75. Q & A of 2

15 Aug 2020

Ms Sun Xueling
Blk 308B Punggol Walk
#01-364
Waterway Terraces 1
Singapore 822308

Dear Ms Sun,

Has The Situation Changed After GE 2020?

1. The total number of votes casted during the General Election of 10 Jul 2020 showed a swing against the incumbent although a supermajority of seats (83 out of 93) were retained, what do you make of it? The First Assistant Secretary-General of the PAP (People’s Action Party) said “What would investors and other countries think?" if 4 GRC (Group Representation Constituency) and 2 SMC (Single Member Constituency) that the WP (Workers’ Party) was contesting were lost. In contrast, the WP said the risk of an opposition wipeout was real and they needed physical presence on the ground to grow the party.

The atmosphere created by the various opposition parties were conducive for the swing of votes and
I felt a sense of relief when it was announced that the WP won a new GRC.

The WP retained their old constituencies of 1 GRC and 1 SMC for a total of 10 seats won. The losing candidates from the PSP (Progress Singapore Party) who secured the highest percentage votes in the constituency of West Coast GRC accepted 2 NCMP (Non-Constituency Member of Parliament) seats.

The law provides NCMP seats in Parliament if the number of elected opposition candidates falls short of the minimum number of 12 seats. NCMPs have the same voting rights as elected MPs.

2. Why do you think the citizenry continues to give the incumbent a big share of the votes? Are Singaporeans weaned? Most citizens have benefited from the government one way or another, but airing issues as the opposition did give citizens a chance to think about how they wanted to vote. The results showed the more credible a party from the opposition is, the more a person from the party is able to gather votes.

I think there is an undercurrent that the government allows people who are narrow-minded and blind by privilege. Where they give favour to family members, relatives and friends out of self interest, we have the beginning of corruption. Selflessness is the opposite of self interest.

The threat of Covid-19 did not cause a flight to safety as feared. No physical rally, face masks, safe-distancing and other precautions were taken during the election.

The political broadcasts, online rallies and social media were carried out under POFMA (Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act). The new legislation empowered ministers to order amendment of online posts that could harm public interest. However, during the election the power was handed over to civil servants who issued a number of correction notices.

The subject of fake news, which is the new legislation, has been in the news frequently. I have written to the Select Committee during the feedback phase as it relates to my case in Select Committee (27).

3. How bad is the Covid-19 crisis? What will it take? The first cluster was reported in Wuhan, China, on Dec 2019 and has since spread across the world.

A number of vaccines are undergoing trials and countries are in stages of containment.

The Singapore government has begun further easing of restrictions on Aug 2020. A total of $93 billion of which $52 billion is from the country's reserves has been allocated to revive the economy as of Feb 2020.

We begin to appreciate the people who provide essential services, frontline workers and jobs provided by small and medium enterprises.

Governments will have to provide for those affected.

4. When all the election results were out and the PAP announced that the leader of WP will be named Leader of the Opposition, what does it mean? In countries with similar systems of government, the Leader of Opposition draws a salary on top of an MP allowance. The party is provided with staff support and resources and it forms a shadow government to track and take over should the government resign.

It also means citizens may choose between parties instead of second-guessing between candidates. Quality new candidates fielded will be as good as established candidates in contesting constituencies.

5. Has anything changed since your last post Civic Responsibility (72) on 19 Mar 2020? Are you biased against the government? My case is based on evidence. There may be a change in attitude, but the wrongdoings committed were not corrected. It is not for want of trying.

6. Why bring up your problem time and again when it is being ignored? It is a matter of principle. The facts of the case as published in my blog and sent to MPs are sufficient for one to argue for or against. That such a discussion has not taken place showed that the problem has been kept covered. For example, Q & A (75) and Rules, Character and Morals (72) were letters handed to MPs. The two posts amongst others should have a reply.

7. You mentioned in Q & A (75) that officers caused you all sorts of trouble, did they stop? A number of examples this year and I pursued it through emails. One acknowledged trouble caused, one caused delay through several rounds of emails, one returned deductions from my bank account after many rounds of emails and one was on rebate not given after many rounds of emails even when it was substantiated with documents. These were from a bank, a trade union organisation, a transport company and an electricity retailer respectively. All were attempts to make trouble.

Of the electricity retailer, I submitted a complaint to EMA (Energy Market Authority). Although the rebate was set out in two documents and I pointed out the mistake made, the EMA officer did not address the issue.

8. Of an indirect reference, are you being treated as a second class citizen? Sometimes we may accept inequality because of some benefit. At other times, we accept inequality out of need. Sometimes there is unfairness because of group or self interest. At other times, the law or policy is stacked against the weak. My situation is unfair because of the self interest of a group of people in government.

9. What do you wish to achieve this time around? The responsibility is with the MPs. The MP in my constituency could count on state apparatus to hold the case down or she could resolve it once and for all. It could be that she is unable to resolve the problem that an opposition MP would not be constrained to do so. It could also be that the opposition do not have sufficient numbers or power to bring it up for resolution. It could be that officials are powerful and could not be held accountable at this time.

10. Will there come a time? It could happen suddenly because of another similar incident. It could be after a by-election or another general election when there is a change of candidate or party. It could be long after one is dead. It could be never.

11. The PM said at the online Fullerton Rally that Singaporeans should not undermine a system that has served them well, is all well? It did in the past, but for those who knew about my case the system cannot now be trusted unless the case is seen to have been resolved.

12. Rules of prudence and National Day Speeches, what are they and what is the relevance? The PM issues rules of prudence to MPs after a general election and he gives a speech to the nation each year after the national day parade.

Aristotle shows that prudence is the ability to find the truth in practical matters about things that are good and bad for human beings. They must figure out what to do by the strength of their reason. This is a vast area than the guidance provided by the law.

The national day speech is a rally, outlines issues of the years past and the years ahead and shows what the people are capable of. This year’s speech will be held in Parliament instead of an auditorium because of Covid-19. The opening of the 14th Parliament with the traditional President’s speech will be followed at a later date by a debate and the PM’s speech.

PM said that it will be a major speech and there are legislations to be passed urgently. Will the PM make changes to encourage diverse views and flow of ideas?

Freedom of speech is part of being a nation because it allows the government to know how its policies affect the people so that problems may be redressed. The very restricted freedom of speech and the circumstances of my case led the government to suppress the problem over three cycles of general election. Isn’t this how the case has been left unresolved?

Jurisprudence is both law and prudence. Shouldn’t the rule of law and the rule of prudence be applied to the case?

13. What do you hope for? The MP should brief and consult the PM of the problem and give a reply.

This letter is Q & A of 2 (75). In the letter I refer to Q & A (75), Rules, Character & Morals (72), Civic Responsibility (72) and Select Committee (27). All are in my blog.
Could you give a reply?

Yours Sincerely,
hh

cc
Mr Lee Hsien Loong
Mr Heng Swee Keat
Mr Teo Chee Hean

Observation

Has The Situation Changed After GE 2020?

1. The total number of votes casted during the General Election of 10 Jul 2020 showed a swing against the incumbent although a supermajority of seats (83 out of 93) were retained, what do you make of it?

2. Why do you think the citizenry continues to give the incumbent a big share of the votes? Are Singaporeans weaned?

3. How bad is the Covid-19 crisis? What will it take?

4. When all the election results were out and the PAP announced that the leader of WP will be named Leader of the Opposition, what does it mean?

5. Has anything changed since your last post Civic Responsibility (72) on 19 Mar 2020? Are you biased against the government?

6. Why bring up your problem time and again when it is being ignored?

7. You mentioned in Q & A (75) that officers caused you all sorts of trouble, did they stop?

8. Of an indirect reference, are you being treated as a second class citizen?

9. What do you wish to achieve this time around?

10. Will there come a time?

11. The PM said at the online Fullerton Rally that Singaporeans should not undermine a system that has served them well, is all well?

12. Rules of prudence and National Day Speeches, what are they and what is the relevance?

13. What do you hope for?

75. Q & A

24 Aug 18

Mr Teo Chee Hean
Blk 738 Pasir Ris Drive 10
#01-21
Singapore 510738

Dear Sir,

Is There Going To Be A Resolution?

1. What do you want done? Prevent the neighbour from continuing to work in HDB flat, allow the refund to CPF Ordinary Account from date of sale of flat, correct the mistakes made in CPF Life and remind people who are aware of the problem that all rectification is made where possible.

2. Is there a problem? Where is the proof? The neighbour should be investigated, they caused noise through the working of a trade in HDB flat. There are documents that refund to CPF Accounts are required and documents that show mistakes were made in CPF Life. These were the reasons why officers would not address the various issues raised.

3. You said the problem began in 1998, did you bring it up? I wrote to HDB Branch Office and the occupier was evicted, but the problem was only part resolved. I met MPs from 2008 onwards when the noise restarted in 2007, started a blog in 2009 and later wrote to various government departments.

4. How did noise from the neighbour to do with your CPF Accounts and CPF Life? The neighbour was able to continue with their work in HDB flat because of an arrangement with officers. It was my continuing complaint that let officers with connection to cause all sorts of trouble.

5. What’s with the officers? A relationship with the neighbour over a long period of time caused the officers to protect themselves at a cost of protecting the neighbour. I was sure of a forced-entry at the neighbour’s flat but they managed to turn against me by preventing further investigation of the neighbour’s flat and my flat through the stationing of people in the flat across the neighbour.

