much ado about nothing

I could not help but wonder, as I sat there watching the idiot box with the dog whining and trying to make me walk him, if I was not just wasting my time. About an hour into the National Day Rally speech and I had to ask, "So what's new?" It is a pity I had fallen asleep when they announced the five-day week two years ago. Since then, I have watched two rally speeches in anticipation of some other electrifying announcement that would turn the world on its head, but they have been rather boring, really.

I guess there were two points that stood out more for me in this speech. The first was the issue of foreign talent, and the creation of a new agency withing the PMO to manage this. I think PM's points can be summarised briefly as
1) It is very important to stay in touch with overseas Singaporeans. It is good to go overseas, but please come back. We will set up an agency to manage this.
2) We all know our birth rate cannot support population replacement. I won't bore you with the details.
3) Since our birth rate is too low, the best way to sustain our population is to attract foreign talent.

In the first place, I think perhaps he glossed over the second point a little too quickly. Is it really so hard to increse the birth rate? It seems we are pouring a lot of resources into the whole foreign talent thing, might it not be possible to invest this in subsidising the costs of a third child instead? Every time the issue of birth policies comes up, my mother becomes incensed because she feels the PAP really screwed up on this one. She will tell the story of how she went to the hospital for a checkup when pregnant with the baby sister, and the nurses kindly directed her to the abortion room (obviously a fair assumption since this was the third, and she should stop at two). And she feels that the government should really show some backbone and admit for once that they were wrong in those early years. Instead, they introduce new and unpopular measures to attempt to fix this problem.

Personally, I have no problem with foreign talent. I see this as a problem of the individual welfare versus the welfare of society. And I believe that by picking and choosing the cream of foreign talent, they would certainly contribute to the country more than a few hundred more babies born to random Singaporean parents.

On the other hand, it is likely that with more competition (whether local or foreign), individuals would be less well off. This is the innate fear that leads people to reject the notion of more foreigners. The key differences are that with foreign talent, the culprits are easily identified (as opposed to some faceless statistic on the birthrate) and with foreign talent, people feel the pain immediately because they are competing for jobs now, not 20 years down the road. It is easy to gripe if you are replaced or passed over in favor of some yellow haired dude, but if some other Singaporean gets your job or promotion, how would you know if he might not have existed if not for government birth control policies?

The other thing that PM focussed on was the new media, the internet and blogs. It is quite clear from the time allotted that this has been identified as a key issue that they are taking very seriously. It is unfortunate that after all the talk, I was still not convinced that the action taken against Mr Brown was reasonable and public spirited. And yet I am still very hopeful for our blogging scene, and especially Mr Brown.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover recently that Mr Brown ranks #300 on Technorati. Given our miniscule population (since popularity is based on links), it is really impressive to have one of our own ranking up in the clouds. To me this signals a very active blogging scene, which bodes well for the continuance of civic discourse, whether serious, fallecious or otherwise. Kudos to Mr Brown, and keep up the good work!