That Philantrophy is pathetic,even migrant philantrophy.

    Get real,not bitter

    CAUSE AND EFFECT,
    ARCHETYPES,
    SYSTEM’S THINKING,

    Why did you leave its because of blank..which lead to blank which in turn also lead you to remit to your relatives here andit helped not only your realtives but the nation as well.

    Still call it pathetic.

16. Pati tuloy yung bilib ko ke Nick Joaquin nawala dahil kay Benigno.

    It is in the interpretation,and mindset..if you have a bitter mindset,which you obviously displayed that is how you would interpret it..to the extreme.

    take things with a grain of salt,pag me nabasa ka don’t turn it to a horror story.

    Sorry kung nagaabiso ako, di ko naman naman alam kung ilang taon ka mas matanda sa akin…If I can take advice and corrections, I can also give them.(baligtad yata)

17. Bencard,

    Anong generalization tungkol sa Pinoy dito ? –

    “Kung susundan ninyo ang takbo ng utak ni Benigno, he is the “unFilipino” Filipino.

    That is what happens to many people, not just Filipinos, who emigrate to foreign countries and who can’t cope with differences in skin color and cultural backgrounds.”

    Sorry na lang kung tinamaan ka. Akala ko pa naman si Benigno lang ang razon kung bakit dapat ako maging magaling.

    Ikaw din pala humahanap ng tukod.

    But I inderstand your situation. I know ganyan talaga ang mga immigrant na insecure, galit kung walang matutukuran o masisi. Kasalanan ng magulang at bayan nila kung bakit ang kulay, english at pagkain nila ay iba kesa doon sa kanilang ginagaya.

    It’s our obligation and duty to give you emigrants something to be proud of?

    Try to accomplish something you can be proud of. Something that will make you forget about your skin color and your height.

18. BE PROUD TO BE A FILIPINO!

    “Maybe it will sound simplistic,it is my unshakable belief that the fundamental thing wrong with this country is a lack of pride in being Filipino. A friend once remarked to me, laconically: “All Filipinos want to be something else. The poor ones want to be American, and the rich ones all want to be Spaniards. Nobody wants to be Filipino.” That statement would appear to be a rather simplistic one, and perhaps it is. However, I know one Filipino who refuses to enter a theater until the national anthem has stopped being played because he doesn’t want to honor his own country, and I know another one who thinks that history stopped dead in 1898 when the Spaniards departed! While it is certainly true that these represent extreme examples of national denial, the truth is not a pretty picture. Filipinos tend to worship, almost slavishly, everything foreign. If it comes from Italy or France it has to be better than anything made here. If the idea is American or German it has to be superior to anything that Filipinos can think up for themselves. Foreigners are looked up to and idolized. Foreigners can go anywhere without question. In my own personal experience I remember attending recently an affair at a major museum here. I had forgotten to bring my invitation. But while Filipinos entering the museum were checked for invitations, I was simply waived through. This sort of thing happens so often here that it just accepted routine. All of these things, the illogical respect given to foreigners simply because they are not Filipinos, the distrust and even disrespect shown to any homegrown merchandise, the neglect of anything Philippine, the rudeness of taxi drivers, the ill-manners shown by many Filipinos are all symptomatic of a lack of self-love, of respect for and love of the country in which they were born, and worst of all, a static mind-set in regard to finding ways to improve the situation.” Barth Suretsky

