Frustration and Tomorrow

Written on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 6:25 pm | by cocoy

It’s frustrating! The divisiveness, the single-minded nature of this country and how often our leadership’s decisions are idiotic, self-centered, often indecisive, and self-defeating— it baffles the imagination, you know?

Did I mention, frustrating?

Not just our politics, even our local church is so frustratingly stultifying you have to wonder, if this is the same Church that stands for all life because pieces like “Lagman Bill is Stalinist” does the opposite.

Then there are the politicians. It is rather cynical to say that, well, they are politicians after all. How can we expect them to be any better? I know that some part of you, however little and for that matter, every person on earth agrees with that cynicism. We seem to be hardwired to doubt a politician, especially when they rarely give us, the electorate, a reason to.

Yes, we laughed when Miriam Santiago cracked jokes in the recent Bolante Senate hearing. She makes for excellent sound byte . Yes, it lightened the mood. Heaven knows how those of us who are addicted to this kind of action had our blood pressure rise durning that farce.

Guess, that’s where the wind blows.

Fellow blogger, Arbet recently wrote a piece, For an Absolute, Hereditary Monarchy. I certainly understand that depth of frustration, that comes from loving a country where the system has been gamed to perfection by those in positions of power and influence who are— let’s be straight, aren’t out to change the world. Is there any doubt as to the validity of his assertions?

Given justified questions like DJB’s post on “Does the One-Third Minority Rule Illegitimate Impeachment?” Especially when faced with Surveys inspire me — VP de Castro., can you forgive people like me for asking the obvious question: “Paano Kung Wala?”

Pretty understandable, right?

I was reading blackshama’s post “Where to next UP and Philippine higher education?” I’m not an educator and I’ve certainly never studied in UP. But this humble Green and White educated blogger agrees that blackshama asks a perfectly good question: “What does education mean for us Pinoys?”

Last October, I blogged about “Can the Future Be Designed (Redux)?” In that post, I raved about do schools kill creativity, by Sir Ken Robinson, among other things. While my post was veiled in my futurist idealism— it was about education:

I believe the future is something we can design, rather than merely throwing chess pieces at the board. We then need not fear the future to be too fast for us to comprehend or wait for that moment when we can be comfortable with it. We can create and design a tomorrow filled with hope, with innovation and with promise or any which way we so choose. Therefore, the future is something we can envision, can strive for, and though, as with all plans, it may or may not be down to the last precise dot, but it certainly be something we can give it a go and make possible. If design is a signal of intention, and our intention for our future is for a holistic approach that mashes up the disciplines and the creative spirit to form intelligence, therefore, couldn’t a designed future then be leveraged to fight incapacity?

Recently in This Week in Tech, episode 169 “The Donkey of the Week” (mp3), one of the things they talked about was education and the financial crisis and what it meant to Americans. Alex Lindsay replied to Leo Laporte’s question on what his teenage son should be preparing for, he said “on top of reading, writing, arithmetic, you have to be effective in communicating on the Internet, with video, with PDFs, with Keynotes—” In other words, Leo summed up “learn those technology tools”.

In a comment to Where the Wind Blows, MLQ3 had similar thoughts and I think any education system must have at the earliest possible grade level:

anyway i think it will be fixed simply because eventually knowledge is an advbantage and people will see you need it. but it will require more bumbling about than necessary. in my limited experience, i found my students appreciated the part of myonline journalism course where i sat down with them and walked them through how i do research online, the most. in turn i was flabbergasted because i don’t think i’m particularly efficient but there you have it. they were simply unaware of many obvious goodies on the internet which can compensate for our often moribund libraries.

And this matter about education that must be front and center shall be forgotten. What will replace it will be the ever repetitive discussion on Charter Change. The Explainer MLQ3 inDesigned to Fail and Failing Design wrote this about the whole mess that is Charter Change:

“The citizenry then, is in a Catch-22 situation. Most everyone who takes the time to ponder the present constitutional framework finds its shortcomings to be so extensive, some sort of change is required -even a total overhaul. Only those who helped write the present Charter seem to hold it in some sort of affection.

The problem, and this is at the heart of anything political, is timing. To make the necessary changes requires a great deal of trust in those in authority -and that trust simply doesn’t exist. So the dilemma is, make necessary changes yes, but making those changes will perpetuate the existing problems, or replace them with entire different, but quite possible, worse ones?”

I think that everyone agrees that we need— at the very least ask our people whether they want to rewrite our constitution. The frustration stems on Arroyo once more taking advantage of this need like a leech. This maybe the deal with the devil we may have to do.

