I have a cousin who is rather high up in an American multinational (I think he’s the first Filipino to hold such responsibilities in the organization) and I asked him, once, why it seemed so few Filipinos reached really high positions in firms overseas. While the American bureaucracy, for one, has more than its fair share of Filipinos, and there are multinationals the world over, filled to the gills with mid-level Filipino managers, why are there so few Filipino top bosses? Hardly any, actually.
His answer came quickly, as befits an executive: “a lack of ambition.”
I asked him to elaborate on his opinion.
“We are easily contented,” he explained. “Once many Filipinos reach a certain level of comfort, they’re not inclined to go any higher.”
This was the genesis of my view that most Filipinos possess a bureaucrat’s mentality: and why the civil service seems so (cozily) ideal for many. I myself noticed I am inclined to be this way: I crave security, I want to minimize risks, I want to, most of all, work to live and not live to work. Employment makes this possible: the company health plan, the company union that fights for it, the predictable paycheck and annual bonuses.
Which is not to pass judgment on this mentality as unhealthy or inferior, per se. It can even be argued that it’s a healthier one than Darwinian capitalism taken to extremes. Yet, taken to extremes, too, there’s the danger that the bureaucratic mentality is not a mental framework that values innovation, or which, when you come to think of it, puts a premium on excellence.
The reality is that the mentality is so pervasive as to have nothing to do with education or social status. Some months ago I had a chat with a banker from Hong Kong who’s fond of the Philippines and Filipinos (with the kind of exasperated affection you might hear an ordnung-obsessed German talking about Italians and their dolce vita). His line is wealth management and so he’s intimately aware of the mental framework of the country’s economic movers and shakers.
“You’re an archipelago,” he began, “with this giant moat comprised of the sea, and so your Ayalas and Sys are, ultimately, safe. They have a captive audience and a natural barrier to anyone challenging them from overseas. Why innovate? Why compete? Once you figure out how to make money, it ends up reproducing itself. You don’t have to be particularly good, just well positioned, and so your energies are better used to preserving your preeminent position rather than embarking on taking risks or competing globally. It’s all very tidy, effortless, and really, quite lucrative. They are the envy of other businessmen in other countries who wish they had it so good.”
But I have gotten increasingly convinced that this mentality, while it has its charms, and may actually make for a better quality of life for most of us, is only made possible by a flawed understanding of business. I have been looking for an appropriate analogy, a useful comparison, and I think I’ve found it.
For some time now, I’ve been of the opinion -or perhaps, it’s more accurate to say, I have a sneaking suspicion- that we live in a Cargo Cult society. As this article, The Cargo Cults, explains,
When soldiers and airmen from the United States and other allied countries arrived in the islands with huge war cargoes, it was for the worshipers proof that those who followed the beliefs of a cargo cult were to be rewarded for their faith. Though the natives did not benefit directly from the appearance on their islands of those types of cargo, the cultists believed that their predictions were confirmed and that the cargo-millennium was at hand. A time of plenty had arrived. There was no longer a need to work. Money was unnecessary. Crops could be, and were, neglected. Pigs were randomly slaughtered for feasts. It was a time to celebrate, and the cultists lived it up.
Things didn’t turn out as the cultists expected, but few lost the faith. When goods fail to appear, as in the postwar period, the followers usually assume it is because they have not yet performed the correct ritual, because foreigners have schemed against them, or because the cultists have neglected the gods.
The complexities of the modern world: it is like Darwinian evolution versus Man being made in God’s image. The ferocious debate between science and faith is like the ferocious debate between those approaching society and its problems from an economic perspective, with its focus on increasing value and promoting efficiency, an essentially remorseless and amoral attitude, to those who possess an essentially philosophical perspective, which has, at its heart, moral questions whether based on religious faith or a more secular approach. But just as the seemingly hopeless divide between faith and science can be bridged, perhaps the great divide between those who put a premium on business and those who hold things like democracy and freedom as what should be, properly, the main considerations of human society, can be closed, as well.
Diosdado Macapagal, a lawyer turned economist, once paid tribute to himself by suggesting he held a competitive edge over his peers:
Leadership in the country today requires a knowledge of economics. The vital problems of the nation are economic in character, namely, unemployment, high prices, underproduction, imbalance of payments, currency controls, etc. Public men who have hazy notions of the fundamentals of economic science and whose minds, for lack of background or aptitude, cannot fathom the mysteries of the economic issues involved in important matters of state, are at a disadvantage. They are like men who treat the sick without the knowledge of medicine, who handle a trial without knowledge of law, who fashion a table or chair without knowledge of carpentry. They are like the Pharisees of old who were the “blind guides of blind men. But if a blind man guides a blind man, both fall into a pit.”
He conveniently forgot to point out that a leader imbued with a thorough understanding of “economic science,” but who lacked political gifts, would be at a disadvantage, too: not least because he’d be unable to muster support for his programs. Most of all, as befitted a person with a doctorate, he put a premium on expertise while forgetting that the bedrock of democracy is popular participation by the non-experts, too. To be sure, a non-lawyer involved in legislation is handicapped compared to a lawyer, but not permanently so: among other things, the non-lawyer can bring fresh eyes and common sense to the legislative process; and economists, too, must realize that their science began as “political economy,” which suggests that what once was, must ever be: you cannot divorce the two. Everything is political and in essence, much of what is political predates the sciences and isn’t subject to the scientific method. But Cong Dadong was on to something, and it was something his daughter took to heart.