19. “Most Filipinos, when confronted with evidence of governmental corruption, political chicanery, or gross exploitation on the part of the business community, simply shrug their shoulders, mutter “bahala na,” and let it go at that. It is an oversimplification to say this, but it is not without a grain of truth to say that Filipinos feel downtrodden because they allow themselves to feel downtrodden. No pride. One of the most egregious examples of this lack of pride, this uncaring attitude to their own past or past culture, is the wretched state of surviving architectural landmarks in Manila and elsewhere. During the American period many beautiful and imposing buildings were built, in what we now call the “art deco” style (although, incidentally, that was not a contemporary term; it was coined only in the 1960s). These were beautiful edifices, mostly erected during, or just before, the Commonwealth period. Three, which are still standing, are the Jai Alai Building, the Metropolitan Theater, and the Rizal Stadium. Fortunately, due to the truly noble efforts of my friend John Silva, the Jai Alai Building will now be saved. But unless something is done to the most beautiful and original of these three masterpieces of pre-war Philippine architecture, the Metropolitan Theater, it will disintegrate. The Rizal Stadium is in equally wretched shape. When the wreckers’ ball destroyed Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, and New York City’s most magnificent building, Pennsylvania Station, both in 1963, Ada Louise Huxtable, then the architectural critic of The New York Times, wrote: “A disposable culture loses the right to call itself a civilization at all!” How right she was! (Fortunately, the destruction of Pennsylvania Station proved to be the sacrificial catalyst that resulted in the creation of New York’s Landmark Commission. Would that such a commission be created for Manila…)

    Are there historical reasons for this lack of national pride? We can say that until the arrival of the Spaniards there was no sense of a unified archipelago constituted as one country. True. We can also say that the high cultures of other nations in the region seemed, unfortunately, to have bypassed the Philippines; there are no Angkors, no Ayuttayas, no Borobudurs. True. Centuries of contact with the high cultures” of the Khmers and the Chinese had, except for the proliferation of Song dynasty pottery found throughout the archipelago, no noticeable effect. True. But all that aside, what was here? To begin with, the ancient rice terraces, now threatened with disintegration, incidentally, was an incredible feat of engineering for so-called “primitive” people. As a matter of fact, when I first saw them in 1984, I was almost as awe-stricken as I was when I first laid eyes on the astonishing Inca city of Machu Picchu, high in the Peruvian Andes. The degree of artistry exhibited by the various tribes of the cordillera of Luzon is testimony to a remarkable culture, second to none in the Southeast Asian region. As for Mindanao, at the other end of the archipelago, an equally high degree of artistry has been manifest for centuries in woodcarving, weaving and metalwork.

    However, the most shocking aspect of this lack of national pride, even identity, endemic in the average Filipino, is the appalling ignorance of the history of the archipelago since unified by Spain and named Filipinas. The remarkable stories concerning the Galleon de Manila, the courageous repulsion of Dutch and British invaders from the 16th through the 18th centuries, even the origins of the Independence movement of the late 19th century, are hardly known by the average Filipino in any meaningful way. And thanks to fifty years of American brainwashing, it is few and far between the number of Filipinos who really know – or even care – about the duplicity employed by the Americans and Spaniards to sell out and make meaningless the very independent state that Aguinaldo declared on June 12, 1898. A people without a sense of history is a people doomed to be unaware of their own identity. It is sad to say, but true, that the vast majority of Filipinos fall category. Without a sense of who you are how can you possibly take any pride in who you are?”Barth Suretsky

20. BAYAN KO!
    I get misty-eyed everytime I hear this song. Beautiful.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tbm4eNJDIY

21. buencamino, you and cvj are masters at shooting the messengers for the message they bear. like benigno, i pointed out some of the most currently visible “symptoms” of what rizal and nick joaquin once articulated as the “culture of mediocrity” in philippine society. instead of a rebuttal of the issues we raised, what do we get from you? personal frontal attack assailing us for being insecure “emigrants”, suffering from inferiority complex. why can’t you two just debate the issues without attempting to psychoanalyze us, or is it just another indication of a simple mind to take everything personally?

22. I’m glad duck vader is here to put some context to the Filipino situation from a social scientist’s point of view.

    I fully agree that the tingi system is income-driven rather than a product of some smallness of mind.

    Early in our marriage, my wife and I would always shop at Landmark Supermart retail. Now, we can go to Makro and buy wholesale.

    Should it mean that I must deprive myself of something just because I can’t afford to buy it in bulk? Why should I buy one kilo of black pepper when I only need 100 grams? Should I deprive myself of black pepper then because I can’t afford the one kilo, just so I can’t be accused by benignO of smallness of mind?

    Here’s a situation:

    In America, when a poor man wants to smoke and he can’t afford a pack of cigarettes: “Can you spare me a cigarette, buddy?”