6. Couldn’t MPs help? There isn’t always a clear line between what is administration and what is execution between government departments and MPs. MPs in Parliament make laws, which are executory in nature. But government departments also give advice, which are political in nature, that they then execute. It is a gray area that government departments sometimes do not carry out or delay instruction from MP.

For example, the Minister in charge of Civil Service and Head of Civil Service were reported to have said about “complex issues no longer fell within neat domain” and “issues that do not fall neatly into any one agency's work” respectively. It is likely they were referring to my problem because the police did not carry out a full investigation when informed of the people in the flat across the neighbour.

7. What do you think is the underlying problem? Power dominates and represses when not used in the public interest.

8. Is there nothing you could do? I did what I can. I don’t think it is practical to make the case an issue in an election or win the case against the government in court.

9. What did you do? Because mainstream and social media did not report the complaint, I informed people, civil societies and news agencies of my blog through emails.

10. Who and which civil societies and news agencies? There were some, but if you were to give me the address of credible persons and entities I would email them.

11. Was it to any effect? Except for indirect references, it has not affected the case in any way.

12. Your case is neither complex nor difficult to understand, isn’t it a simple case of noise from the neighbour? Why do you think the case remains unresolved over a long period of time? I agree, but because it involves officers the problem is made inaccessible. We are back to the underlying problem of power or the struggle for power.

13. What could be done? Openness, accountability, taking unpopular measure. Doing, not just saying. Leading change.

14. What do you think is important? Fair mindedness.

15. I may be in a salaried position, fair mindedness may not be to my advantage? Generally a situation is made better when it is for the common good or you serve the public interest. You are not selfish. A note: a sortition system minimises corruption.

16. What is sortition? Random and stratified sampling techniques to choose persons who deliberate and evaluate the measure in question. The system is practised in places around the world.

17. What is common good or public interest? What in your case is in the public interest? Causing damage to thing or causing harm to person, whether physically or psychologically, is against common good or public interest. In my case allowing a trade in housing flat and deliberately causing trouble just before and after I sold my flat were clearly against rules and regulations. These were crimes and there was a victim. If nothing is done, these will affect others in similar circumstances. It is therefore in the public interest to stop and prevent such from happening.

18. Do you think your problem is going to be resolved? I think if I insist on an investigation by Parliament, the case may be held in suspension because of the negative publicity it will generate. If government departments are asked to resolve it, they may not address the various issues just as they had not addressed the issues before unless there is a complete change of personnel.

19. Will you continue to attend Meet-the-People Session conducted by MP? Yes, if there is a chance the complaint will be addressed. There is no other course of action. It is the job of MP to resolve the issue.

20. Why did you not attend Meet-the-People Session conducted by opposition party? I could bring them trouble because they do not have strength in numbers. Any MP could bring up the issue in Parliament because it can be generalised. The issue is quite clear.

21. You are referring to the representation of MPs? Yes, MPs have a certain degree of responsibility to speak and act in our names.

22. Is there something lacking? In the case, there are two. The rule of law and the meaning of being human.

The Q & A are the various issues of the case.

How is the case going to be resolved?

Yours Sincerely,
hh

Observation

Before handing over the letter Q & A (75) at Meet-the-People Session, I gave Mr Teo two reasons why there should be an investigation by Parliament:

1) How many cases of working a trade in HDB flat that officers know of where no action is taken? Unless there is a thorough investigation of the case, which is possible with the 7 sets of documents in Salient Points (40) that was submitted, we will never know the full extent of the problem. Most of us live in HDB flats and there were frequent complaints of noise.

An officer, who visited me, asked what I thought the neighbour upstairs was doing and I said fashion accessories or jewellery. He agreed. Also refer to the first two paragraphs of Discovery (9), Singapore Mint was reported to say the jewellery market was lucrative and was considering local distributors to represent it and the experience of noise from a participant on BlogTV.

2) Is there any legal procedure that prevents heads of department from taking action when their officers commit wrongdoing? If so, why is it so? There are many such examples in Salient Points (40). For an example, the police did not conduct a full investigation of the neighbour and the people in the flat across the neighbour when informed. Also, there was no reply to the letter Mr Teo wrote to the police after Inquiry (27). Similarly Bedok Police Division did not reply when the case was referred to them a second time in Standpoint (34) Item 16.

69. Help

Two items, the CUTS filed in the Prime Minister Office at www.wp.sg dated 7 Mar 12 and the owner's letter to civicadvocator.net dated 11 May 09:
 
1. During his Presidential campaign last year, President Tony Tan noted that the ombudsman was an institution that ought to be looked into. The office of the ombudsman was first proposed to the Government by the 1966 Wee Chong Jin’s Constitutional Commission, and in 1994, then backbencher and current Law Minister K Shanmugam also raised it in Parliament. The role of an ombudsman is to investigate complaints about the unfair administrative decisions or actions of a public agency, including delay, rudeness, negligence, arbitrariness, oppressive behaviour or unlawfulness.
 
An ombudsman does not have the power to make decisions that are binding on the government. Rather, the ombudsman makes recommendations for change as supported by a thorough investigation of the complaint. A crucial element of the ombudsman is its independence from the executive or administrative branch of government. There are many variations of the ombudsman office around the world. Singapore can and should find a variation that suits local needs and conditions. An ombudsman with a well-defined role and clear mechanism for action can be beneficial for Singapore.
 
Sir, Singaporeans today are well educated, well travelled and well informed. This invariably leads to higher citizenry expectations when it comes to political and corporate governance. Higher expectations are not necessarily negative developments for they signify growing interest in local politics and the national agenda.
 
The establishment of an ombudsman will address higher citizenry expectations in two ways. First, it will signify the Singapore Government’s acknowledgement and respect of a maturing Singapore polity’s desire for a variety of institutions that can reflect the concerns of the ordinary citizen. This will serve to build trust between society and State. Secondly, it will develop local civil society by empowering institutions. While many would agree that capable and honest leaders are vital for good governance, the sign of a mature and self-sustaining society are decentralised and independent institutions.
 
The establishment of an ombudsman would also be in keeping with the Prime Minister’s vision for an open and inclusive society and, most certainly, in tandem with Budget 2012 which has also been characterised as an inclusive one.
 
An ombudsman is not designed to serve as a check on the Government. That is the opposition’s role. An ombudsman should not use its office or mission to disrupt the work of the Civil Service. It should not mischievously aim to embarrass Government agencies and offices or erode public confidence in the Civil Service. The need for an ombudsman, Sir, is not based on any inadequacies of the Singapore Government, but rather on the fact that Singaporeans and Singapore society have evolved. Singaporeans are now more politically mature. With maturity comes the need for empowerment. Empowerment is necessary for a sense of ownership to develop. An ombudsman would be a step in this direction.
 
(Pritam would like to thank a Singaporean blogger and expert for granting permission to use his analysis in the filing of this cut.)
 
Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2012 at 12:37 am
 
2. Dear hh 

See http://civicadvocator.net/category/forem

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 8:26 AM, TKL Petition Volunteers <tkl100kpetition@gmail.com> wrote:
 
Dear Mr hh 

We could publish your letter on our site.
Besides that, how else could we help you?

Civic Advocator 

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 6:24 AM, hh <blank> wrote:
 
Dear Sir,
 
              I hope you could publish my complaint. I will point out what happened between HDB, a neighbour and myself.
 
2.    Soon after I handed my letter of complaint to an interviewer at MPS (Meet-the-People Session), I noticed people shifting into the flat across the neighbour. Four weeks later there was a force-entry at the neighbour's flat. A few days later the neighbour approached me to ask that I compromised. Thinking back, it was his concession to me since by then he knew I could not do much to stop him.
 
3.    The neighbour kept at their works even as I continued to write and meet MPs at MPS. On my behalf they wrote to HDB, Town Council and Police. One curious fact was HBO (Head, Pasir Ris HDB Branch Office) replied to all MP's letters to HDB except for one from the Town Council when it was indicated to him in the cc that the letter and an attachment from the Minister-in-Charge of Civil Service was for his information only. In reply to the MPs' letters, HBO stated there was no excessive noise and I may obtain a court injunction or seek assistance from other government agencies. There were five such letters, each without much variation with cc to MP.
 
4.    I know all along the neighbour is carrying on a trade of some kind. Different types of noise are heard throughout each day. I know officers at the Branch Office and some community centre members at MPS cannot be relied on, but I had some help from insiders and MPs. For example someone sent a bcc from HBO to the Chairman (Residents' Committee) in a letter HBO had replied earlier. In the bcc he wrote no noise was detected during their house visit and asked the Chairman to explain good neighbourliness to me.
 
5.    The bcc tells me the house referred to the-flat-across-the-neighbour. It mentioned the date of their visit and the Chairman would be meeting the Treasurer before a visit to me later. I noted they visited me the same morning after HBO and Chairman had their house visit and the incessant knocking that morning before the Chairman and Treasurer's visit was deliberate. I also suspect that to maintain noise down to acceptable level, there may be a device that detects and records noise in the-flat-across-the-neighbour.
 