Though again, the two approaches are not irreconcilable; they are complimentary. Scientific methods and principles, the handling of statistics, are used in gauging public opinion; but it requires a certain dexterity, an instinctive feel and skill, to marshal that opinion, mold it, hold it, wield it. Politics will always have a mystical attribute attached to it, which is why I pointed out that even a pragmatist like the President consults prophesying nuns, her one time ally turned nemesis Jose de Venecia, Jr. pays attention to letters dictated by his dead daughter, and Romulo Neri, Jr. begins his day by consulting the I Ching and a high percentage of officialdom consults geomancers and fortune-tellers.
The difference between officialdom and their constituents is greater familiarity with the formal structures of government, the regulations the officials themselves make -and break- and perhaps, of the true sources of wealth in our country. Yet all belong to the Cargo Cult.
From the four corners of the world, transported in the holds of ships traveling the seven seas, or in the bellies of aircraft, our cargo comes: rich or poor, the balikbayan box is expected, because demanded; how it gets from door to door, is no one’s concern, really.
And this brings us to what makes possible the door to door service: gaming the system.
It may be more accurate to say that Gaming the System, and not really politics, is our national pastime. We’re very good at it and, indeed, we can game practically any system; and engaged in this collective gaming, what, then, is the real advantage or even logic, in reforming the system and making it invulnerable to being gamed? None. No one will admit it, everyone’s secretly content with it. Which is another reason nothing really happens.
In Wikitruth, there’s an entry on Gaming the system:
Gaming the System means, simply, using the rules, policies and procedures of a system against itself for purposes outside what these rules were intended for. Most of the time, a set of rules will be put in place towards a simple goal. The goal might be to prevent innocents from being harassed to preventing wasted time covering well-tread (and decided-upon) ground. Unfortunately, when a system puts too many rules in place, makes them too vague, or otherwise fails to know the consequences of these rules, people who study the rules closely can then use this massive (often contradictory) ruleset to play the “game” their own, unexpected way.
Think, for example, about the dizzying regulations concerning official corruption in our country, which actually fosters the very thing the laws are meant to prevent.
And it concludes with this solution:
Believe it or not, a stronger central authority fixes more of this problem than anything else. This may sound like something against the goals of Wikipedia, but currently Jimbo Wales or Danny will step in and apply rules against the system as they need to: hard, fast rules with no appeal that are permanent. These are called Wikipedia Office Decisions. They make total sense: the people who are running the system get to make choices. But because Wikipedia falsely makes it sound like everyone has a say, these moves look like dictators running roughshod on the People.
Hence, the not-so-secret yearnings of so many Filipinos for a Man on Horseback who will “Hoy, Puñeta!” a fractious and undisciplined population into line. Which, besides being only a temporary solution at best, also causes more problems than it solves.
Which makes this tart piece of advice with which the Wikitruth article ends, apropos to our discussion:
Over time, Wikipedia’s central authority will make rules more hard and fast. But until then, we remind you that the only way to win against a gamed system is not to play.
Which is exactly what hundreds of thousands, even millions, of Filipinos have done. Incidentally, they are among our best and brightest or at least those with a more enterprising bent. It has ever been so: what brought the Malays to what’s now the Philippines in the first place, and led those from one island to move to another, and another, if not dissatisfaction with the status quo, so that there’s one theory that Tagalog is derived from Cebuano? An island peoples are, essentially, a nomadic people, we have wanderlust genetically programmed into us.
Anyway, let me finally get to this photo, which I took some weeks back to illustrate a point I wanted to make.
Typhoons and bad weather are inevitable: and we’ve become used to thinking that power outtages and electrical fires are a predictable consequence of typhoons. But mitigating the reasons typhoons lead to power failures doesn’t occur to anyone: what happens is, energy is devoted to clearing up the mess in the wake of a typhoon and, as soon as that’s done, everything goes back to normal -until the next time a typhoon strikes. The power failures are blamed on trees whose branches are unpruned, mainly, but hardly ever on the truly abominable state of the electric lines, which are a chaotic mass of dangling or tangled wires on leaning posts, with buildings hooked up to them willy-nilly.
Now I’m sure if you ordered Meralco to take responsibility for the chaotic condition of the electrical wires, they’d plead that the effort would bankrupt them. Oddly enough, no order has been made, which might force the creation of some sort of plan: things being less tangled in places like Alabang, you could start with Tatalon. You could even insist, if you were the government, that any new development has to have underground wiring, which would be more typhoon-proof (though there’s the question of flooding!), and where old buildings are razed and new ones erected, underground connections should replace the old-fashioned posts. One reason no order’s been given is that it would bring up the inconvenient reality that local and national governments don’t take zoning particularly seriously, and that the population has swamped the existing infrastructure.