    In the Philippines, when a poor man wants to smoke: “Pare, pabili nga ng isang Marlboro.”

    Who has self-respect, the mendicant or the tingi buyer?

23. When will it end,all your endless self-flagellations on the Filipino?

    Let’s all BE Proud To Be Filipinos!

24. “…and the reason why there are no resources is because of the smallness of the imagination to create them and that is the Culture.” – ratatouille

    I’m sorry, but I can’t agree that our poverty (lack of resources) is caused by “the smallness of the imagination to create them.” The main causes of our poverty is the lack of opportunities to create resources due to bad political leadership and the iniquities in our social structure.

    Look at all those millions of overseas Filipinos (including Bencard and benignO) in places where there are opportunities and where the social systems are more equitable. Where is the “smallness of the imagination” in the billions of pesos that they annually remit back home? Where do I see culture here?

25. The holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl in his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” said: “…everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Also: “Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.”

26. “it is only when one lives in a foreign soil that he realizes something amiss in being a filipino. when the philipines is mentioned in international news only in connection with disasters,i.e., volcanic eruptions, mudslides, moonsoons, kidnapping and beheading of foreigners by homegrown terrorists, etc.; when the philipine stock exchange is hardly mentioned in the business sections of major newspapers; when hardly a glimpse of the “token” contingent of filipino athletes in the olympics is flashed momentarily on national tv; when expatriates pinoys (with active participation of the philipine consulate) parade on major avenues before a sparse crowds of curious onlookers and zero coverage by mainstream media; when pinoy entertainers attract virtually no attention from other than the usual “wowowee” pinoy fans; when philippines is usually bypassed (especially in western countries) as tourist destination in asia; one wonders why the filipinos (in the words of the late roger dangerfield) ‘don’t get no respect’.” – Bencard

    All those enumerations can be said of a hundred other countries, not only the Philippines.

    To Bencard, only the developed nations are admirable. The rest of the world must be hated, insulted, denigrated. Especially the Philippines, since he is a Filipino and he is so ashamed to face the likes of Roger Dangerfield.

    Dangerfield is a pure racist and “doesn’t get no respect”.

27. I have to agree with Rego,that the beauty of this forum is that we don’t always ahare ideas,pero as per tagakotta de cebu,it is souding like self flagellation.matagal ba holy week.

    Either we change topic,or start being proud to be Filipinos. Simplistic? What happens next is up to us?

28. Why all the fuss about Singapore? On one hand why can a city of 600+ sq km with only a labor force of almost 3 million people produce almost as much as a country with a labor force of almost 50 million in a country with 300,000 sq km. We do not count the GrossValueAdded of the subsistence sector of the economy.

    Per capita why does Singapore produce more than the countries of India and China?

    Are the Pinoys, Chinese and Indians all dumb?

    First of all you have to give credit to the highly evolved Chinese warlord Lee Kwan Yew.

    He was forced to secede from the Malaysian federation because of the intractable dichotomy between the Chinese trader and the Malay populations of Indonesia and Malaysia. Both the Dutch and English colonizers traded not with the Malays but with the more advanced (evolutionary wise) Chinese traders who were the integrators of both economies just like here in the Philippines. After the wave of nationalizations and expulsion of the white men except here, the Chinese merchant classes took over the trade of the British and Dutch East India companies. Since they were a simply a port city they moved from being a haven for privateers and later a safe haven for the savings of Chinese traders in S.E. Asia predominantly Indonesia. Almost 70% of the monies in Singaporean banks belong to Indonesian Chinese. Obviously they became the Switzerland of the east in the world. Mainly for the Chinese business in S.E. Asia. Hence banks use the SIBOR rate as the benchmark interbank rate for offshore funding in Asia. Singapore became the money center of banks in the region. Singapore became the capital of what is known formally of Greater China. Countries outside the influence of the mainland. In S.E. Asia it is the Chinese businessman apart from the transnationals that integrated Asean.