This Cha-Cha issue needs to be settled and a plebiscite held for that purpose is the right thing to do. The right path is to call for a Constitutional Convention and have the wisest and smartest amongst us draft a path for the future.

But that’s not going to happen.

Cynically and practically speaking this nation’s leaders, political, and church— will prefer the wind to blow in a Constitutional Assembly. To describe such act as hubris would be generous. Like always, they will grasp for the quick and easy road. They will grasp for their collective self-interest and shallow minds will allow.

Perhaps if this train finally pushes through— by hook or slimy hook, maybe we can finally start having a discourse on things that do matter. Even though with certainty in the short term, the collective focus on dole outs that have failed to uplift our people will persist. Long lines at the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office will remain. PGH would continue to be a bastion of people looking for proper health care and this nation’s taxation system would continue to be broken. And you know what? The pork will flow.

In a country of pork, of charity sweepstakes of failed healthcare, of an education system that is broken, perhaps a negative income tax may help hard working people a pay check away from disaster. What is this negative income tax? In Free to Choose, Friedman Milton and Rose talked about negative taxation:

The basic idea of a negative income tax is simple, once we penetrate the smoke screen that conceals the essential features of the positive income tax. Under the current positive income tax you are permitted to receive a certain amount of income without paying any tax. The exact amount depends on the size of your family, your age, and on whether you itemize your deductions. This amount is composed of a number of elements—personal exemptions, low-income allowance, standard deduction (which has recently been relabeled the zero bracket amount), the sum corresponding to the general tax credit, and for all we know still other items that have been added by the Rube Goldberg geniuses who have been having a field day with the personal income tax. To simplify the discussion, let us use the simpler British term of “personal allowances” to refer to this basic amount.

If your income exceeds your allowances, you pay a tax on the excess at rates that are graduated according to the size of the excess. Suppose your income is less than the allowances? Under the current system, those unused allowances in general are of no value. You simply pay no tax.

If your income happened just to equal your allowances in each of two succeeding years, you would pay no tax in either year. Suppose you had that same income for the two years together, but more than half was received the first year. You would have a positive taxable income, that is, income in excess of allowances for that year, and would pay tax on it. In the second year, you would have a negative taxable income, that is, your allowances would exceed your income but you would, in general, get no benefit from your unused allowances. You would end up paying more tax for the two years together than if the income had been split evenly.

With a negative income tax, you would receive from the government some fraction of the unused allowances. If the fraction you received was the same as the tax rate on the positive income, the total tax you paid in the two years would be the same regardless of how your income was divided between them.

Even as our leaders knock themselves up at all this insanity of Impeachment and Charter Change, of the never ending politics, our world is rocked by a financial crisis that has deepened a chasm between free enterprise and social enterprise. Equally important may the question of education and all that, we are amidst a transformation. Tomorrow will be vastly different. And this once more draws upon frustration that our leaders— political, religious and even in media, don’t just get it.

Gordon Brown during the launch of Global Entrepreneurship Week spoke this about the future. And he gets it. He said:

“While we have Free Markets and its right to say we should have free markets, we shouldn’t have value free markets. Markets should be underpinned by social purpose.”

Do you get it?

Ordinary people— people day in and day out that I have had the pleasure of conversing on plurk and on real life are frustrated at the nature of our politics and the nature of our national life. This blog exist because of that frustration. And as the philosophy of Free Markets is transformed to incorporate social purpose, so too must the nature of our politics. It must have a social purpose beyond the press release and we must rise about being petty and small and trite.

So please, let us all cut the crap, shall we?

(updated to include this paragraph:) I’m pretty sure that any discussion that raises discourse will be forgotten. There will be no serious thought on education. there will be no serious rethinking of our taxation. there will be no focus on science, on transforming people to think beyond having a 9 to 5 job and to think outside the box. That’s just poignant.

Tomorrow is about how small the world is and at the same time how great the opportunities are. As Filipinos can we carry on in an age where communication and opportunity is simply an Internet Address away? And as this explosion in Free Market and enterprise continues, tomorrow will be guided by a social dimension that goes beyond politics, beyond religion. We need open minds to embrace this marvelous new age. Can we leverage it? As a nation, we don’t even dare to try. We can, you know?

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About The Author: cocoy Mac. Linux. Tech. Comics. Free Market. Politics. New Media. Coffee. Geek. He hangs out on twitter as @cocoy, on Plurk, FriendFeed and blogs at Big Mango.