But the individual citizen thinks, do something, anything! But instead, nothing: the problems are so vast, no solution can be contemplated, much less attempted. And so, when the inevitable occurs -the system breaks down- everyone just has to appear busy long enough to patch things back together until the next time it all breaks down. And yet, with the tangled wires in plain sight, people end up shocked by transmission losses! It’s really a failure to even comprehend how electricity gets from point A to point B, what’s involved, how things work, and that electricity isn’t some sort of magical ether.
Never mind how the system’s supposed to work: everyone’s gamed it, anyway. Which is why, as a balikbayan recently told me, “everytime I come home, everything’s slightly more decayed, the people are poorer, life is a little worse, but everyone’s seems so accustomed to it.”
We have abandoned our ambitions, viewing coping as a kind of triumph; and because we have turned to worshipping the little-understood abstractions of the economy, raising it above the political, we fail to see how until and unless we master politics, everything, including progress, will truly be beyond our grasp.
smoke, who has put forward gaming the system quite often as a way to understand what’s going on, though, since hope springs eternal, we still have to strive for the reality she sees-
…far too many Filipinos are still lazy, unimaginative, and mediocre; far too many of our youth are pathologically enamored with consumerism; and we are still a nation run by morons, who are ‘fiscalized’ by idiots, with running commentary from mercenary retards.
Not being a permanent reality in our country (and change is taking place, on a smaller scale, with people groping their way towards trying to build up the momentum to achieve it on a bigger scale). But in the meantime, I have to wholeheartedly agree with the grimness of things, as The Warrior Lawyer sees it, and as {caffeine_sparks} experiences it.
leytenean, the politcal “gift”, as used in my (and i believe mlq3’s) comments above is in the context of talent or natural aptitude. it is not the literal usage as in christmas gift. look before you leap. too fast on the keyboard or is it brain malfunction?
i think as a general rule, filipinos are not risk-takers and if they ever take risk at all, it is in the spirit of bahala na, without a serious consideration of the odds. many are seguristas to their own detriment. the usual pattern is to work for one company, hold the job till retirement, and be content with token raises or promotions along the way.
i once had a prospective client who complained about being discriminated against after being rejected for employment despite multiple degrees, over ten years experience, loyalty, and devoted service to her last employer. it turned out that she was not hired because of her apparent lack of courage to move on, try new ways of doing things, take calculated risks. i politely declined to take her case.
mlq3,
i think that GMA’s greatest flaw is the lack of noble ambition because of an excess of expertise in gaming the system, the latter making the former unnecessary for success. An orig supporter of hers and close confidante even now once told me that her greatest ambition was just to be a “good” president and not a “great” one. In greater men this would be an admirable modesty. In her, it merely reveals the real limits of what we can expect, as there really isn’t anything there in her which History will consider great or ennobling. I think this is painfully true and accounts for her inability to inspire the best in Filipinos, other than how to best game the system, which truly brings out the worst in them.
Bencard: Ahhhh, Boston. Next time it happens, have your client first get transferred to metro-DC area, and for her to get residence inside Washington DC. Then, she files the case.
Leytenian,
when you refer to Benign0 sa dinami dami ng sinabi nya bakit vacuous lang ang dumikit sa utak mo?
==============================================
some people who are not contended resigns and then resigns hanggang walang makuhang permanente.
on exceeding the parents,if you can’t beat them,try then if still cannot, then join them.
I tried doing that by exceeding my dad’s educational background he only was at college level .kahit di nya nakumpleto mba nya,yet he approves most of the theses of those trying to graduate at the national defence college. When his friends want to talk to The DPWH sec,DOE sec sya nilalapitan dahil madiskarte daw sya at sya pinahinaharap at binibigyan ng instant consultancy job.Even a former congressman clasmate who co-authored the procurement law is having problems with procurement in the real world, sa kanya pinapaayos.
I gave up on trying to exceed him years ago dahil I could never match his achievements and diskarte sa buhay.wala dahil di makuntento sa trabaho resign ng resign. Ngayon sino kasama ko;if you can’t beat them,join them.,join them.
bencard,
i would recommend for your client to hire a career advisor to do all the work for her. it’s expensive but worth it. A career advisor is a firm that keep databases of employment directly from companies before these jobs are even communicated to recruiters or advertisers.
employers will not just look on education and years of experience but how one skills and talent can be transferred to the new industry. Skills, team oriented and proven track of success are keys. Failure and burning bridges with previous employment can hurt one’s credibility.
on political gift.. i agree of course.. the actual gift did not come with the right talent and skills. the result of one’s political gift is poor. it’s not extraordinary.
djb, don’t you think it’s a little premature to judge what will be. i mean your sweeping statement that there “isn’t anything there in her which history will consider great or ennobling”. one can try to be a “good” president by doing the best that he/she thinks is good, as his/her maker has given him/her the wisdom to know it. but he/she can only be “great” in the estimation of his/her fellow men. i don’t think abe lincoln INTENDED to become a great president. he just did the “right” thing and let history took its course.
upn, right, or it could have been the bronx (where i’m also licensed to practice law). lol.
I see here a pinoy PHD in physics who is a vp in silicon valley.btw djb di ba physicist ka din?
http://www.timog.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-3096.html
In the semiconductor company that I work for here in Silicon Valley, The VP of Quality Systems is a Pinoy. He handles all the QA departments of our company around the world.