    Economic power determines political power. The west deals mainly with the Chinese in and out of the the mainland. Now that the PRC is rapidly industrializing the influence of the West is slowly shifting to the upcoming mother of all economies. Now Singapore has to turn itself into Disneyland and Las Vegas to survive.

    Naisbitt’s Megatrends Asia

    Ethnic Chinese: New Great Economic Power
    Big Businesses That Are Chinese-Owned
    Thailand 81 percent
    Singapore 81 percent
    Indonesia 73 percent
    Malaysia 61 percent
    Philippines 50 percent

    You cannot take Singapore singly as an independent economy. It was always deeply integrated with its neighbors through the Chinese merchants. Personally I consider most big Chinese businessman her as Chinese multinationals. Nothing racist mind you. But the merchant class is not tied to any country.

    The Philippines like its neighbors were fashioned by empire. To say that pinoys are dumb is simply a statement of extreme ignorance which must be forgiven.

    For the vast majority of pinoys who have to use their wits on a daily basis to put food on the table that statement is utterly lacking in thought and imagination. At the end of the second world war the plan for Germany was to devolve the society back to the agricultural stage of human development. In other words turn back the clock. A plan for cultural genocide. The Spanish landlord culture is hard to break. Even Ninoy Aquino was infected with it. Maintaining that culture and the culture of trade and commerce is endemic in this country.

    Pandit Nehru wanted to build industry by insisting that India be able to establish a watch industry. Learn how to build a watch from scratch and you can build anything. -Engineering and science. Move from the artisans to industry. But they did have an evolved artisan class. The forerunner of engineers. Our forefathers had evolved to that level as they were capable of weaving their cloth with hand looms. That normal evolutionary pace was interrupted by history. Now we have got serious challenges on how to move forward without devolving. It is will difficult.

    Not all human species will evolve at the same pace. The conditions for this will vary dependent on so many factors. Prior to the industrial revolution the East and Middle East surpassed Europe in so many aspects. Now India and China are rapidly industrializing their economies and the west is realizing that the future of the planet is dependent on Asia. For us since we are latecomers to this game of nation building consolidating tribal cultures, peasant cultures with the predominant neo-colonial culture is going to be interesting.

    Excerpts from a paper on the persistence of underdevelopment. The last sentence says it all.

    “Why is underdevelopment so persistent? One explanation is that poor countries do not have institutions that can support growth. Because institutions (both good and bad) are persistent, underdevelopment is persistent. An alternative view is that underdevelopment comes from poor
    education. Neither explanation is fully satisfactory, the first because it does not explain why poor economic institutions persist even in fairly democratic but poor societies, and the second because it does not explain why poor education is so persistent.

    This paper tries to reconcile these two views by arguing that the underlying cause of underdevelopment is the initial distribution of factor endowments. Under certain circumstances, this leads to self-interested constituencies that, in equilibrium, perpetuate the status quo. In other words, poor education policy might well be the proximate cause of underdevelopment, but the deeper (and more long lasting cause) are the initial conditions (like the distribution of educational endowments) that determine political constituencies, their power, and their incentives.

    Though the initial conditions may well be a legacy of the colonial past, and may well create a perverse political equilibrium of stagnation, persistence does not require
    the presence of coercive political institutions. On the one hand, such an analysis offers hope that the destiny of societies is not preordained by the institutions they inherited through historical accident.On the other hand, it suggests we need to understand better how to alter factor endowments when societies may not have the internal will to do so.”The Persistence of Underdevelopment:
    Institutions, Human Capital, or Constituencies?1
    Raghuram G. Rajan (I.M.F. and N.B.E.R.)
    Luigi Zingales (Harvard University, N.B.E.R. & CEPR)

29. “To be honest, I found Nick Joaquin’s whole essay full of this act of categorizing symptoms as the problem, rather than looking for the root cause. He may write well, but his essay is very weak.” – DuckVader

    I’m with you Duck. Here’s why:

    We have heard many complaints, and every day we read in the papers about the efforts the government is making to rescue the country from its condition of indolence [or “heritage of smallness”]. Weighing its plans, its illusions and its difficulties, we are reminded of the gardener who tried to raise a tree planted in a small flower-pot. The gardener spent his days tending and watering the handful of earth, he trimmed the plant frequently, he pulled at it to lengthen it and hasten its growth, he grafted on it cedars and oaks, until one day the little tree died, leaving the man convinced that it belonged to a degenerate species, attributing the failure of his experiment to everything except the lack of soil and his own ineffable folly.

    xxx

    We desire that the policy be at once frank and consistent, that is, highly civilizing, without sordid reservations, without distrust, without fear or jealousy, wishing the good for the sake of the good, civilization for the sake of civilization . . .

