Easy Life

Recently there has been a lot of debates with regards to how the foreign talents are ``eating into'' the livelihoods of the locals to the point that many are expressing indignation and some are starting to show xenophobic behaviour. While I am not saying that the fears of the local populace are unfounded, I would like to remind people that at the end of the day, we ourselves are responsible for how well we do in life, and not the government. Thus, if we choose to establish affirmative actions like quotas or even display ``favouritism'' for the locals, it will tend to defeat the entire premise of meritocracy, the one thing that this country prides itself as being the ultimate leveller.

But of course, reality is often different. The theories that are often expounded on egalitarianism are only applicable if all things are equal---clearly all things are not equal. It is a delicate balance between the labour required and the labour supplied; there are few employers who are willing to pay more for a local worker if for less they can hire a foreign worker who is willing to put in more hours. The basis of most businesses is to make a profit, and not to actually provide jobs for people---this is a fundamental thing that many people must learn to comprehend. If we view things from this perspective, then we can see that there is a strong (and stiff!) competition between the locals and the foreigners for the job market.

People are generally pampered these days, with many relying heavily on the multitude of government-led schemes in order to better provide for themselves. I am not insinuating that this is wrong, but this does mean that the newer generation of folks need to learn the meaning of hard work, and to be willing to put in the hard work in order to literally earn one's keep. Already there are many who want the easy way out---just look at the number of ``idol hopefuls'' who throng the auditions for the various reality television programmes which promise a large measure of fame and what is mostly a simple chance towards making good money. Of course, the standard argument here is that many are there for interests sake, and are just auditioning to see if they got lucky, much like why people are still buying lottery tickets when the probability of a payout is ridiculously small. I'm not saying that attending such auditions for celebrity-type events is a bad thing, but I seriously question the intent behind many of these people.

Society is on its way to ruins, that we have known for a while, with the increasingly easy life that the urbanites have grown to adore. Money is plentiful for many people, but almost everyone wants more. All these things are hard to mitigate away, and perhaps it is from all of these affluence will disaster strike us. In many cases, wars come about because one of two extremes exist; either the country is ruinous to the point that the people are no longer happy, and their anger drives them to fight for more rights and material gains, or if the country is too affluent and enjoys so much power and prestige that it involves itself with world politics in order to further strengthen its power and influence in the world domain, with restraint being a non-existent word.

Okay, so I'm bitter about the world today, and bitter at some of the happenings in my country. I could go on, but I don't really want to, seeing as to how all this yelling on top my soapbox is not going to do anything productive by any form of measure. So perhaps another time I will talk about other stuff.