So American, German, Israeli, Taiwanese, Chinese, and Filipino directors and managers are his subordinates. He has a PhD in… I believe it’s in Physics.
By the way, he chose to live in the Philippines, instead of moving over here, so that he could manage his own businesses over there. He works in our company every 2 weeks per month, then go back to the facility in the Philippines to do some more work. Very busy guy. The company is the one who spend for his air fares. I don’t know why, they probably think that it’s worth it with respect to the work that he does for the company.
most of the comments in timog.com post also question the ambition of the pinoy.
“why are there so few Filipino top bosses? Hardly any, actually.”
That depends on once orientation. The Filipino top bosses rarely announce themselves to the public in the same manner as the politicos. But they do exist but not as visible as their counterpart in the government. They are younger too and very talented. In addition, they keep low profile to avoid being the target of bad elements (kidnapping, identity theft, etc)
Example, my highschool classmate was the VP of Unilab, then SC Johnson, now VP in Unilever. He won’t stop until he will be the president, that I am sure. My supervisor a long time ago in the Philippines is now the VP in Kraft Foods in Thailand. He sent his kids to Singapore for schooling (most rich Asian families are doing this for security reason and recognized eligibility when moving to UK or US for college). Recently, his daughter got full scholarship in a US University. During my son’s (in middle school) robotics tournament and tour of aerospace facility, I met a very young Filipina engineer who happened to be the VP in design/production of aircraft surveillance program. I’m impressed she is in late 20s. Filipino top bosses are getting younger.
Last year and this year I attended 2 middle schools graduation (private school) with high white students population and their valedictorian – Filipinos. Last month, when a Filipino couple told us that they are moving their son to public school we check the public schools in the area and found out that Filipino students are highly welcome due to their high grades in English and Math which help pull the records of the school. Public schools compile grades by races, Whites and Filipinos are on the top. Filipinos have separate category than other Asians.
Lack of ambition is a matter of perspective and territorial.
supremo,
“You probably did not get your daily ration of Fil-American dog shit.”
speaking from your experience eh?
quezon,
“scalia, how many fil-ams are on welfare? jeez.”
i dont know. jeez
from the same comment thread on the site I mentioned.
….marami tayong bigatin na mga Pinoy sa investment world:
1. head ng structured finance sa Commerzbank
2. vice president at isang senior vice president sa Citigroup
3. vice presdient sa team leader sa Morgan Stanley
4. vice president sa Lehmann
5. executive director sa UBS-Japan
6. managing consultant sa PWC-Japan
7. IT manager sa RBS
at marami pang iba
at mayroon ding Pinoy na isang principal ngayon sa isang international school, director ng UN Stat office sa Tokyo, senior officer sa UNU at I am sure marami pang iba……
Bencard,
GMA is no Abe Lincoln! Mentioning them in the same breath is well, intellectual halitosis. Who knows of course what History will think. But remember that history begins in current events and much as I have tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, it’s been one great disappointment after another with her. We keep touching bottom hoping to find deeper water, only to find the shallow cuteness of a kiddie pool in a gaming room. If it weren’t for puppeteers like FVR, Ed Ermita, Puno et al, there really wouldn’t be anything to Gloria even worth criticizing or thinking about. The only thing I respect about her is the Office she holds. But that’s just my personal opinion, which I don’t claim counts for any more or any thing less.
MLQ3,
GMA is the pinnacle of the Roman Catholic victory over the secularism America tried to implant in us. Either Soc Rodrigo or Raul Manglapus would actually have been far better for us and unsatisfactory to the Goddess Worshippers. But in her, the Bishops have found the perfect good Catholic maiden with just enough smarts to become President, but no real mind to wrap around the Constitution and absorb its true and deepest meaning. She was the lever they always wanted by which to control everything remotely yet compleatly. She is the Blessed Virgin Mother incarnated with political power by which they have gamed the system. It actually began with Roco and abolition of Science at the Grades One and Two level (still absent in the curriculum!). They have made monkeys of the Filipinos by starting them out young in a simian culture of superstitious beliefs in miracles, intercession and all the paradigms of a mendicant existence dependent on priests, saints, and politicians. We are educating whole new generations of reverent idiots filled with nationalistic resentments and religious nonsense. Even so called mass media that proclaims their dedication to the search for the truth and the public’s right to know are complicit in the abominable agenda of the Catholic Church to keep the Filipinos stupid. And before anybody starts talking about how the private schools do teach science, just ask yourselves how many articles are published by the professoriate of DLSU, Ateneo, UST, etc. in ANY peer-reviewed scientific journal every year. ZERO!
Missing in the discussion with regard to the Filipinos abroad is the fact and reality of large numbers and proportionality.
Many like to point to the US because many, many Filipinos live there. But how exactly does “many†translate to taking total population of the country?
For Filipinos in the US, not much. Last census data pegged total Asian Americans at 4.3% of population, or about 12 million people. Taking the very generous estimate that Filipinos in the US number 4 million, that’s a 3rd of 4.3%, or less than 1.5% of the total population.