    From the “Indolence of the Filipino” by Jose Rizal

    Si BenignO ay mapagpapasensiyahan. But, I’ve once thought, how did Nick Joaquin (who admired Rizal) miss this one? Did the mother rear an ungrateful child? Joaquin’s own heritage will stand or fall on this folly.

30. Another concrete example of when the rich and powerful fuck up with their hedge investments governments step in to save them. The free market at work. Yesterday for a short period the interbank market for funds seized up. Left alone it had the potential of starting a spiral of defaults in the class of financial assets. A massive deflation of values that could have precipitated a rout.

    Paulson and Bernanke said a few days ago this will not affect the rest of the economy as it is simply a small sector. Yup, that is why they had to intervene to prevent it from affecting the entire financial markets. They just had to make sure. So we now know that the Greenspan put is still in effect. When these fancy financial architects fuck up governments will move to save them.

    The poor farmer who lost his newly planted crop in the last floods does not even have crop insurance. But we just contracted for billions in credit from the Chinese to put up a broadband for the government. How dumb is that?

    “Everyone is confident. Because we are all true believers in the Theology of Capitalism. But just in case this capitalism thing doesn’t work out, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Canada, the European Central Bank and the Fed all joined to say that they would put some additional liquidity into the system. The ECB, for example, announced that it would make “unlimited” amounts of money available at 4% interest. The idea is to protect the financial system from a serious mishap. In a truly capitalist world, of course, there are no protections. People get neither what they want nor what they expect. Instead, they get what they got coming. But the world’s banking cartels have stepped in to fix the credit system and make sure real capitalism doesn’t happen.” Bill Bonner, The Daily Reckoning

    All this to save hedge fund investors who belong to the upper strata of the income spectrum.

31. so they are:Positioning,Packaging,Persuassion and performance.

    Karl,
    I am talking about the Marketing Mix as marketing principles taught by Kotler.

    Those poor p’s that you enumerated above are marketing strategies that may fall uner promotion.

32. Let’s be proud to be Filipinos!

    Puro pataasan ng ihi kayong pseudo- intellectuals and so called marketing whiz kids in this blog.

    Ok bilib na kami sa inyo!

    But in the end ,STOP the self-flagellation of the Filipino race!

33. Now Singapore has to turn itself into Disneyland and Las Vegas to survive. – hvrds

    That observation is spot on. Singapore (under LKY’s son) is approaching the uncertain future with a certain bravado that belies an underlying sense of insecurity. That being said, things are looking up over here with the job market and real estate market being better than it was compared to recent years. (I’m crossing my fingers that my landlord won’t raise my rent.) Everyone is holding their breath and hoping for the success of their two major Integrated Resorts (casinos) in Marina Bay and Sentosa.

    Bencard, the popularity of Cosmetic Surgery is not a measure of nationalism (of lack of it). If you were right is using your yardstick, South Korea can be considered less nationalistic than the Philippines which is clearly not the case. Extreme makeovers is a global phenomenon. As for living in the Western World, i have done my share of visiting and working in the West (Europe, America and Australia) and this does not change my above-mentioned observation.

    I wonder why after giving your critique against the Filipinos, you now complain when a criticism of the same sort is directed at Fil-Ams and Filipinos of your generation. The behavior of many (though not all) of your kind is well known among us locals and has been written about and commented on often enough. It’s something that Filipinos who have remained in the Islands just have to put up with on a regular basis.