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17 Responses to “Frustration and Tomorrow”

  1. EQualizer on November 21st, 2008 7:50 pm

    COCOY:

    Remember:Power is never given; it is always taken!

  2. EQualizer on November 21st, 2008 10:52 pm

    Gloria Arroyo,Pride comes before the fall!

    One Day In The Near Future:

    Headline:”It’s All Over;The Pidals On Exile!”

  3. UP n grad on November 22nd, 2008 12:39 am

    to the Equalizer: the Marcoses fled to exile — temporarily (just see where the Marcoses are now… and as Erap is today, Makoy would be an old-man of Philippine politics with a strong following. Can you not hear a big crowd wishing that Makoy had not died?

  4. Conyo on November 22nd, 2008 3:49 am

    When Noli de Castro becomes president, the Black and White movement will have more meetings at their favorite coffee shop, Starbucks.

    These so-called nationalists just cant seem to get enough of these overpriced lattes.

    Drink up suckers while buy more SBUX stock!

  5. cocoy on November 23rd, 2008 6:37 am

    EQualizer: of course Power is given. people surrender it all the time.

    Conyo $SBUX is actually interesting these days.

  6. Concerned_grader on November 23rd, 2008 9:52 pm

    Wow I can’t believe I’m commenting with mature men.

    But yeah..

    I’m just a young boy… Say 16 yrs. old

    On the CHA CHA issue:

    I still think it’s just a mental play. A mental play, in a way that Gloria will give us an issue and everyone will stagger themselves on that issue, on how controversial it is. But we won’t see the real picture here… That she is plotting to extend her term.

    Extension for me is to endure limits. So literally, PGMA is getting privileges that gives her the ticket to doing what she wants may it be good or bad not only for herself, her government but also for her people, her nation!

    I’m just concerned of our economy, of how low it is right now, how everything else is falling into place. LIKE IT IS ORGANIZED/PLANNED. Read the lines! Don’t read between it… It’s reverse psychology!

    Like I said Mental play and complete abuse…
    ~A Child

  7. Concerned_grader on November 23rd, 2008 9:56 pm

    Cocoy and EQualizer:
    Power can be given, gained and earned. But it can also be forcefully taken…

    DIRTY WORKS ofcourse…

    and Power can be surrendered in exchange for money…

    Another mental play

    Feel the mind with poverty and greed

    Greed + Poverty = Manipulation

    Thus, our rights can be bought….

  8. Bencard on November 24th, 2008 5:07 am

    cocoy, what percentage of “educated” pinoys voted for estrada, fpg, trillianes or even honasan? i really don’t think it’s education, per se, or the lack of it. it is more like education plus patriotism and the ability to use right reason over emotion (excessive use of subjective standards such as mabait, mapagbigay, maawain, guapo, magaling magsalita, etc.) in choosing the right leaders.

  9. cocoy on November 24th, 2008 6:16 pm

    Bencard, i wasn’t simply talking about politics, re: education or educated. i was thinking education in relation to everything else: innovation, building new things, art, commerce, etc. etc. and how intelligence and creativity go hand in hand as a response to the challenges of the 21st century. this isn’t just a philippine problem— it is the same question being asked by every country in the world, even the united states.

    as for pinoys voting for a certain crop of politician. it has been why i’ve been blogging there should be better political parties.

    there has to be a deeper bench.

    if people want a change in the way their politics is, they should run for public office or get good people to run. it doesn’t matter if it is just for village elder/barangay captain or city councilor. we need better politicians in every strata of government.

  10. Juwan_D on November 24th, 2008 6:52 pm

    The biggest frustration…THE VOTERS…THE FILIPINO PEOPLE!!!

  11. Patricio Mangubat on November 24th, 2008 9:00 pm

    i always hear parallelisms about what happened to macoy and what would happen to gloria. the reason why macoy still animates the minds of a few is that he was really a very good president at the onset. greed just overcame him and he did the unthinkable. he also built a cult around himself.

    gloria does’nt enjoy a macoy.in fact, she’s just a poster girl. the real power lies behind gloria, those who back her.

    hi cocoy,

    you always say that those who want change, they better run for office. that’s good. but unless the system remains the same, you cannot really elect good people in office. palusot na lang palagi yan ng mga gustong manatili sa poder ang mga corrupt. masyadong oft-repeated line na yan ng mga counter-revolutionaries.

    it’s actually best for good and well-meaning people to take part in policy-making instead of being the elected officials themselves.