Any count or estimate of the number of Filipinos in topmost or upper level management positions has to take that into account, over and beyond just anecdotal representation. Add to that other constraining factors that first generation Filipino immigrants may encounter in the adopted country, like the very crucial factor of age.
Since Daly City was mentioned, it is where the presence and concentration of large numbers to a large extent count toward Filipino employment successes. A FilAm continues to take his turn on the highest executive position in the city. The same could be said of similarly-populated cities like Hercules, Vallejo, or Union City.
The very subjective criterion of ambition has to be fleshed out or taken in conjunction with more measurable quantities and qualities.
It is my belief that the Filipino is no more ambitious, or no lazier, than any member of any ethnic group. Just provide him with the right environment and orientation.
djb, you not not only mention your name with rizal but use it, and you are NO rizal. is that also within the ambit of your “intellectual halitosis”? and who cares about your “disappointments”” are they supposed to affect my own assessment of gma’s presidency? how presumptuous of you to think that your evaluation of her quality as president is the same as that of the entire filipino nation? you can have your personal opinion but don’t, even for a moment, assume that everybody else follows your line of thinking.
Historically, the Catholic Church ran a politicalized theocracy here powered by Simony, much as the Taliban did in Afghanistan. Some might even wish to draw parallels between the opium-based wealth of the Taliban and the opiate-based simony of the RCC in the PHilippines. Now that they have captured the State, they don’t really have to sell stampitas and scapulars anymore. Simony has been replaced by “PAGCORY”. Cory Aquino was similarly a willing puppet. The Church hated Marcos in the end for the same reasons that Joma did: he wouldn’t share power with them. Gloria however is another matter. CBCP News is far better leading indicator of what Malacanang will be doing than PIA. The Men in Skirts cover for the sins of the Woman who wears the pants in this family, even as they occasionally tsk-tsk at government just to impress the Filipinos with their supposedly superior wisdom.
Until their Religion is debunked, we shall sink deeper into the ranks of the unfit. Now, most especially, when scientific understanding of such important issues as fuel, food, the environment and education has become absolutely necessary for the survival of nations, I can think of no worse influence towards disaster than the Catholic Church with its goodie-two-shoes moralistic disguises and support for unbridled multiplication like rats and rabbits. They are absolutely responsible for overpopulation and the crime, poverty, deprivation and hopelessness that has wrought.
Most depressing of all, NOBODY stands up to them. Not even the Supreme Court, not the Press, not academe. Nobody! It is a situation that suits them just fine, because now they can preach their plan for salvation untrammeled and unquestioned by the Dumb.
filipinos ambition in the Philippines is simple. they just want a job. Ask the majority . It has nothing to do with religion.
the government has an active role to provide opportunities for those in need.
KG,
pero bilib ako sa mga indians. the CEOs of Accenture, Pepsi, Citigroup, McKinsey & Co., to name a few, are all indians
trivia on Accenture – it has more employees in India than in the US!
The Ca t,
compliance just seals the ambition
It was alleged that in Stonehill’s black book “Doberman” was none other than president DM. Then Secretary of Justice Diokno was fired and Stonehill was deported before facing charges. Diokno would have pushed a complete invesdtigation on the Stonehill fiasco.
History teaches us that DM was the first Philippine President to apply for an IMF credit card with all its concomittant conditionalities. Foremost of which was giving up fiscal and monetary policy then to the U.S. naturally on orders of the IMF he started the Decontrol process. The poor sap (DM) did not know the difference then between land reform and asset reform. Asset reform in the agricultural sector is revolutionary in nature. It is a political act of state.
In spite of Magsaysay’s and Garcia’s efforts to end American domination of the Philippne economy then, DM reversed the policy framework and put the country on the road to permanent economic servitude.
For a country that was then a major exporter of gold that was a major blunder when the world was still on the de facto gold standard.
How could a country run out of foreign exchange when the world then was on the de facto gold standard?
Simple—- all our bureaucrats both in public and private service all were trained as employees and not employers. Accountants, lawyers and bankers. Economic discipline is schools and universities were forbidden to teach political economy (it was tainted with Marxism they said then) very much like in the U.S. So you got basic neo-keynesian Samuelson economic theory. That became the bible till Cory’s time then we shifted to Friedman’s book on economic dogma.
The International Energy Agency has announced recently that world is facing an energy crisis similar to 1973 and 1978.
This time the crunch will probably be more intense.
The transition from easy oil to tough oil to unconventional sources of energy, the dollar crisis vis a vis the Euro, credit and banking crisis in the U.S. and put in the Usama factor (instability in the M.E. ) where a large amount of oil will be coming from.
Most of the emrging markets have opened their financial systems to the dollar reserve system. They are getting squeezed from a dollar that is loosing its value to rising oil and energy prices.
All outside the control of central bankers in the emerging markets.
All the Philippines has today is IMF credit card (direct and indirect) propped up by income from foreign pinoy workers.
President DM was the first President who applied and got an IMF credit card. His daughter is notable in that she has become the most avid user of the credit card.
The Republic (as one major conditionality of the IMF credit card) is the guarantee to all foreign investors to access of foreign exchange if they invest in the Philippines.
The Phiulippine state guarantees risk for all foreign investors.