34. “in the defense of Benigno (no, seriously) he does have a point. his only problem is that he’s applying his ideas in a sweeping manner.”

    i agree. and there lies the danger. to make generalizations without backdropping his arguments in a system (political, cultural, social, etc.) so complex is not ony irresponsible but intellectually dishones, considering he has not controlled for many of these confounding factors.

35. “So we should abide by the rule that “he who asserts must prove”. Anyone who asserts something and asks others to disprove him should be ignored for being a shameless attention beggar. You just can’t ignore the question to back up your assertion by saying it is already obvious. It’s like saying, “Hey man, are you so stupid not to see what I am saying?””
    ——————————————————-

    Ey yun naman pala Jaxius eh. Yan lang naman pala ang ibig mong iparating. So why the sarcasm?

36. kailangan mo ba talaga idaan sa ganyan? Bakit ba di mo diretsahin?

37. “peculiar to my generation, cvj? what about the burgeoning vicky belo’s clientle, and not only show biz people of your “generation”, but ordinary young wage earners who try to “makeover” their appearance at cost that their ofw cousins would probably cringe. you have no inferiority complex? how come you have a penchant for quoting foreign authors to buttress you arguments on every topic of discussion here – hoping thereby to gain vicarious authority and credibility.
    you are living in singapore, i understand. try living in the western world, if you can. then tell me if you are any more comfortable with yourself as we are.”

    ——————————————————-

    Bravo, Bencard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

38. “To be honest, I found Nick Joaquin’s whole essay full of this act of categorizing symptoms as the problem, rather than looking for the root cause. He may write well, but his essay is very weak.” – DuckVader
    ——————————————————–

    But then you can not identify the root cause without a well defined problem statement.

39. “Between Singapore and the Philippines (just using common sense here, no need to approach this from a rocket scientist’s point of view), which country do you think has the bigger problems at the moment?” – benignO

    Walang sense of proportion itong si benignO. How can you compare a 270-sq.mi. city-state of 4.5 million people with a 115,831-sq.mi. archipelago of 7,100 islands and a teeming 85 million people?

    Pwede ba, stop this inane exercise of calumniating the Filipinos as dumb, stupid, unimaginative and small of mind just because we have not achieved what the Americans, or the Australians, or the Singaporeans have achieved so far?

    Siguro 100 years from now at na-achieve na ng Philippines ang level ng US ngayon, at buhay pa si benignO at si Bencard, para sa kanila, dumb, stupid, unimaginative and small of mind pa rin ang mga Filipinos dahil ang mga Americano may mga bahay na sa moon at Mars, tayo wala.

    Iyan ang logical conclusion ng mga inane comparisons na ito.

40. tagakotta,

    Sorry ha,di naman kami pataasan ng ihi and I don’t claim to be whiz cheese whiz or anything.

    Kung makipag usap nga ako dito,ayoko ng name calling at asaran,pero minsan di maiwasan,napipikon din ako .

    pansinin mo sino ang nakakatagal ke Cat at Rego na walang pikunan at tawagan ng masasakit na salita.

    dahan dahan ka naman padre,inayunan na nga kita sa self flagellation.

    Kung pwede lang.

41. Karl Garcia and Other Intellectuals and Marketing Experts in this blog:Tama na ang debate! let’s enjoy the weekend.

    Life is simple.Life is short.Life is corny.

    Here’s one Cebuano joke for you:

    Anak: Tay unsay English sa otot?
    Tatay: Wind of Change
    Anak: Ug Otot nga wa tingog?
    Tatay: Sound of Silence
    Anak: Ug Otot nga dalang tae tay?
    Tatay: Dust in the wind
    Anak: Pag ka bright dyod ning tatay, Liwat dyod ko nimo!