6.    I think a deal was struck with the neighbour after the force-entry. They could have been evicted. In fact an occupier was evicted from the flat many years earlier followed by a transfer of the flat from the first owner to the neighbour, and the neighbour was stopped by an insider before the current complaint. I had written first to HBO and later to MPs about it.
 
7.    Since the noise has not stop, I would be forced to leave. The solution is for the issue to be made known. 
 
Regards,
hh         

Note: Civicadvocator.net was closed down sometime later.

Observation The post at civicadvocator.net on 11 May 09 was followed two weeks later by DPM Teo Chee Hean saying that the government was on the lookout for "bold and visionary" leaders and people who could adapt to changing environments. On 30 Mar 10 he said public officers would be encouraged to keep to the logical rather than ideological path and stayed pragmatic in making polices. And on 13 May 11 after the General Election he said politicians were forced to admit they need to connect to the people, and Public Service was forced to re-look at the way in which it formulated policies with respect to citizens. 
 
The posting of Committee (27) on 15 Oct 11 may have generated a debate in Parliament that led the Worker's Party's General-Secretary to say his party would act as a voice for the people in Parliament on 21 Oct 11. His remark is at Overview (28).
 
The CUTS at the Worker's Party's website dated 7 Mar 12 was posted after Dissent (30) on 11 Feb 12.
 
The owner started his blog on Aug 09 and noise subsided some time after Standpoint (34) in Aug 12. It was the only way to resolve his problem.

66. Corruption

Corruption, Global Security, and World Order  Robert I. Rotberg, Editor
 
a) Defining corruption is notoriously difficult to do. Nevertheless, definitions of governance issues matter. Society's definitions or operative understandings of corruption help to identify what it believes to be the reasons for corruption's existence, and predetermines what it believes to be the effective and critical elements for corruption's cure.
 
Understandings of corruption that are advanced by academic theorists capture important pieces of the idea of corruption. Public corruption generally involves, in the predominant understandings, the violation of law, the breach of prescribed duties, the subversion of the public interest, and the violation of other broad normative standards. Corruption may also involve--in a more particularized sense--betrayal, secrecy, inequality, and private rent-seeking by public actors. However, as useful as these understandings are, something is missing. All such understandings fail to capture what is the deeply emotive quality and loathsomeness of corruption's core. Corruption, in its popular conception, is more than the breaking of rules or even self-seeking by public actors to the detriment of others. It is an expressly moral notion that challenges belief in a shared moral fabric. It expresses the transgression of some deeply held and asserted universal norm.
 
When one attempts to understand the phenomenon of corruption, and the public response to it, the power of this popular conception must be recognized. It must be recognized because it is a critical part of public attitudes toward corruption, and because it reminds theorists and practitioners that corruption often has deeper moral foundations. This view tells us that until we come to grips with the moral dimensions of this problem, our prescriptions for attacking this phenomenon will miss the essence of what popular attitudes may correctly recognize as the underlying problem, and the composition of the distinctly "corrupt" core.
 
b) Rules and prevention require an honest leadership that successfully contains corruption among employees and bureaucrats. But fostering integrity among the leadership is difficult. Governments (as well as company boards) must limit self-seeking among their own ranks. Strong competition for leadership positions, be it general elections for public offices or tournaments for economic leadership positions, is commonly seen to be insufficient to prevent malfeasance. Rather, press freedom and a high level of transparency contribute to holding senior officers accountable. This system provides a clear motivation for bottom-up approaches to anti-corruption.
 
The importance of bottom-up approaches is also documented at the cross-country level. Press freedom is clearly a bottom-up approach to improve accountability in the public sector and ultimately to reduce corruption. While causality is trickier to ascertain, there is substantial evidence that countries with high levels of press freedom have lower levels of perceived corruption. These correlations are robust even when controlled for standard influential variables, for example income per head.
 
However, bottom-up approaches are not controlled as well by superiors as are top-down approaches. At times, bottom-up approaches may conflict with anti-corruption strategies that are chosen by business and political leaders. Revelations of misconduct may come at an abysmal time. Such strategies may not complement the other overall goals of an organization; these strategies may even endanger the leadership itself. But the purpose of bottom-up approaches is precisely that such approaches credibly commit a whole organization to anti-corruption efforts. Attempts fully to control anti-corruption are similar to an autocratic regime that attempts to improve its international reputation by controlling the state's media, an approach that is not widely approved.
 
Conflicts between top-down and bottom-up are standard in managerial science. These conflicts have also been well recognized in business ethics. But this topic has been only slightly explored for anti-corruption. Evidence from experimental investigations for labor markets reveals that a good deal of employee behavior is based on intrinsic motivation, fairness, and reciprocity. Employers may thus offer wage premiums so as to provide incentives for good performance even if this performance cannot be observed. In addition, employers may disregard applicants who are willing to work for low wages. Most interesting, employers may blindly trust that their employers are performing well. This type of trust often causes increased efforts among employees. To the contrary, increased monitoring often creates a certain level of distrust that weakens the intrinsic motivation of employees and limits their willingness to act with integrity.
 
We are short of a theory that reveals how to best balance top-down and bottom-up approaches. But a top-down approach can avoid some of the aforementioned repercussions by better integrating the bottom-up endeavors.

Observation The owner uncovers a long-standing affair between the officers and neighbour that allows the neighbour to work in their flat.
 
A team was installed in the-flat-across-the-neighbour shortly after the owner's first Meet-the-People Session. They kept an eye on the owner and monitored the activities of the neighbour. The intent was to cover up past dealing by forcing the owner to sell his flat.
 
It was the support of insiders that enabled the owner to point out wrongdoing. Corruption, Global Security, and World Order would refer to the insiders as bottom-up approach.
 
Pervasive Case (5), Question (15) and Reason (22) provide the details.

65. Moral Hazard

The Corruption Conundrum  V. Raghunathan
 
Corruption is universally disapproved of, and yet universally practised.
 
 At one extreme, in India, it would seem that we are beginning to take corruption in our stride. We no longer squirm at being ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world. We have come to accept corruption as our national character and hence we do not view it as serious and alarming social malaise, as is evident from the popular support enjoyed by some of our scamsters in public life. In fact so blase are the officials in our land registration offices about corruption that--secure in their knowledge that they will neither be caught nor will there be any serious consequences that will visit them even if caught--they routinely designate one of the clerks as the bribe-collector.
 
So then, what can we as individuals do to break the paradox of corruption?
 
 To find an answer, let ask ourselves why and how the Indian Institutes of Management, Indian Institutes of Technology and a few other establishments of excellence have remained 100 per cent corruption-free, despite being government institutions? These institutions are corruption-free in the sense that the probability of a student gaining admission by means other than the admission criteria laid down is zero. The systems and processes of admissions are such that no one individual or even a clique of powerful individuals can influence the process of selection of the students--not that undue pressure is not applied from the highest offices in the land. Fortunately, even a pliant head of institution cannot comply for the simple reason that he is powerless. So when he says, 'Sorry, I cannot do anything to ensure the admission of your ward,' he is not just taking a moral posture. He is telling the truth. Of course when you belong to such an institution, the moral posturing comes automatically. Everybody believes in fairness. Everyone knows that your statement of inability to influence is backed by the system. And that helps enormously.
 
We have seen glimpses of what a systemic initiative can do to curb corruption in the Right to Information Act. The right to information by itself does not take away anything from the decision makers and yet it enforces a degree of transparency, and hence observability, which in turn curbs corruption.
 
The No-Nonsense Guide to Legal Issues in Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing  Charles Oppenheim
 
Freedom of Information A basic purpose of FoI legislation is to reduce the public's distrust of government. It improves democracy by giving the public greater access to the workings of government, and a better-informed electorate presumably ensures better government. It reduces the need for whistle-blowing and leaks, and reduces the chances that governments and government-related bodies make expensive mistakes or corrupt decisions.

Observation Officers did not deny the going-on. Having set the owner up, they kept referring him to Community Mediation Centre. Under normal circumstances, HDB would have came to a quick conclusion because the owner pointed to events that showed officers colluded with the neighbour and insiders assisted the owner. But high officials would not take up the case.
 
For more than five years the neighbour continued to work in their flat even as the owner complained. Before, it was the first owner who allowed an occupier to work in the flat and he was evicted. Following the transfer of the flat from the first owner to the neighbour, they continued with their work. The officers intended cover-up because they facilitated the transfer after the eviction. High officials kept their silent because they wanted to avoid the consequences. 
 
A extensive network of contacts in the administration enables the neighbour to carry on a trade in their flat. Even as the Ministers instituted policy changes because of publicity in the case, the administration did not correct the problem. This is the moral hazard.
 
Noise may be down and less frequent after Standpoint (34), but the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour are still around to protect the neighbour.
 
Civics (10) and Public (11) show the extent of the problem. 

61. Rights

How To Run The World  Parag Khanna
 
"Accountability is the DNA of civilized societies"  Simon Zadek, founder, AccountAbility
 
This is what AccountAbility does. A British nonprofit founded in 1996, AccountAbility digs deep into its clients' culture to embed sustainable practices in a manner invulnerable to market whims and local conditions. Its experts go on-site with leaders and staff, mentoring from top to bottom, pushing tangible change from within. By working with the leadership of some of the largest companies, including Nike and Nissan, it kicks off a process of strategic sustainability that ripples through massive supply chains.
 