Thanks for the info Anthony. nakakaibilib nga sila (indians)
balik tayo sa pinoy at pinas ;you mentioned accenture my wife works there as a database administrator and she asked the CEO of their client washington gas ;should the democrats win ,what will happen to outsourcing? ang sagot sa kanya a contract is a contract,don’t worry.
muntik na nga maasign sa tate misis ko almost two years ago kaya lang nabuntis sya with our first and only child.
annecdotal na naman ito kaya pasensya na sa mga nagrerely sa satistics
madaming nagreresign sa accenture dito sa pinas, dahil sa singapore lumilipat at hanggang ngayon ang sisipag ng mga headhunter for the singapore companies.
It is a good thing(for me and my kid) my wife chose to stay here instead.
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CVJ, is there space left in singapore, bakit aggressive ang recruitment? 1990 pa kasi visit ko sa singapore ,congested na tingin ko ,maybe sa tingin ko lang yon tulad ng tingin ko sa congestion sa manila.
I saw this post yesterday afternoon and decided to do a little experiment: I wondered it benign0 would show up and regale us with the usual. But deep inside, despite his assholery, I believed benny still had a bit of class. My hypothesis then was that benny would just nod approvingly at the post and not post a comment. It’s 10:28 am Manila time and still he hasnt. Well done, benign0. 😉
(The experiment of course assumes he checks MLQ3’s blog regularly.)
bencard, perhaps you protest too much. you surely recall how dm did as i put it -point to his being an economist as giving himself an edge, and you know he was very proud of his doctorate in economics. and if you have any doubt about what i wrote above, please consult “a stone for the edifice,” his autobiography and apologia for his presidency.
DJB Rizalist on, “Most depressing of all, NOBODY stands up to them. Not even the Supreme Court, not the Press, not academe. Nobody! It is a situation that suits them just fine, because now they can preach their plan for salvation untrammeled and unquestioned by the Dumb.”
Seems nothing significant had changed from the bad old days where the political leaders, the military generals, the justices and the bishops have common appreciation of each other roles preserving their own status quo and the governed majority waiting for mercy and miracles to happen.
Malas talaga!
So horrible, that even the Sulpicio tragedy is blamed on the passengers who did not know how to swim – gospel of the dumb (di alam, di patay). The country’s leaders are doing a great job. Literally yes, when majority just accept whatever given by their leaders unquestioned -from rice to salvation.
djb, nod. this is what i’ve called her failure of the imagination.
Karl, Singapore’s ability to sustain economic growth has always been dependent on the growth of factor inputs (land, labor and capital). As economist Paul Krugman argued way back, Lee Kuan Yew’s economic strategy for Singapore is pretty much patterned after Stalin’s Soviet Union:
http://www.pkarchive.org/trade/myth.html
One of LKY’s strategic mistakes is its population control policy in the 70’s which resulted in too few local Singaporeans to sustain such a strategy. We Filipinos (among other nationals) are here to compensate for that mistake and are part of their strategy to increase the labor component. I read that they plan to grow their population by an additional 2 million (from the present 6 million) by 2010.
Jeg, i think Benign0 was busy rebutting Abe over at FV.
PSI on, “Filipinos are among the largest subgroups of Asians in the United States, at least by population, yet among the poorest and least educated. But coming from a Chinese-American Hu, the observation could be biased.”
Supremo’s link.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/acs-05.pdf
Dang!
Filipinos median household income is second highest.
Filipinos poverty rate is the lowest at 5.2 while 13 percent or higher with Chinese, Vietnamese and Koreans.
Sabi nga ba….
Good work, Supremo.
DJB,
Have to look at motive too, don’t you think? What is the Church’s motive. I’m kind of at a loss, have been for many years, regarding the Inquisition. The Church wanted to save souls and the body is in the way of saving souls, hence…
The biggest problem I see in the Church is that they always look at things a priori, and therefore they do not really listen to anyone except those in the hierarchy. They engage in dialogue but they act more like lawyers to the faith rather than approach problems with any open-mindedness. But how can you question their motive? Anyone have an answer?
MLQ, stop calling it failure of the imagination. This statement is a failure of imagination. Call it a lack of imagination, rather. You’re not saying we tried and failed to imagine?
And the reason why Filipinos don’t reach pinnacles is simple… In their home country, the social structure stunts them. Abroad, it may be racial discrimination or the problem is the Filipinos’ own self-worth. Filipinos are racist, correct? They think their race is inferior. These could be the causes. Another thing is the rearing culture. We love our children and want to keep them forever. Italians aren’t exactly go-getters too you know.
“Lack of ambition is a matter of perspective and territorial.” – Dodong
——————————————–
I totally agree.
BTW I believe that whatever negative traits that the Filipinos have can be changed for the better. And all the commenters in these blog can be a very good agent for that change.