42. “But in the end ,STOP the self-flagellation of the Filipino race!” – tagakotta, i agree. but i have to correct you on your statement. the term itself means no one can stop it but one’s self since it is self-inflicted, and you cannot inflict it on a whole race. self-flagellation as it pertains to the filipino as a whole, is a character trait, and not one which everyone will have. it is a noun, not a verb.

    to propositions that Filipinos in general lack pride or a sense of pride, and that this has led to us being a fuck-up country of small minds, let me quote an excerpt from my essay… (yes, not from a foreigner)

    “The social cancer that plagued Dr. Rizal’s time was never really cured. Following executions after executions of martyrs willing to give up their lives for their country, revolutions after revolutions of fighting and in-fighting for our freedom, toppling of dictators and corrupt governments, we are still where we have been a millenia before when Rizal lamented, ‘And taong di magmahal sa sariling wika, ay mabaho, at mas masahol pa sa isang malansang isda.’ And I’m not referring to language deficiencies. I am referring to that trait of ours to be innately ashamed of anything Filipino, or that attitude of attributing anything bad as innately Filipino, that has become our downfall… We speak of undisciplined fellow Filipinos in the 3rd person, as if we, who are also Filipinos, are not part of them. When we see others breaking traffic rules we say things like: ang Pilipino talaga walang disiplina. Hello? Parang di ka kasali don…We have to reinvent the Filipino. We are not a class of thieves, frauds, and drunkards. We are just a class plagued by them. They are not one of us. We true Filipinos, must therefore work at it, to expunge them from our midst.”

43. Puro pataasan ng ihi kayong pseudo- intellectuals and so called marketing whiz kids in this blog.

    Is it pataasan ng ihi if you quote marketing principles in the discussion of a “dysfunctional culture”.

    To be credible in a forum, one has to impress that she/he is an authority of what she’s talking about. I do not participate in topics that I know nothing about.

    Just like in the discussion of legal issues where one has to quote references and proper terms, I find it necessary to describe a phenomenon using the proper terminology.

    I do not care if someone gives me a heads up about some information that I may not be aware of.

    It’s been years that I have stopped teaching the Principles of Marketing in the Graduate School in the Philippines so I thought that there must be new trends in the local academe that I am not aware of. My exposure to marketing now is being part time consultant to people who’s putting up business here in the States and helping a sister who’s finishing her Graduate School.

    Kung gusto ko talagang makipagtaasan ng ihi dito, I should be using big words in Economics, Marketing and Finance and pasting articles that I hardly understand.

    But my purpose is to impart knowledge in the simplest way possible. Some people who doubt what I am writing do research and in that process they learn too.

    Gusto ko may napupulot ang nagbabasa ng aking comment at hindi ang mga emosyonal na mga salita na nagpapainit ng dugo.

44. this idea of a TRUE Filipino vs a FAKE Filipino has been playing on my mind since it struck me that our char faults were not of our own making, but was ingrained in us by the Spanish and American colonizers themselves. I look at the TRUE Filipino as the ones before the colonizers came. History speaks of how honorable our people was then.

    perhaps that’s why my attitude differs so much from that of Benigno’s. instead of feeling bitter, i feel anger. instead of feeling guilty, i feel pride. why blame or feel sorry for those that exemplify those character faults? are we truly at fault? someone who’s been born wearing a blindfold will not know anything except that darkness given by his blinds. likewise, someone who’s been relentlessly told that his race is inferior will not believe anything likewise. the Filipino has been told so much how small of a mind he has that he has begun to believe it true, w/o even trying to dispute it.

    I believe we all exhibit this “un-Filipino-like” facade. It is only when we look deep inside ourselves and realize that the TRUE excellent Filipino lies underneath, and has been there all the time, do we realize that neither are we an inferior race nor one who has small minds, but rather just one imprisoned in our blinded belief that we are.

    Intensive brainwashing, err, teaching pride in ourselves will do wonders.

45. Kakatuwa naman! 😉

46. bencard, gumawa ka kaya ng web blog mo para malaman kung may idea ka na galing sa sarili mo. ano ba yan lagi ka na lang messenger. tapos, mali mali pa o binabaluktot mo ang balita.

    Eto suggestion na blog title:

    bencard the __ complex mind. yung reader na ang bahalang magsabi kung ano ang complex sa tuktuk mo.

47. “the Filipino has been told so much how small of a mind he has that he has begun to believe it true, w/o even trying to dispute it”

    I beg to differ though.