  12. Patricio Mangubat on November 24th, 2008 9:02 pm

    juwan,

    bakit mo sinisisi ang Filipino VOters? Kasalanan ba nilang si Gloria ang nakapwesto? Hindi! Tandaan mong nandaya si Gloria, at inamin niya mismo yan sa Hello Garci tapes. Nagsalita ang taumbayan pero nilapastangan at ninakaw ni Gloria ang boses nila!

    Bakit takot kayong sabihin ang totoo–na ang dapat sisihin dito ang mga magnanakaw ng kaban ng bayan, ang mga grafters at ang mga umaabuso sa kapangyarihan! Bakit ninyo sisisihin ang taumbayan?

  13. Juwan_D on November 24th, 2008 9:32 pm

    Patricio Mangubat

    Di ako makikipagtalo sayo…at di ako maka GMA o administration at di ako maka opposition…ang totoo DI AKO MAKAPOLITIKO!!!!!

    Base sa pananalita mo…si GMA lang ang mandarayang politiko hahahaha let me guess…yung mga gusto mong politiko ay hindi mandaraya at hindi kurakot at magnanakaw…tama?????? hehehehe

    Tanong para sayo:

    1. SInong politiko ang hindi nandaya?
    2. Sino ang naglukluk o bomoto sa mga magnanakaw at mandarayang politiko?
    3. Ikaw patricio, sino ang binoto mo? nakakasiguro ka bang hindi kurakot yung binoto mo?
    4. Sino ang iboboto mo sa 2010? nakakasiguro ka bang hindi kurakot ang iboboto mo?
    5. Sinong politiko ang alam mo na hindi kurakot?

  14. jcc on November 24th, 2008 9:44 pm

    patricio,

    i agree with “deeper” bench argument. if the people are being given the choice among, erap, noli, villar, honasan, jinggoy, trillanes, lacson, escudero, jdv at ibapa.. you are talking of shallow bench of second stringers.

    other than “deeper bench” we should reform the electoral process. it is easier said than done though. right now, you have JMelo, a Kapampangan in the agency.

    iyong pandaraya ni GMA sirang plaka na iyan… and from my standpoint, she is better than FPJr.

    if GMA has her backers to get her into power, in FPJr., he would be dancing under his puffetters in the likes of Angara and Tito Sotto. You will not be able to address corruptions and poverty in both governance, but in FPJr., you could be treated for an entertainment.

    But entertainment is the least of our needs. We need to survive.

  15. joma on November 24th, 2008 10:38 pm

    there has to be a deeper bench. - by cocoy

    If this is an important criteria, then we are fucked!

  16. cocoy on November 25th, 2008 4:16 pm

    pat,

    but unless the system remains the same, you cannot really elect good people in office. palusot na lang palagi yan ng mga gustong manatili sa poder ang mga corrupt. masyadong oft-repeated line na yan ng mga counter-revolutionaries.

    Human kind has mastered warfare. Especially the Americans with all their advanced smart bombs and precision guided weapons. And they’re not stopping with the development of energy-based weapons that we see in science fiction but would soon be part of the battle field. One of the fundamental insights America has learned is that fighting war— very easy. What happens after that is the difficult.

    I always hear a call for a revolution. The hesitation is simply called EDSA 1 and EDSA 2. Fighting is easy, nation building is much more difficult.

    Yet a revolution can happen quietly, creeping until one day people would notice things are different. You say the system is imperfect— why would those in charge today, change the system that has kept them in power? they’ll never do it. If we expect *those* people to do so— we’ll be waiting forever.

    How can we the people change it? What your kind vision to be real? We can. Through elections. Vote people in. I know it isn’t easy. people have actually tried it. remember, roco’s party— none of those people won.

    as for people doing policy— sure, that’s excellent. we need that. i think that is very important. more so than electing people into power. Same goes for people running their own businesses. Same for ordinary people who form lines when riding a jeep, a bus or MRT. It isn’t just our government that’s flawed. We the people are culprits too.

    that said:

    joma,

    there has to be a deeper bench. - by cocoy
    If this is an important criteria, then we are fucked!

    it isn’t just government this, or government that. ordinary people can do their part simply by being good people in their own lives.

    yes we need a deeper bench. it has to start at the local level

  17. cocoy on November 25th, 2008 4:29 pm

    jcc,

    other than “deeper bench” we should reform the electoral process. it is easier said than done though. right now, you have JMelo, a Kapampangan in the agency.

    yes, we need electoral reform too. among other things.

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