And I know a couple of Ateneo grads working abroad who have Harvard MBAs under them, and they don’t have post-graduate degrees, just the BAs (BSs sound wrong).
brian, i was responding to djb’s analysis of the president. she’s the one, i said, who suffers from a failure of the imagination, not filipinos as a whole.
re: your point on the social structure, self-worth, racism, nod. except i’d add that unfortunately what may be more commonly the case is that whites are viewed as superior and other non-whites are then viewed as inferior. and nod at co-dependent culture with kids.
djb,
i disagree with going head-to-head with the church because what non-catholics fail to realize is you are essentially calling on catholics to commit apostasy. no reasonable person should demand this of someone who belongs to a religion. it is like calling on secularists to commit treason.
since we are already half way there by having an official separation of church and state, meaning not a regime of state hostility to churches, but rather, a prohibition on any church enjoying state support, then the objective becomes ensuring the prohibition is correctly understood and applied. this is where non-catholic voters should be of help except in some cases they’d go even further in blurring the distinctions between church and state than catholics, who have to be historically conscious of the inquisition and the spanish era here, are prepared to do.
” i politely declined to take her case.” So you’re not a risk-taker, too, Bencard.
Rego – a person can only be an agent of change if he can empower himself and then others to change. That is what the OFWs are doing in terms of living. So in turn they financed educations of younger relatives who can relate to the benefits of change and set their ambitions. Hopefully, another top managers (of change).
Brian B – church motive is divine salvation and not physical realities. Enduring suffering is closer to divinity. It does not make sense at all if you are one of the dozen children in a family and fight for food on the table.
@ Supremo
Thanks for the link.
I looked at page 17 as you said, and the education part of Hu’s observation is quite true with Filipinos trailing Indians (South Asian), Chinese, and Koreans in terms of attainment of bachelor’s degree.
mlq3, nice to see you’re embracing certain ideas that appeal to Yours Truly. 😉
This is a letter sent to me way back by a Pinoy living in the US (having read my book, you’re probably familiar with it):
Obviously too, an aspiration to EXCELLENCE, is what underpins ACHIEVEMENT.
Unfortunately we’d be hard-pressed to find such levels of aspiration in our society. It might have something to do with the intellectual bankruptcy described above.
By the way, don’t mind “The Cat”. Her style of limited thinking goes way back (refer to the following ‘insight’).
http://www.apmforum.com/columns/orientseas47.htm
Happy reading! Ms. Madcat, stidi ka lang diyan. 😉
Oh, man, benny!
😀
…but rather, a prohibition on any church enjoying state support, then the objective becomes ensuring the prohibition is correctly understood and applied.
I suppose this doesnt count, eh?
Benigno
you are resurrecting the dead. This writer has long been forgotten. My blog is enjoying thousands of viewers without self-promotion but yours need a lot of controversies to create traffic.
i am not ashamed to have battled this guy who proclaimed himself to be the father of offshore business in the Philippines. Never heard. Isn’t he the cause of PEX meltdown when he threatened me to “make sumbong” to Zobel so I can be banned from that forum. Very funny. Two guys, benigno and one self-proclaimed expat, afraid of one woman. hahaha
Didn’t you just did that again to MLQ3 recently and sassy and other known bloggers that you were banned from their blogs?
DJB,
The Catholic Church of the Philippine is the root of all evil?
Thanks for the article cvj,digressing a bit;
I think singapore can be the testing ground for vertical farming, I know it is not a new idea, but I saw it again on cnn; as a proposed solution for the distance of farmlands to the city(fuel /transpo costs).But until further notice,I think it is cheaper to import veggies from China and rice from its neighbors.
for our country, vertical farming would be difficult to sell.
on oil I don’t see an immediate solution even with the vertical farming to resolve the food vs bio fuel issue(bilyon piso siguro ito para ma implement).Too late for the long term contracts and huge inventories. Shell moved out its refineries because of municipal tax issues in Batangas.
some suggest lumot for ethanol san mo kukunin sa dagat,o gagawa ka ng artificial lake at gawin mong lumot, another land use issue.
cocodiesel, isang bagyo lang sa bicol region or northern luzon sira na naman ang mga coconut at it take years of recover.
maybe it is time to look for the scientist who has the “Formula” ala the Marlon Brando film.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080754/
benign0, i’ve always said much as you’ve perfected having an abrasive persona, you do raise good points. it may be that what you practice is “tough love” and this what gets the goat of so many people. but also, i suspect you can’t get away from insisting that change must come with a value judgment that i’m not sure is necessary or even productive, specially if you’re dealing with an entire people and your views on society, when we have to keep breaking down that society into its component parts. also, you are certain about certain observations when they’re not necessarily up to date, because of your distance from the scene.
your obsession with the “ocho-ocho” for example is so 80’s and not the way things are done anymore. no one goes to miting de avances anymore, the electorate can’t be bothered to listen to stump speeches -on the local level, candidates are back to campaigning door-to-door. on the national level, the population is so large and there are so many large urban areas and the areas that are vote-rich are themselves changing (what’s happened to the “solid north”? ilocandia’s relatively depopulated and the old ethnic blocs, in a sense, are breaking up, it’s been argued, just as the old command vote institutions are finding their discipline waning) that candidates must focus on battling it out on the airwaves.
a valid criticism can be made that the collapse of the old going-on-the-stump political culture was accelerated by media and the wealthiest politicians conspiring to promote advertising as the end-all and be-all of campaigning. oodles of money to be made down the line for the big tv networks and the radio stations. not much of an incentive to push more than one or two issues, perhaps, and since you’re going for the least common denominator political advertising may not necessarily be particularly edifying.
life is increasingly becoming more complex, we filipinos are becoming more complex, and so i disagree with you most with regards to your “it’s simple, really” mantra. some problems may be simple, some solutions, too, and in some respects we may be over-complicating things. but in other matters over-simplifcation is precisely the problem and distinguishing between the two may be more helpful.