    Look around you in cyberspace. How much content of the kind that constitutes http://www.getrealphilippines.com can you find?

    I think the more accurate observation is that praises to the high heavens of Pinoys is far FAR more abundant than the kind of content I publish. There’s lots of Pinoy feel-good and back-patting content around.

    The fact that there are more of you here DISPUTING my assertions and condemning cute little moi for daring to say bad BAD things about Pinoys than those who are actually willing to REFLECT on the sad truths contained in my assertions ironically points to the fact that Pinoys are proud to be Pinoy and are willing to fight for said pride.

    The trouble with this pride is this:

    What exactly SUBSTANTIATES this pride?

    What COLLECTIVE ACHIEVEMENT can we actually cite to make this pride SUSTAINABLE?

    That we struggle to answer the above questions, explains why the other part I observe, this willingness to “fight” for said “pride” seems to amount to nothing more than personality attacks (even sadder — speculations on Yours Truly’s personal circumstances), pathetic ad-hominems, and appeals to emotion.

    If what we see above is the best defense of the Filipino’s honour we can come up with, then our society is in a sad state indeed.

    Sad indeed that those who presume to fight for Pinoy pride, merely undermine it further in the process. 😉

48. “Look around you in cyberspace. How much content of the kind…can you find?”

    Benigno, cyberspace is not an accurate place to look for what I’m pointing out. while the rest of us here have access to a computer and internet, many of those I point out as wearing blinds, would even be lucky to know there are such things.

    “I think the more accurate observation is that praises to the high heavens of Pinoys is far FAR more abundant than the kind of content I publish. There’s lots of Pinoy feel-good and back-patting content around.”

    Pinoy feel-good and back-patting are not the same as pride. feel-good sentiments are actually coping mechanisms, and back-patting is just one way of being content with mediocrity.

    and the fact that there are more of us disputing your “assertions” (are they really yours?) does not automatically translate to everyone of us disputing the entirety of what you said. unless you failed to read between what we wrote, you would’ve noted that many of us (Manolo, me, and others included) accepted that there is a “hint” of truth in what you said. where we differ from you is that we do not agree it is sweeping, nor applicable to everyone. generalization is a fallacy. and there is a reason why it is so.

    and here are my answers to your questions:

    What exactly SUBSTANTIATES this pride? When realized, excellent work beyond that of what mediocre acceptance can churn out.

    What COLLECTIVE ACHIEVEMENT can we actually cite to make this pride SUSTAINABLE? none. for there are few people with that exact pride to drive them to excellence. most pinoys are just like you, content to be bitter that we will never succeed bec we are inborn with character faults, not realizing that one can always rise above one’s self. hey, but when more people achieve enough pride in themselves, maybe we can “collect” them and their “achievements” and hammer it relentlessly on future generations so that we can “sustain” that pride.

    “Sad indeed that those who presume to fight for Pinoy pride, merely undermine it further in the process. ”

    speak for yourself. you’re the one doing a lot of undermining. and our society isn’t in a sad state. it is people like you who believe it is that are. stop preaching hopelessness Benigs, maybe you might actually help.

49. “Look at all those millions of overseas Filipinos (including Bencard and benignO) in places where there are opportunities and where the social systems are more equitable” – Shamam of Malilipot..

    I agree with you that opportunities are lacking in the country, but abundant where B & b where and in places where millions of other OFWs are now earning and remitting to the country. But why are they abundant in a those countries where just decades ago, they were in equal footing to us or even worse? Malaysia for example.

    Bencard and benignO if their claims are true, then maybe they jettisoned the Culture of small mindedness to adapt to their new country. Most people who immigrated to First World countries, left the undesirable cultures behind and bring along the one they can be proud of.. but then again a theory is just a theory, anyone can be proven wrong even those who claims to be experts. we are not scientists.. you know…

50. I still believe we should enjoy the weekend .Basang basa na kami sa “P.N.I” contest about the brilliant marketing whiz kids and pseudo -intellectuals .

    ako simple lang,di ba na i repeal na ang law of supply and demand???

    Have a nice weekend KIDS!

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