But AccountAbility is more than a corporate watchdog. Its Global Accountability Report evaluates UN agencies, development banks, and NGOs as well--all of whom have plenty of room to improve on measures such as whether their members control their budgets and how consultative they are with other stakeholders. Democracy cannot solve these problems, but collaborative governance can. This means leveraging private investment to build transport infrastructure and make water management more efficient, but in the context of partnerships in which business and government recognize mutual obligations and monitor each other.
 
For this reason, the notion of "good governance" is rapidly supplanting democracy as a global mantra. Leaders worldwide face growing pressure to provide economic freedoms, efficient services, and political transparency--but not necessarily democracy. In fact, good governance implies protecting and delivering on rights more than democracy alone does. China's Communist Party has a massively superior capacity to care for its citizens than India's Congress Party, but technology has enabled more than two million Indians to file electronic claims for rights to public information. In the Obama administration, the same bureaus and offices that used to issue rhetorical demarches about democracy are now focused on supporting enterprise funds that create jobs, establish public-private micro-credit programs through local banks, and use social networking technology to train journalists and encourage youth activism. This is the language of good governance and a better pathway to build democracy.

Observation Why was the owner's case ignored? The government could clarify what went on within the system.
 
The owner makes his complaint in Plea (7), Record (8) and Behaviour (23).
 
Posts asking the government to step in are under Governance in Category (80).

60. Open Source

Next Generation Democracy  Jared Duval
 
Open government is also not a new idea. The conviction that transparency is a check on the power of governments is a crucial element of modern democracies. When it was forbidden to provide transcriptions or reports of debates in the British Parliament, Samuel Johnson, among others, was hired by the Gentleman's Magazine to imaginatively re-create the debates as if they'd happened in some other, fictional kingdom. Freedom of the press is enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Napoleon reportedly said, "I fear the newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets."
 
Social-change organizing, more effective government decision-making, and public problem-solving seem to me a better match for the idealism that originally inspired the rise of these movements. After all, Wikipedia is a site that dreams of a "world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge." Certainly, we will have squandered the promise and potential of the open-source and wiki movements from which that sentiment arises if we use the tools that come from them mainly as just one more way to hawk product.
 
Indeed, the indisputably public goods that are our laws and public policies are probably the last things that could ever be considered proprietary. So it makes sense that the barriers to collaborative problem solving in these areas might be far lower--and the results could be far more fruitful--than in the world of software, where the question of public versus private ownership is more contested. Even some nominally private efforts, like WebMD, the one-stop online site for whatever medical information one could want, are using a kind of wiki approach to create real-world public benefit.
 
Thus far, however, the only prominent example of the president engaging the public has been his Open for Questions "town hall meeting." Hearing promises that Obama would answer whatever questions Americans deemed most important, ninety-two thousand people logged on to the White House Web site to suggest a question and/or cast a vote on what issues the president should address.
 
The result was an embarrassment. As Politico reported,

The top four questions under the heading of "Financial security" concerned marijuana; on the budget, people voted up questions about marijuana to positions 1-4; marijuana was in the first and third positions under "jobs"; people boosted a plug for legalizing marijuana to No.2 under "health care reform." And questions about decriminalizing pot occupied spots 1 and 2 under "green jobs and energy."

While many pundits saw this as a cautionary tale of what happens when you allow more direct forms of democratic participation, the result actually vindicated serious thinkers who have tackled the issue in depth, including The Wisdom of Crowds author James Surowiecki. In that book, Surowiecki outlines three conditions that must be met in order for the quality of the collective judgment of many to exceed that of an expert few.
 
First, Surowiecki writes, the group must represent a broad diversity in its thinking. Second, each participant should have a degree of independence from other group members. Neither of these conditions was truly present in the Open for Questions experiment, even if the third--the ability to aggregate "local" opinions for all to see--was.

Observation OSC (Our Singapore Conversation) could be open source government. The owner's case could be discussed under the topics meritocracy, morality or happiness. It could focus on what is to be done, otherwise the case could be refuted. 
 
Since Jun '07 when the problem started, there is official silence. There is, however, general support from viewers and indirect references in the media after he started blogging.
 
Public Service (48), Open Access (49) and Openness (50) are on democratic renewal, the commons and ethical judgment respectively.
 
Postings after Standpoint (34), which were held back because noise from the neighbour went down, were posted after the owner sold his flat. If the postings strike a chord, please give your comment.

59. Anonymity

On The Condition Of Anonymity  Matt Carlson
 
For these reasons, turning to contingency, transparency, and aggressiveness as guiding principles not only for unnamed sourcing practices but for news practice in general offers a way to break from the patterns that have hampered journalists' efforts to achieve the cultural authority they so desire. Most vitally, these principles privilege the needs of the public over the needs of journalists to erect professional boundaries distancing them from the rest of society. Each of the three principles--contingency, transparency, and aggressiveness--requires its own explanation, but it must be stressed that none of them is sufficient in and of itself.
 
Contingency
 
This proposal did not specify the knotty question of where the line should be drawn between appropriate and inappropriate anonymity, but it did seek to shift the balance of power away from the source and closer to the journalists. Similarly, criticizing the prewar coverage, Russ Baker insisted journalists should enforce contingencies to stop sources from using anonymity to avoid accountability: "Sources should not be allowed to remain unnamed when the information they are imparting serves to directly advance their own and their employers' objectives." Baker attempted to separate out legitimate uses of anonymity from its undesirable application as a cover for officials. Both Garfield and Baker usefully sought ways to activate contingency in a meaningful way that quelled critics' complaints by empowering journalists. Reporters would gain standing vis-a-vis their sources by dictating when and on what grounds confidentiality can be broken--heretofore a right solely possessed by sources. In addition, instilling the fear of public disclosure would reduce the ability of sources to take advantage of their anonymity in purely self-serving ways.
 
Transparency
 
Despite room for abuse, transparency deserves greater appreciation and application, particularly in the face of news controversies. Journalism cannot count on its reporting to be treated as factual purely based on the circular assertion that the news, because it is news, is factual. The cultural ground has shifted too much for this authoritative strategy to function effectively. Instead, journalism needs to embrace a new openness; if it does not reveal names, it still should open up formally hidden practices, reveal uncertainties, and explain contradictions. But transparency is not, on its own, a normative guidepost for unnamed sources or for journalism more broadly. More holes need to be filled, and for that, we turn to aggressiveness.
 
Aggressiveness
 
One way forward is to promote aggressiveness as a key journalistic principle. This is not to lionize aggressiveness for its own sake, but to construct an ideal of aggressiveness as a quality of a journalism that works on behalf of the public. The term is meant to connote the favoring of activity over passivity, public disclosure over private access, and reportorial persistence over acceptance. As a normative basis for journalistic authority, aggressiveness provides a guiding principle for journalism's continued vigilance of government and other social institutions. It eschews the debate over objectivity by supplanting the fear of political slant with an acknowledged popular grounding. In this way, aggressiveness does not require or condemn partisan journalism; rather, it sets the goal at making public institutions accountable and transparent.
 
Aggressiveness requires audiences to be critical as well. In endowing journalism with a mandate to act aggressively on behalf of a public lacking the ability and access to know the activities of our public institutions, vigilance remains a necessary condition. Michael Schudson notes: "Everyone in a democracy is a certified media critic, which is as it should be." While journalists claimed to be constrained by the monitorial environment in which they work, vigilance remains too important to leave journalism unattended. We, the public, should let it be known what principles we expect journalists to follow if we are to recognize the authority of journalism. After all, if notions of appropriate practices, norms, and expectations of journalism are socially constructed, real weight attaches to discussions of what kind of journalism we want to have.
 
Epic Win For Anonymous: How 4chan's Army Conquered The Web  Cole Stryer
 
4chan offers a place where people are completely in control of their identity, allowing for expressions of opinions without repercussions. In a 2010 TED Talk, Christopher Poole explained his view on anonymity:
 
The greater good is being served here by allowing people--there are very few places now where you can go and be completely anonymous and say whatever you like. Saying whatever you like is powerful. Doing whatever you like is now crossing the line, but I think it's important to have a place [like www.4chan.org]
 
Poole outline 4chan's core competencies and further explained his devotion to privacy in a spring 2011 South by Southwest keynote speech. He described a "loss of the innocence of youth," using the example of a child who moved to a new city and could reinvent himself in his new town. Or even an adult who got a new job and wanted to change the way he was perceived by coworkers. When you have a social network tracking your identity wherever you go, online and off, that sticks with you. "You can't really make mistakes in the same way you used to be able to," says Poole. "The cost of failure is really high when you're contributing as yourself."
 
When you're anonymous, it allows people to be more flexible and creative, and poke and prod and try a lot of things that they might not were they to have a little picture of their face next to all their contributions. I think anonymity is authenticity. It allows you to share in a completely unvarnished, unfiltered, raw way. I think that's something that's extremely valuable. In the case of content creation, it just allows you to play in ways that you may not have otherwise. We believe in content over creator.
 
Poole's keynote speech also spoke to 4chan's focus on meritocracy. Other communities that focus on identity, and on rewarding people with points, badges, and other accolades, develop strong hierarchies. Sometimes this is good. You want the smart people who continue producing compelling content to be rewarded.
 