Karl, thanks for the heads up on vertical farming. Nothwithstanding my advocacy for land reform, I think vertical farming is also worth a look as it is in keeping with the basic thrust of food sovereignty.
The Catholic Church of the Philippine is the root of all evil?
Apparently, it’s so evil that even the Muslim Filipinos are undergoing “unbridled multiplication like rats and rabbits”.
mlq3, I don’t think Pinoys are getting more complex.
Just because there are more things going on doesn’t necessarily make a system more complex. For example, the brain is made up of a number of cells that do pretty much the same thing (tansmit and receive electrical impulses from one another). Likewise, the liver also has a similar number of cells and may even have a greater number of types of cells than the brain. However, the way the brains cells are structured and the multitude of ways that they are related to one another vastly dwarfs that of the liver.
Kung baga, it is the way brain cells are structured and networked that give it its complexity and its intelligence. The liver, on the other hand, is pretty much limited to some basic filtering and secretion of bile. Kind of a very close analogy to the bigger picture we are talking about, aint it? 😉
The way I see Pinoy society, not much in the way of structure has been created in the last 50 years. So whilst there is a PERCEPTION that more complexity has been created, this perception may be due more to the increased number of players in the system and an increase in dynamism (which is DIFFERENT from the quality of complexity) and not really due to any new structure created or developed further in our society.
In that sense, the FUNDAMENTAL ISSUES in Pinoy society remain, as I continue to assert, simple.
So yes, dude. It remains simple. Really.
Ms. Cat, as I said, stidi ka lang diyan. To give you a bit of credit, you’ve graduated from grandstanding about your personal credentials to grandstanding about your blog’s traffic.
Very classy indeed, my feline pal. 😀
No prob CVJ,
no matter how it is over used I refer you to the handy dandy wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming
======================
On catholicism,
DJB,
I might have said that the catholic church is the strongest lobby group against population control.
Even Rizal would not have said that the church is the root of all evil.
although padre damaso and salvi were glaring bad examples, to say that they are the root of all evi,l for lack of a better term is so over.(sosyal)
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
— Albert Einstein, echoing Robert Green Ingersoll (“I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night, — blown and flared by passion’s storm, — and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.” from the Field-Ingersoll Debate), quoted from PhysLink.com
I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.
— Albert Einstein, following his wife’s advice in responding to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the International Synagogue in New York, who had sent Einstein a cablegram bluntly demanding “Do you believe in God?” Quoted from and citation notes derived from Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (draft: 2001), chapter 3
“Both deism and traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic theism must also be contrasted with pantheism, the notion attributed to Baruch Spinoza (d. 1677) that the deity is associated with the order of nature or the universe itself. This also crudely summarizes the Hindu view and that of many indigenous religions around the world. When modern scientists such as Einstein and Stephen Hawking mention ‘God’ in their writings, this is what they seem to mean: that God is Nature.”
— Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (2001), chapter 3
I have been following your blog for almost three years , I remember you said that your mom was a catholic and your old man a protestant.
I can also understand that you are a physicist by profession,so I won’t bother your belief system and I am not asking you to stop bothering ours.
its a belief system nga eh.that was just an opinion, no more no less.
yep.. echoing the idea of KG..
your hatred for religion is what is keeping you from having an open mind DJB.
even in this highly-modern world, we need both the empiricism of science and the faith that religion offers.
if we are yet to discover the absolute truth in things; let us, for the meantime, suffice ourselves with the ready explanations that religion provides while also continuing to pursue the search for knowledge that will help us explain life’s realities.
despite the apparent inflexibilities of all the religions of the world, i pray that you do not forget that it was the same church who now accepts the general theories in science as not against the fundamental dogmas of the church, like evolution, when only about 200 years ago, that same church would have placed you in a compromising position even if you just hold a leaflet on the topic.
from what i understand and what history tells me, killing religion requires a long span of time to accomplish. to effectively kill one, it takes generations of disproof on dogma, not an outright revolution of your idea. for a revolution oft entails even more loss than what could be gained. even if you gain the supremacy of your belief, the energy required to dissolve a long-standing idea, could have been used instead to forward to further improve and find explanations that would justify the new belief.
the world has a way of peacefully sorting things out and discarding things that is no longer relevant through time.
FWIW, i don’t think lack of ambition is our problem. The fact that you have millions uprooting themselves either from their home provinces to seek a better life in the city, coupled with the millions who have left the country to work elsewhere is proof that we, as a people, possess ambition.
Our statistics on entrepreneurship also show the same drive. The Philippines has among the highest rates of entrepreneurship, almost five times higher than Singapore. Most of the entrepreneurial activity also comes from the low income Class D and E sectors so you also cannot blame the poor for lack of initiative.
Blaming lack of ambition for our present poverty and inequality is like blaming the victims of the recent Sulpicio ferry disaster for not wanting to swim to shore.