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Saturday, October 31, 2009
no to ghg cuts

Singapore rejects emission cuts

quite disappointing, really.

what is this obsession with growth? why does the economy need to grow, if the population is not growing, less foreign immigration? income is good, of course. business and industry are all good, but why do we have to keep harping on the need to grow and grow and grow. we don't need all that growth, i think, especially if resident population isn't growing. where is all this growth going to? the government? the foreign businesses?

i don't know, probably my economics is faulty. but if the economy is meant to serve the people, a system in which people can act to maximise their welfare, then the point of growing the economy would be to provide more opportunities for people to act to maximise their welfare, wouldn't it? but it seems that singaporeans are now stuck in the middle - the people who can afford to come here to work are either (a) highly successful and occupy the top end of the economic spectrum or (b) extremely poor and occupy the bottom end of the spectrum. given how income is distributed, it would seem that the top end are getting more and more. how many singaporeans does this really benefit?

and eventually, who are we producing for? ourselves? unlikely - the main defence has often been that singapore is producing for other countries, for other markets. no we're not - we're producing for other markets, but we're earning the money. in essense, we are producing for ourselves money, even if we do not consume the products directly. besides, shouldn't we be moving towards more knowledge-based, value-adding work, where we don't actually produce excessive physical goods?

this sort of touches on the value system of the current economic system, marginally. it's this obsession with quantity, more and more and more! we need more of everything, so we can sell them cheap, and we can sell more of them! when do we stop?

i'm not making any statements here

Labels: news

1:08 AM