But there are two ways this can go wrong. The first is encouraging self-promotion at the expense of quality content. You don't see social media gurus trying to game 4chan in the same way that they do Twitter and Facebook. The second is that it can put the focus on strong personalities rather than on strong content. Longtime veterans of communities are organically given more respect and their words sometimes given more weight than they deserve. On 4chan, you're only as respected as your latest post. Its users are happy to let the hivemind take credit for their creative work for nothing in return but the private satisfaction of entertaining or informing one's /b/rothers and the sense of belonging that goes with it.
 
There are essentially twin themes that make 4chan what it is: the participatory creative culture and the spontaneous social activism. They can be seen as two manifestations of a process that social media researcher danah boyd calls "hacking the attention economy." Whether through creativity or creative destruction, 4chan's /b/tards (or lowercase a anonymous) and the politically oriented trolls (or capital A Anonymous) are exceptionally skilled at getting people to take notice, without spending a single dollar to promote their work. Neither of these capabilities could exist on Facebook at the same scale because they are only made possible by 4chan's emphasis on anonymity and ephemerality.
 
Lee Kuan Yew  Hard Truths  To keep Singapore Going  Straits Times Press
 
Q: You have said that freedom of the press is subordinate to the primacy of purpose of an elected government, yet you never nationalised the press or, as in the case of Malaysia, taken control of ownership of media companies. Did you ever consider it?
 
A: No. I don't think it's necessary to own the press. First, it'll become like Radio and Television Singapore and the whole media is controlled by the state which I don't think is good. In fact I wanted to allow the media, even the TV, some channels to be run by SPH, some by MediaCorp, and MediaCorp could eventually be privatised. I think there's value in having the press taking an independent view but within limits, knowing that we will not allow it to undermine government policies.
 
We started off on a fundamentally different basis from the Western media. First of all, the Western media never started in this way. It's the freedom of the owner to hire and fire people, to purvey his views....
 
We're not going to allow that in Singapore. We just want straightforward reporting of the hard facts as the news happens. And if you want to crusade there's the editorial and the commentary, which are clearly different from the news reports. I think there's value that.
 
But now, we're going to get a lot of junk news and falsehoods on the Internet and I'm not sure how long it will be before the people get sophisticated enough to know what is rubbish and what is true. We've got to take the risk. It's already part of the media that Singaporeans are exposed to.

Observation Without a free press or a lively online community who speaks for the public? A problem was allowed to continue for five years when its cause was clearly stated. The removal of the officers would have shown to the general public something was done, but the general public was kept out. The problem was posed to high officials and ordinary citizens for their consideration in Petition (17) and Citizen (32) respectively.
 
The owner's contact with the press and online community: Item 11 and note in Officers (3), Item 7 in Pervasive Case (5), Item 8j in Civics (10), Item 14o in Comment (14), Item 4l and 4m in Petition (17). While Item 8 in Petition (17) and Item 5 in Principle (47) refer to the use of ties to hurt and the small number of viewers to his blog respectively.
 
Anonymity is necessary when there is repression. An anonymous voice could be neutral by displaying considered opinion and leave the public to decide.

57. Ideas

Institutional Change and Globalization (2004) John L. Campbell
 
What Are Ideas? How Should We Define Them? Institutionalists mean many different things when they talk about ideas. This makes the literature on ideas confusing. To bring some clarity to the discussion, we can use two conceptual distinctions to identify different types of ideas and their effects. First, ideas can be underlying and often taken-for-granted assumptions residing in the background of decision-making debates. In this regard, ideas are institutions in the sense generally intended by organizational institutionalists. However, ideas can also be concepts and theories located in the foreground of these debates, where they are explicitly articulated by decision-making elites. Background assumptions can be visible to actors yet taken for granted in the relatively mild sense that they remain largely accepted and unquestioned, almost as principles of faith, whereas ideas in the foreground are routinely contested as a normal part of any decision-making debate. Second, ideas can be either cognitive or normative. At the cognitive level ideas are descriptions and theoretical analyses that specify cause-and-effect relationships, whereas at the normative level ideas consist of values, attitudes, and identities. In this sense, cognitive ideas are outcome oriented, but normative ideas are not. (Rueschemeyer and Skocpol 1996b, 300). As figure 4.1 illustrates, by combining these distinctions we can identify four types of ideas: paradigms, public sentiments, programs, and frames. It is important to recognize that this topology does not differentiate types of ideas by their function or effects. However, as discussed in the next paragraphs, each types of idea does exert unique effects on decision making and institutional change. In particular, because background ideas are often so taken for granted, they tend to constrain change. Because foreground ideas are contested and often used to challenge the status quo, they tend to facilitate or enable change.
 
Public Sentiments The fact that public sentiments can constrain the options available to decision makers is graphically illustrated in Margaret Levi's (1997) study of military conscription. Using a rational choice approach, she concluded that the degree to which citizens are willing to consent to serve in the armed forces during war, risk their lives, and, therefore, put their country's interests above their own, depends on the degree to which they perceive that the system is fair. That is, if draftees believe that all citizens are being subject to the draft in an impartial manner, then they tend to consent to the wishes of their leaders. But if they believe that some groups are being treated differently, due perhaps to their class or status position, then there is likely to be much draft evasion and other forms of resistance to conscription. Public sentiments regarding the fairness of the system are key and constrain how effectively political elites can mobilize for war.

Observation "At the cognitive level ideas are descriptions and theoretical analyses that specify cause-and-effect relationships, whereas at the normative level ideas consist of values, attitudes, and identities. In this sense, cognitive ideas are outcome oriented, but normative ideas are not."
 
Cognitive ideas are quotes in Deliberation (37), Switch (38), Morality (39) and Meritocracy (41). Normative ideas are quotes in Citizen (32), Elites (42), Openness (50) and Empathy (63).
 
Other cognitive ideas are quotes in Quote (20), Committee (27), Dissent (30), Conflict (43) and Rights (61). If these are to be adopted, it need Doer. The Doer would be the elephant mentioned in The Righteous Mind and Switch.
 
Other normative ideas are at Behaviour (23), Argument (44) and Perspective (45). The number of viewers doubled when Behaviour (23) was posted. 
 
Posts under Pronouncement in Category (80) include what was said by our leaders.

56. Character

Losing It  Bill Lane
 
Welch never lost the fire, the passion. I see him on TV now, and he still has it. In fact, he has begun to stutter just a bit, as he used to do in what Dennis Dammerman, his CFO, has called his "violent period," a phrase that never ceases to make me laugh. When the stuttering and stammering began in a one-on-one conversation or at a small conference-table meeting, the alarm bells would go off. You knew the shit was about to hit the fan--or you.
 
The intensity, the passion would escalate to a boil, seldom directly abusive to an individual. It was often wildly positive and full of promise, and something that I call amor fou (stealing from the French phrase that Tony's shrink uses in The Sopranos).
 
Crazy love.
 
Listen to some of the language, most of it from his CEO annual report letters, which, in other companies, are usually sedative devices for insomniacs:
 
"Bureaucracy is the Dracula of institutional behavior, and will rise again and again, requiring everyone in the organization to reflexively pound stakes through its reappearances." (I wanted the stake to be pounded through its heart, but Jack reigned me in.)
 
Or:
 
"We cultivate a hatred of bureaucracy in our Company and never for a minute hesitate to use that awful word 'hate.' Bureaucrats must be ridiculed and removed."
 
Or:
 
"The top 20% and the middle 70% (of managers, or perhaps employees in general) are not permanent labels. However, the bottom 10%, in our experience, tend to remain there. A company that bets its future on its people must remove that lower 10% and keep removing it every year--always raising the bar of performance and increasing the quality of its leadership."
 
Not enough. Sports teams do better than that. And we never really removed 10%, but the overstatement, and the passion that drove it, got the point across that nonperformers could no longer be tolerated anywhere in the company.
 
Or:
 
"There are undoubtedly a few 'type IV's (successful, but nasty, oppressive, and tyrannical managers) remaining, and they must be found." (Scary, but documented in the case of some successful senior managers who did not share or implement the values of the company, values at which we had arrived after serious month's-long debate and deliberation.)
 
These values were not from some hyperbolic mission statement concocted by a PR firm. I've been out of the company for nine years and still carry my values card in my ratty old wallet.
 
Luck may be a factor in your career, but you are the master or mistress of your destiny.
 
Any other view, in my view, is the view of one who is losing it--or has lost it.
 
Be true to yourself. Ask yourself and your colleagues whether they ever perceive you as arrogant, whether they ever see you wandering near the River Styx of integrity violation, whether you are a little behind in what's going on, and whether you need to communicate with them and the people who work for you more frequently, more passionately, and with better skills. Ask them whether you are spending too much time on social stuff and on window dressing for your shop rather than knowing intimately how your shop works from the bottom up.
 
Ask yourself these and other questions I have tried to share in this book. They represent the best of 30 years of my observations of leadership and, better, the views of some very accomplished individuals who have made it into the stratosphere and are determined to stay there.
 
And I have told of those who made it--or almost made it--and lost it.
 
Don't you lose it.
 
