I love what economist Graeme Maxton whose book 'The End of Progress' enlightened me a lot. His book presented a rude awakening to many of the conventional thinking about economics that i've come to accept into my 'operating system' without question. Maxton is not against capitalism. Is just that the current form/concepts are twisted & unsustainable.
Maxton's views on charity/philanthrophy gave me a rude shock as well as i've written in an earlier blogpost.
Words in bold is the doctrine of S'pore's current ruling regime.
More & more malls sprouting up like mushrooms
+ Flood in locusts swarms of foreign workers
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= Mania in consumption
Consumption, consumption, consumption. It is consumerism run amok on steriods. Poor Mother Earth.
More & more greenery are being cut down for development. Trees are considered to be of little use to the gdp obsessed regime. Trees cut down & building a car park for parking fees to suck $$ is what they like.
It was reported by WWF that if the rest of the world consumes resources at the rate like sinkies do, we would need 3.5 Earths.
"No amount of innovativeness or human ingenuity can replace many of the world's resources when they are gone. Optimistic modern-day economists need to have a chat with their colleagues who study the hard sciences if they are in any doubt. There are laws in the world of physics & chemistry, & unlike those of economics, they do not change. We cannot simply manufacture new supplies of copper, zinc or oil when the existing ones are gone." - Graeme Maxton
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"Modern economic thinking has given us false goals, demanding growth for its own sake, encouraging a mania for consumption that requires the planet to be laid waste, exploited for our convenience."- Graeme Maxton
Is an unfortunate sight to see more & more people mutating from citizens into consumers over the years.
"Modern economic thinking has mispriced our world. It has failed to put a value on pollution, waste & disposal costs of many items we use. It has encouraged us to think about the short term, not the needs of future generations."- Graeme Maxton
When people buy the $2 stuff from Daiso, they know is made in China thus is cheap from china's abundance of cheap labor. People seldom think about the externalities associated with the cheap price if they are aware of such externalities in the first place.
"Price we pay for our resources has almost nothing to do with what they are worth. It is madness that a barrel of oil, which took millions of years of planetary activity to create, which comes from a declining reserve & which can could be of value to many generations to come, is worth US$150 or less. That price encourages us to waste it- as we do. More than 80% of it is squandered. Nor does the price reflect the pollution it causes, greenhouse gases it releases, or the environmental damage caused during its extraction."- Graeme Maxton
Though i dislike the current regime's gdp obsession, the selling of fuel without subsidies is the right way. S'pore is 1 of few countries in Asia selling fuel without subsidies.
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