A ``Proper'' Rant?

Yeah yeah, I know I had already written something for today, but like many of my recent posts, they tended to be rather technical in nature.

For me, for this blog, ``technical'' can mean anything from this set of categories:

1. Something related to computer hardware;
2. Something related to computer software that I use (not program);
3. Something related to computer programming that I did;
4. Something related to music things like composition or research;
5. Something related to 笛子, flute, or one of the many music instruments that I have experience playing.

To most people, they are too geeky because they aren't proper rants.

Well, here's a ``proper'' rant in a while.

The more I look at Singapore, the more that I am starting to find that at some fundamental level, we seemed to have lost what it means to be Singaporean. This is not a rant about immigration/emigration, but a rant about how the values that we inherited from our progenitors are starting to be the main reason why we are facing all kinds of strange social issues today.

In the Old Economy, with a heavy focus on manufacturing, hard work meant that more widgets could be made, which had a direct impact upon productivity. Because of that, a lot of policies were constructed then to support this mode of production; the work ethic then was also revolving around this.

Everyone was working as hard as they could in whatever they were involved in. Education levels were not as high as they are now, and thus hard work was seen as the prize of the workers that were available then.

But in the New Economy, where manufacturing is much sidelined in favour of tertiary industries like ``the knowledge economy'' or even the ``service industry'', hard work alone is insufficient. This is because the nature of work has evolved---gone are the days where quality can be quantified, controlled, and replicated, leaving productivity to just the careful execution of the controlled process by hard work in generating more and more of the widgets. The New Economy demands actual intellectual capability, a certain nous that provides the type of competitive advantage that separates an okay company from a great company.

My generation is stuck in between the Old Economy and the New Economy, because we are at the age group where we do not have enough capital to try new ideas, and have to be stuck with those with the capital who are still running things like it was still the Old Economy. This means that we are in a situation where many of the current bosses still believe erroneously that putting in long hours is still the right way to achieving success for the company.

They suffer from the survivor bias fallacy---``back in my day, I worked eighteen-hour days, and my bosses had to beg me to not work so long hours''. How does working eighteen-hour days work in the generating and testing of good ideas is something that I, after having undergone post-graduate training, cannot understand. And even if it were possible to work eighteen-hour days to generate/test such good ideas, working eighteen-hour days means that there is no time to go out and do something social/recreational, both of which are beneficial to the mental health and in some ways, the national reproductive rate.

``But if you have the passion, then working eighteen-hour days will not feel like working!''---that's the battlecry of the capital holders who thrived in the Old Economy.

I call bollocks on that. There is a reason why the whole forty-ish hour work-week was a thing that was instituted as laws all around the world---this was a right that was fought for with blood and sweat from workers of the late nineteenth century just after massive industrialisation against the capitalists of that era that wanted to exploit the crap out of all the workers (both adults and children) from the under-classes then.

I am not saying that no one should work eighteen-hour days. I'm saying that working eighteen-hour days should be something that is stated up-front to be presented as a choice to the potential employee, with suitable amounts of compensation/remuneration, and not be unethically snuck upon them post facto.

But who am I kidding? It has always been the nature of capitalists to exploit their labour---that is literally how they turn profits from their businesses. Of course they don't say it the way I do; they instead couch it in more pleasant sounding terms like ``looking out for our bottomline'', or ``employee motivation while keeping expenses controlled'' and the like.

That was why slavery was a thing. It would still be a thing, except for the bunch of wars that were fought over it.

Oh wait. It is still a thing---it is only hidden behind Hobson's choice.

I think I'm getting a little too bitter to write coherently, so I'm just going to stop here now.

Till the next update.