 
We're With Nobody  Alan Huffman, Michael Rejebian
 
We operate on two basic premises: Only documented facts truly matter, and everyone knows something we don't know. The guys in the asylum in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest may have been clinically insane but they knew what Nurse Ratched was up to, and because no one listened to them her crimes went undetected. Everyone has a piece of the truth, and even if it's lodged alongside imaginary ponies or contradicts a piece that someone else holds, it's possible to approximate the whole, to arrive at verisimilitude, by carefully assembling the disjointed fragments into your own mosaic.If that sounds like an entirely unscientific method for proving facts, it is. But it occasionally does lead to documentation. It's like a trial. One witness says this, one witness says that, and eventually the jury picks and chooses what to believe and makes it proclamation. The verdict is afterwards officially accepted as the truth. The defendant ceases to be an accused murderer. He's either acquitted or he is a murderer. It's there in print, in the local newspaper, in the courthouse records. It's documented.
 
There are exceptions. People get exonerated through DNA. Official records contain errors. Paper trails are intentionally hidden or even obliterated. But documented records are the closest society comes to establishing the truth, and if a source's story isn't true it almost always comes apart once you start asking how to nail the paperwork down. Without documentation, or even evidence of document tampering, our investigations go nowhere. We're oppo guys, not the FBI. As such, we're essentially a hybrid species--part investigator, part critic, part paid informant.
 
From our perspective, much of what passes for political debate today is arrested at the trailer-porch conversation stage. It's interesting, as far as it takes you. If it takes you only to an Internet echo chamber, it's useless for our purposes. Unfortunately, in today's political environment, the documented facts are often left backstage, where they gather dust; while half-truths and untruths--always enthusiastic, able performers--enjoy the limelight. This is nothing new. As Mark Twain observed long ago, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." But it does seem more pervasive now, when there are more and better delivery mechanisms and people seem less enthralled with honest accountability.
 
Everything we cite in our reports must be thorough, honest, accurate and, as we can't stress enough, documented. Whether our candidates know it or not, the last thing they want is for us to bowdlerize their record, or to have the opposing campaign reveal a weakness that we have not discovered first and forewarned him or her about. Despite the obvious differences, and the fact that we contribute to the campaign's portrayal of their opponent's record, our essential objectivity positions us closer to investigative reporters than to spin doctors.
 
Being opposition researchers has freed us to research a range of characters--in some ways, even more so than in our previous lives as daily newspaper reporters. We've become immersed in a side of politics that tends to remain hidden from public view: the process by which candidates are systematically dissected, evaluated and prepared for potential public attack. There are fundamental differences between what we do and investigative reporting, of course. We don't need a firm lead to justify undertaking our investigations, and we do not publish the results of our work. Though we have a clear agenda, in that we're beholden to our campaigns, we're free agents when it comes to uncovering the truth. We're deeply vexed by what Colbert calls the "fact-free zone" and are, of necessity, relentlessly objective, because there's no need for sycophants in the realm of opposition research.
 
Allegiances are strange animals. They define us. They guide us. They bring about both success and failure. They steer us down the paths of our lives. We used to pledge the most basic of all allegiances as children, and then stopped for the most part when we reached adulthood, as if we no longer needed that reminder of loyalty to God and country. But allegiances exist everywhere; they swirl thick around our heads, tempting us always to choose or to swat them away.
 
Some allegiances are exclusive. When Republicans in the House of Representatives unveiled their twenty-one-page Pledge to America in 2010 to tell voters what they'd do if they took control of Congress that November, they actually rolled out nothing more than a pledge to others in the party and to the conservative tea party movement that had been wreaking havoc on mainstream GOP candidates. The pledge, which included commitments to extend tax cuts for the wealthy and permanently prohibit taxpayer funding for abortion, vowed to "honor families, traditional marriage, life, and the private and faith-based organizations that form the core of our American values." Some provisions even matched the hardened positions of the tea partiers. The point is that such pledges are not really promises to "America" and are certainly not intended to include everyone, namely Democrats in this case. They are tools to divide, to differentiate and to destroy. In a political debate during a heated campaign, what could be better than to wave around a sheet of paper, point to your opponent and say, "I took a Pledge to America and he didn't."
 
The preamble to the promise included a line that read, "We pledge to honor the Constitution as constructed by its framers." It included a line that read, "We pledge to make government more transparent in its actions, careful in its stewardship, and honest in its dealing." It also included this: "We make this pledge bearing true faith and allegiance to the people we represent." When I read that last line I thought, "Huh? What? Didn't each of those House members already make those pledges when, on the first day in office, they raised their right hands alongside every one of their colleagues and uttered the words, 'I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States'"?
 
To advance politically, you have to be with someone, even if that someone is just you. Your allegiances have to be secure. Your actions must be beyond reproach. You have to care about nothing more than what advances you politically, because that is the source of your power, whether you intend to use it for your own gain or for the betterment of society and the people you serve. Every day, our elected leaders and would-be leaders are offered invitations to form allegiances--from giant corporations with deep pockets, from small business owners with shallow pockets, from seasoned political activists, from fringe groups borne out of the issues of the moment such as health care and immigration reform, from regular folks interested in nothing more than a good job and a better life for their families. The allegiances they choose can keep them in office, send them back home or even put them in jail. For these current and prospective officeholders, it won't take a lifetime to be defined. Alan and I can do it in less than a month.

Observation The government professes meritocracy, but there is favouritism. The owner's case is an example. Officers and a network of contacts protected the neighbour. Noise came down only after many postings over many years in the owner's blog. It was not through any overt action by the authorities. The general public do not get to know about it because of censorship.  
 
No matter how many times the owner complained, the authorities would not engage him. To do so would be to admit a problem. To them the problem is contained, and the owner would know his effort is useless.
 
Therefore the owner blogs to reach as many people as possible. It is a long shot. Should his case be mentioned in an election, a lost in the poll would show dissatisfaction.
 
Proving (24) shows proof of the case. Punggol East (35) and Corruption (66) are on checking government. Case (19) and Help (69) are attempt to involve the public. 

51. Governance

The Values of Bureaucracy  Edited by Paul Du Gay, Written by Charles T. Goodsell, pp.19,22-23
 
The bureau as unit of governance. Considering the bureau's governance capability in abstract isolation would be difficult and perhaps meaningless, even on a purely deductive basis. To make the exercise more tangible, I make a systematic comparison between the bureau and other units of governance along ten specific sources of capability. Five of these relate to Rule: endowment with political power, possession of financial and other resources, being conferred with legal authority, having technical (i.e. teachable) skills, and being privy to professional (or institutional) knowledge. The other five capabilities, relating to Response are: linkage to elections, incorporating public representation, being externally accountable, being open to change, and engaging citizens directly in governance...
 
As for external accountability, the elected institutions of governance are definitely held accountable by voters, the most drastic means being failure to re-elect. In Britain--but not America--party leadership is accountable to its rank-and-file membership. With respect to bureaux, they are subject to external reviews by many mechanisms: the budget process, audit reports, programme evaluations, performance reviews, inspector general reports, and cases heard by the courts. All elements of the government are in general open to press investigations and media exposure, and in United States freedom-of-information laws facilitate such enquiry. Quangos and hybrids, however, tend to operate more independently and confidentially than bureaus....
 
To sum up this broad survey of the comparative capability for governance on the part of eight governance actors, institutions associated directly with elections have extensive capacities for Rule and Response, with the exception of expertise and specialized knowledge. Actors such as interest groups and the media are well equipped with power, resources, and public insights, but lack authority, skills, and external accountability. Quangos, contractors, and non-profits are, for most part, well equipped for Rule but not Response. This leaves the bureaux. They possess in abundance all capabilities for Rule and, to mixed degrees, those for Response as well. Hence, as an actor in a democratic system the bureau stands apart with respect to the uniquely sweeping nature of its governing capability. In what ways is this capability used? It is to this question that we now turn.

Observation "...external accountability...With respect to bureaux, they are subject to external reviews by many mechanisms...All elements of the government are in general open to press investigations and media exposure..."
 
HBO (Head, Pasir Ris HDB Branch Office) replied to the owner when MPs wrote to HDB on behalf of the owner. Later, because the complaint involved HBO, the owner wrote to the higher authorities including the President. A month after the presidential election, he wrote a second time to the Presidency and it was followed by a lessening of noise. This was in Sep 11 and the email is President (26).
 
It took the owner four years, of which he blogged the last two, before officers and the neighbour decided to reduce noise. The problem remains unresolved.
 
The press, or the media, could only refer to the problem indirectly.
 
Elites (42) is on the worst aspect of meritocracy. Recommendations in Report (1) and Item 3 in Integrity (25) request that the officers be removed. Item 4f,4g,4h and 4i in Discovery (9) make clear what the stationing of the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour is about.

50. Biology

Natural-born existentialists  Ethics cannot be based on human nature because, as evolutionary biology tells us, there is no such thing.  Ronnie de Sousa

Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we were put in the world to rise above.

Katherine Hepburn to Humphrey Bogart in African Queen (1951)

Questions about what matters, and why, and what exists in the world, are quintessentially philosophical. The answers to many of these questions are informed by how we conceive of ourselves. How has what is often described as the ‘Copernican revolution’ effected by Charles Darwin changed our self-conception? One particularly surprising feature of evolutionary biology is that it lends significant support to existentialism.

To make the journey from evolutionary biology to existentialism, let’s start with one of the oldest and most profound of philosophical questions: how do we decide what is right or wrong, good or bad? Many philosophers have warned that no facts about nature can ever provide grounds for claims about values. In A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), David Hume made a compelling argument that an unbridgeable gap separates fact from value, ‘is’ from ‘ought’. To attempt to bridge that gap is to commit the ‘naturalistic fallacy’: no argument from factual premises can ever secure a conclusion about what is valuable, or about what to do.

In Principia Ethica (1903), the philosopher G E Moore adduced what he called an ‘open question argument’ for a similar constraint on any discourse about value. He claimed that any attempt to define ‘good’ in naturalistic terms – such as pleasure, or ‘utility’, or for that matter a divine commandment – must fail, because it always remains an ‘open question’ whether pleasure, or utility, or that particular divine commandment, really is good. If such a definition were sound, like the definition of a triangle as a three-angled plane figure, then the question would not make sense. ‘Is a triangle really a three-sided figure?’ would merely signal a failure to understand the definition.

Moore’s formulation has given rise to an enormous amount of debate. It is reasonable to object that it begs the question: for if one of those definitions of ‘good’ is correct, then the question is no longer open. But it must be admitted that no definition of ‘good’ in terms of some natural properties is very plausible. Hume’s original ‘is-ought’ gap still gapes.

In practice, of course, it would be hopeless to decide on what is best without reference to facts. In medicine as in public policy, ‘evidence-based’ decisions are the gold standard to which even politicians sometimes aspire. But the evidence we attend to is relevant only because certain goals are regarded as unquestionable: health, happiness, life. These values are presupposed, even if they seem too obvious to be articulated, by any practical or moral argument. If money buys happiness, then strive to make money. But only if happiness is the sort of thing you ought to pursue. If food sustains life, then eat! But only if you value life.

So where can we find the justification of general premises about value? If going from fact to values is a fallacy, then we can’t ground value judgments in facts. But if not facts, then what? Non-facts? ‘Alternative facts’, perhaps? One class of truths that are sometimes distinguished from ordinary facts of experience is the class of logical facts. And some philosophers, notably Immanuel Kant in the 18th century, thought that we could somehow extract moral principles from pure reason. That would seem to reduce immorality to a mere logical or mathematical mistake. And, on the face of it, that seems absurd, despite continuing efforts by Kant’s followers to convince us that it seems absurd only because we are not smart enough to get it. This has long been a ploy of philosophers, just as it was among theologians: insist that, if you disagree with their dogma, you must be either stupid or wicked. I prefer to persist in not getting it.

So must we admit that all claims about value, goodness or rightness are arbitrary? No. But if we are to resist that conclusion, we must reconsider the fact-value gap. Perhaps we can think of some facts as enjoying a special status, enabling them to provide plausible though not logically compelling reasons.

One proposal in that vein might be to take our wants and desires at face value. To want something is implicitly to view it as valuable. Our desire is a fact about us, but it seems to point to a value. We care about what we desire, and by definition what we care about is what we value. John Stuart Mill adopted this strategy when he declared in Utilitarianism (1863) that ‘the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable is that people do actually desire it’. For that, he has been convicted of committing the naturalistic fallacy, by equivocating on the meaning of ‘desirable’. Does it mean ‘worthy of being desired’ or does it mean ‘capable of being desired’? The fact that something is desired trivially proves that it can be; but it fails to establish that it should be. For not all that we desire is worthy of desire.

Nevertheless, even if no factual evidence can ever count as proof of a claim about value, some claims sound more reasonable than others. Being desired is better than nothing as support for regarding something as desirable. But how can we tell which of our desires we should endorse?

One time-honoured approach appeals to the idea that our desires are worthy, providing that they stem from our authentic human nature. Daoists, Epicureans and Aristotelians, among other purveyors of ancient wisdom, have all urged us to follow nature. But what could that mean? As the same J S Mill pointed out in his essay ‘Nature’ (1874), there are two ways of understanding the word:

In the first meaning, Nature is a collective name for everything which is. In the second, it is a name for everything that is of itself, without human intervention … while human action cannot help conforming to nature in one meaning of the term, the very aim and object of action is to alter and improve nature in the other meaning.

‍To enjoin anyone to follow nature is otiose on the first meaning, and self-defeating in the second. So what could be meant by that ancient piece of wisdom?

Thomas Aquinas, borrowing from Aristotle, devised an ingenious two-step strategy for answering that question. Step one: look at what happens ‘always or for the most part’ in nature to determine its laws. That investigation will reveal the natural and proper ‘functions’ of organs and activities: those that Nature, so to speak, ‘intended’. (If Nature is just another name for God, then the talk of ‘intent’ can even be taken literally.) Step two: use the resulting observations to determine what we ought to do – and especially what we ought not to do – according to whether it was found to be ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’ in step one.

Unfortunately, Aquinas’ strategy, though still holding sway in the Vatican as the doctrine of natural law, is a slippery example of ‘bait-and-switch’. In step one, the word ‘law’ seems to be used as in science, to refer to descriptive generalisations about what actually happens. In step two, however, the word’s meaning is closer to that of ‘legislation’. Laws of this second sort are promulgated and often broken. Laws of the first sort cannot be broken, even if they are stochastic, specifying mere probabilities. Laws of one kind are about the facts of nature; laws of the other kind are about how we should change those facts.

Everything that is alive is part of nature. Some of it is good for us, some of it is bad for us

Despite that flaw, natural law theory was plausible enough before Darwin. Even now, we are likely to judge that nature sometimes makes ‘mistakes’. For Aristotle as for Aquinas, organs that failed to perform their normal functions or, by extension, organisms whose difference made them unable to thrive were freaks of nature, ‘monsters’, giving rise to a whole branch of study called teratology. That word is still used to designate the study of congenital or developmental abnormalities. But in light of Darwin’s discovery, we can see that it makes no literal sense.

One way to describe what is revolutionary about Darwinism is that it inverts the status of the normal and the abnormal, or more precisely of typical and deviant specimens. On the assumption that species are stable and unchanging, unusual specimens are ‘abnormal’ or even monstrous: their deviance demands an explanation. But given the facts of evolution, nature is a continuum of variable individual things that resemble one another to a greater or lesser extent, depending mostly on the degree to which their lineages are close in ancestry, but also resulting from the inherent variability of all living things. In that perspective, no actual fact is more natural than any other. What requires explanation is not that some individuals are different from typical specimens, but that living things cluster around what seem to be typical specimens.

If no abnormalities had occurred in the past 4 billion years, you and I would still be bacteria. Every mutation or other rearrangement of our DNA that brought one of our ancestors closer to being human, when it first occurred, must necessarily have been unique, and therefore abnormal. We are the direct descendants of millions of freaks. In light of that thought, we should perhaps regard our more eccentric acquaintances with more respect. Not every freak is an improvement, but every improvement must first have been featured in a freak.

In light of evolution, then, natural law theory is bankrupt. It can give us no useful guidance as to what life to favour or what goals to pursue. Indeed, although many conservationists and environmentalists believe themselves to be motivated by the inherent value of nature, most are probably self-deceived. Of endangered species, for example, what they prize is not really that they are natural, but some other virtues: that they are aesthetically appealing, like eagles, or potentially useful, like the flora of rainforests. For who has ever joined a demonstration with a placard deploring the near-extinction of the smallpox virus? Everything that is alive is part of nature. Some of it is good for us, some of it is bad for us. Nature’s purposes, if it has any, are not ours. The mere existence of a natural fact or organism tells us nothing about whether it is good.

Perhaps, though, the contemplation of the fact of evolution itself might offer some lessons on how we should live. In an increasingly secular society, many think of evolution as having taken over the role of providence. Surely natural selection, in ensuring the ‘survival of the fittest’, has brought us to a pinnacle of perfection. Or at least, since we are, to be sure, not quite perfect yet, the adaptive process of natural selection will ultimately make us so.

Unfortunately, this is wrong. What nature has contrived cannot be expected to be best for us, for at least three reasons. The first is that the process of adaptation takes time. And in the time it takes, things might have changed, so that just when natural selection has made us nicely adapted to one set of living conditions, these no longer apply. An obvious example here is junk foods. In an environment where salt, sugar, fat and protein required work to acquire, our ancestors developed a natural taste for them. That’s why junk food is the most likely to be enjoyed by any child, no matter what the culinary style of the prevailing culture. But in our current circumstances, a taste for junk food doesn’t look so healthy.

Much the same might be true of some of the emotional dispositions bequeathed to us by natural selection. If we follow some evolutionary psychologists in thinking that evolution has programmed us to value solidarity and authority, for example, we must recognise that those very same mechanisms promote xenophobia, racism and fascism. Some philosophers have made much of the fact that we appear to have genuinely altruistic motives: sometimes, human beings actually sacrifice themselves for complete strangers. If that is indeed a native human trait, so much the better. But it can’t be good because it’s natural. For selfishness and cruelty are no less natural. Again, naturalness can’t reasonably be why we value what we care about.

A second reason why evolution is not providence is that any given heritable trait is not simply either ‘adaptive’ or ‘maladaptive’ for the species. Some cases of fitness are frequency-dependent, which means that certain traits acquire a stable distribution in a population only if they are not universal. This is best illustrated by the fable of doves and hawks made famous by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976), but originally due to John Maynard Smith’s On Evolution (1972). Suppose that ‘doves’ never escalate a conflict into a fight, while ‘hawks’ always fight to the death if opposed. It is easy to see that in a population of doves, a hawk will prosper, and his kind proliferate. For doves will always concede any resource in a dispute, and hawks will have the advantage in every conflict. In a population of hawks, however, doves will have the advantage. For while they often lose a meal, by always retreating in the face of opposition, doves will survive every encounter and get a chance for another. But most encounters will pit hawk against hawk, giving each only a 50-50 chance of surviving. At some point, somewhere between all-hawk and all-dove populations, the proportion of hawks to doves will reach an equilibrium. From that point, more hawks will result in an advantage to doves, and hawks will do better if there are more doves.

In the real world, we might think of psychopaths as analogous to hawks. They do well in a world where most others will always yield rather than risk causing harm. But if they were to become more numerous, psychopaths would increasingly risk encountering other psychopaths, rather than the average sucker they are used to exploiting. The advantage will pass to the average cooperating type of individual. It has been estimated that psychopaths maintain their numbers at a steady 1 per cent of the population. Perhaps, at this stage of civilisation, that is the point of equilibrium. That would make being a psychopath as ‘natural’ as anything else, but it doesn’t mean we must approve of psychopaths.

Sex comes with so many disadvantages that it is something of a puzzle for evolutionary theory

The third reason we should not equate the natural with the good is the most important. Evolution is not about us. In repeating the well-worn phrase that is supposed to sum up natural selection, ‘survival of the fittest’, we seldom think to ask: the fittest what? It won’t do to think that the phrase refers to fitness in individuals such as you and me. Even the fittest individuals never survive at all. We all die. What does survive is best described as information, much of which is encoded in the genes. That remains true despite the fashionable preoccupation with ‘epigenetic’ or otherwise non-DNA-encoded factors. The point is that ‘the fittest’ refers to just whatever gets replicated in subsequent generations – and whatever that is, it isn’t us. Every human is radically new, and – at least until cloning becomes routine – none will ever recur.

Most humans have no interest in the propagation of their genes. Indeed, in most sexual encounters, people’s interest lies in frustrating the only goal we can plausibly ascribe to nature: namely the replication of genes. Some people do crave to have babies, but they seldom think of that in terms of gene replication. We have our own desires, and they have little or nothing to do with any ‘goal’ of nature.

I care about my own goals and desires; I don’t care about nature’s. That brings us back to Mill’s counsel: in any deliberation, we can’t do better than to start with what we desire, even if we don’t automatically endorse our every impulse. So what is it that we do desire?

Well, the better question is, what can’t we desire? Beyond a few basic biological needs, there seems to be no limit to what humans can desire. In fact, I doubt if there is anything that someone abhors that isn’t also the object of another’s craving. And conversely: whatever you desire, there is sure to be someone who would be disgusted by it.

That diversity is not accidental. Variety and diversity are the fundamental condition without which evolution could not have occurred. The transition from one species to another – like the variation between individuals – is gradual in both time and space; but those transitions that evolutionary theorists have singled out as the most important appear to present relatively sudden increases in complexity. With higher complexity come new possibilities. But new possibilities often come at some cost to the organisms concerned.

Here are two examples. Among the most momentous transitions in evolution was the association of cells into multicellular organisms. This entailed that single cells sometimes had to sacrifice themselves to enhance the prospects of the group of which they were now only a part. Programmed cell death, or ‘apoptosis’, has been described as ‘a sine qua non of a multicellular state’. An equally crucial invention was the novel use of exchanges of genetic material for the purposes of reproduction – sex, for short. Sex comes with so many disadvantages that it is something of a puzzle for evolutionary theory. To mention just two: cell division, or cloning, results in the re-production of time-tested models. Sex does no such thing. Instead, it produces new and untested models that might altogether fail to be viable. Second, and equally drastic, there is the ‘two-fold cost’ of sexual reproduction. Every sexually generated individual requires the resources needed to have supported two parents. Therefore, in a direct competition with an equivalent cloning species, a sexual species will quickly be swamped by the asexual.

The most recent major transition in human evolution is the invention of language. Although language seems to us so obviously useful that its cost is hard to discern, there is some truth to Thomas Hobbes’s explanation of why humans find it so much more difficult to cooperate than ants do. Ants don’t require a tyrannical monster to enforce cooperation, Hobbes argued in Leviathan (1651), mainly because they don’t talk. They can be harmed but not offended; they can’t make agreements and therefore cannot break them; and they don’t ‘strive to reform and innovate’ – all of which spares them quarrels, disagreements and generally bad feelings.

Those might well be viewed as drawbacks of our capacity for language. But the positive aspect of language lies precisely in our capacity for disagreement. As animals, we have interests. These are not necessarily confined to self-interest, since animals can be fierce in the defence of other individuals. If genes are sometimes linked to behaviour, and if they are copied to later generations, animals can be assumed to be innately programmed to defend kin at their own cost. That is individual altruism in the service of what Dawkins called ‘selfish’ genes. But it is difficult to imagine any two non-language-using animals quarrelling about anything that does not arise from innate need. Both might want one thing that is in limited supply, or they might want currently incompatible things. (Two animals might differ about who will eat the one available prey, but also about where to set the thermostat.)

What language does is to enable speakers to differ about propositions. Propositions ground inferences, which can be persuasive without being logically compelling, and on which two people can differ. Thus the invention of language, like other major transitions of evolution, generated an explosion of possibilities. When we can talk about what we want, we can also discuss, generalise, refine, extrapolate, analogise, creating fresh propositions to endorse. Wants can be grounded in basic needs and desires but, from those raw materials, talking quickly leads us to a potentially unlimited variety of new propositions about artificial things to care about: cultural conventions, institutions, art, money. These constitute the values by which we govern our lives. Each variant of human desire is ‘natural’, not in the sense of being required, but only of being made possible by nature. And it is in what nature makes possible, not in what it necessitates, that we should look for the answer to the question about what we should be or do.

Our nature arises from our choices. It is enabled, but not determined, by biology

These new possibilities and the choices we make among them define who we are. And that is the core idea of existentialism as articulated by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1946 – the doctrine that for humans alone, existence precedes essence: that who we are is determined by our choices, not the other way round. Because our values have arisen in a process of debate, inference and generalisation, they are no longer even distant consequences of our basic needs. Our nature arises from choices that were not determined by our biological make-up. It is enabled, but not determined, by biology.

That holds for us both as a species and as individuals. As individuals, we each face, at every turn, the options that result, in part, from previous choices, both our own and those of our predecessors in the human experiment. But there is no predicting where those choices might lead as we talk ourselves into them. As a species, we are part of a lineage in which a large number of crucial transitions, brought about by chance in this one lineage but not others, have enabled new possibilities. As individuals, many of those possibilities have been spurred by the urge both to imitate and to ‘reform and innovate’. And among those, it is up to each of us to make still new choices. If there is a human nature, it is created as much as it is found.

The unpredictable character of human nature is all the more apparent when we confront what might in retrospect look like yet one more major transition: the advent of technology, and especially the creation of the world wide web. Given that unpredictability, we cannot be sure that the existence of the web will not end up limiting our choices rather than enhancing them in some ways that we can only begin to glimpse. But even if that happens, those choices will be ones that no pre-existing conception of human nature will have dictated.

What biology teaches us about human nature is that, in a very real sense, there is no such thing as human nature. The only coherent attitude to that fact is that of the existentialist: if there is any guidance to be found in nature, it is that there is nothing there to follow. Instead, we should aspire to create it.

Observation

Natural-born existentialists  Ethics cannot be based on human nature because, as evolutionary biology tells us, there is no such thing.  Ronnie de Sousa

Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we were put in the world to rise above.

Katherine Hepburn to Humphrey Bogart in African Queen (1951)

Our nature arises from our choices. It is enabled, but not determined, by biology

These new possibilities and the choices we make among them define who we are. And that is the core idea of existentialism as articulated by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1946 – the doctrine that for humans alone, existence precedes essence: that who we are is determined by our choices, not the other way round. Because our values have arisen in a process of debate, inference and generalisation, they are no longer even distant consequences of our basic needs. Our nature arises from choices that were not determined by our biological make-up. It is enabled, but not determined, by biology.

That holds for us both as a species and as individuals. As individuals, we each face, at every turn, the options that result, in part, from previous choices, both our own and those of our predecessors in the human experiment. But there is no predicting where those choices might lead as we talk ourselves into them. As a species, we are part of a lineage in which a large number of crucial transitions, brought about by chance in this one lineage but not others, have enabled new possibilities. As individuals, many of those possibilities have been spurred by the urge both to imitate and to ‘reform and innovate’. And among those, it is up to each of us to make still new choices. If there is a human nature, it is created as much as it is found.

The unpredictable character of human nature is all the more apparent when we confront what might in retrospect look like yet one more major transition: the advent of technology, and especially the creation of the world wide web. Given that unpredictability, we cannot be sure that the existence of the web will not end up limiting our choices rather than enhancing them in some ways that we can only begin to glimpse. But even if that happens, those choices will be ones that no pre-existing conception of human nature will have dictated.

What biology teaches us about human nature is that, in a very real sense, there is no such thing as human nature. The only coherent attitude to that fact is that of the existentialist: if there is any guidance to be found in nature, it is that there is nothing there to follow. Instead, we should aspire to create it.