Why Y'all Uncomfortable with Americans?

Shape shifters and borgs.

Shape-shifters are Star Trek aliens who possess the magnificent ability to change composition and morph into different shapes and looks and beings. A lizard-man one day, a human the next.

The borg is a big cubic alien world/structure that unites the brains of thousands of humanoids in one machine-like creature that is relentlessly rational and ruthless. From many, one.

Shape shifter

America is one part shape-shifter and one part borg.

I have no idea what the Philippines is, but it is not a shape shifter, and I don't think it is a borg. It may be an asteroid, a big chunk of rock that does not change, that goes 'round and 'round.

I'm always perplexed when intelligent people like Raissa Robles explain that they don't have much respect for the United Sates for what America did in the Philippines during the Philippine American War. It is such a rigid view, and says so much about the Philippines, locked in place.

This perspective lacks the recognition that America is a shape-shifter, marvelously adept at adapting. America was harshly racist in 1898, the period of which Raissa speaks, and the racism fueled cruel behaviors in the Philippines. But America is dynamic. A land of open voices and ears that listen. Americans have argued about freedoms from the nation's inception, giving women voting rights in 1920 when before they had none. And substantially eradicating racism from 1950 to 1990

Freedom to speak forms the conscience of a nation.

Borg cube

Technology helped  Americans to speak. And accelerated the pace of change. Americans were able to look at the whole of themselves. And not like what they saw.

The most popular racist in America was perhaps Archie Bunker of the highly popular television show "All in the Family" which ran during the 1970's. His portrayal of a loud, stubborn bigot made bigotry look like it is. Ignorant. Archie was followed in the annals of TV history by the black and funny Bill Cosby in a show called "I Spy". Later he had his own show, the "Bill Cosby Show", a family with the wise but dense and totally hilarious Bill Cosby a little like Archie Bunker, but black.

America started liking her blacks. Black athletes. Black preachers like Martin Luther King, whose assassination was a martyr's moment, for sure. A wake-up call. And now a black President.

The historical pudding proved the point. Blacks are neither lazy nor sex addled (at least no more so than whites) nor stupid. Mexicans, too. And Asians.

So the American ethnic composition continues to morph, a little less white every year. And a lot less racially ignorant than 114 years ago.

The American borg, the block of relentless power, is evident in two ways: (1) in global self-interest and military might, and (2) in rabid belief that certain rights like speech, bearing arms, employment opportunity, fairness and safety are not to be curtailed by private or government authoritarianism. In shorter words, America is a relentless borg for:

• Global commercial enrichment.

• Freedom and fairness for its citizens.

What is the Philippines?

Germany and Japan are done with World War II but the Philippines is still fighting its revolutionary wars and its colonizers.

The Philippines retains the same basic social infrastructure as it had during the Spanish colonial period. Religious democracy. Corrupt. Regionalized into self-serving clans and warlords and feudal estates. The dynasties. Never quite a harmonious national entity.

Except those Sunday's twice a year when Pacquiao fights.

It is strange.

Lacking unity to any purpose other than Catholic conservatism, the Philippines cannot progress. It seemingly cannot forget the past and recognize it is over and done with, cannot look ahead and foresee disasters blown in on the winds, cannot comprehend what the relentless abuse of its marvelous natural resources means.

Cannot adapt.

Yes, yes.

Whither Philippines?

The Philippines is an asteroid.

A chunk of rock, sealed in a vacuum of religious irrationality and self-serving authoritarian leadership. Sealed to the pains of history. Unable to apply science and common sense and vision to look ahead and solve problems.

'Round and 'round we go, ever sealed to the past. Unable to find a way to unleash the dynamics of community effort.

• Passing internet libel laws to squelch voices rather than raise them up, to solve problems. The FOI Bill, a tool for raising voices, is not a priority. 

• Relying on personal favor and gain as the basis for employment and business deals, rather than the productive vigor and might of competition and competence and fair play.

'Round and 'round . . . tying things down . . . holding them back . . .

Stuck in self absorption. Afraid to let go . . .

Bible Update: The Book of Maude

The Bible is many books in one. It is a historical treatise, albeit one built on a lot of allegory and story. It is a text book. It is a recitation of moral law, or how we can live in God's image. And it represents civil law for the time it was written.

It is read literally and it is read figuratively. Either approach runs into problems so it invariably gets read with lots of explanations and deductions and caveats. You know. Little footnotes to explain away the aberrations.

Indeed, it has some famous amendments to accelerate and firm up re-interpretations. The most popular of these is the New Testament, where Jesus through his apostle Paul and a few other loyalists recasts how we should interpret God's ways. For example, there were admonitions in the Old Testament that had become outdated. Like the ban on eating pork. In the New Testament, we find that pork is no longer considered "unclean".

Why? Because pig meat is no longer diseased and dangerous.

Religious leaders also wanted to create a kinder, gentler Creator, rather than continue to portray God as the One who relentlessly rained violent destructions up on the planet. Pestilence and plague, wars and starvations.

So the Old Testament got amended and Christianity flowered.

Another amendment is found in the Book of Mormon, penned by the American prophet Joseph Smith just a couple of hundred years ago. The amendment was not voted on but was simply adopted by a certain committee of believers, and the Mormon Church has been going gangbusters ever since.

Well, you know, I figure it is high time that we construct a new amendment, a new book. There is one area of the Bible where the amendments of the New Testament and Book of Mormon have simply not kept pace with modern knowledge and values.

No, no. It does not involve foreign investment or libel or even right of reply, or reproductive health, directly. It is more basic than that.

We need to explicitly revise the Holy Bible to recognize that women do not belong in harems or trailing behind their hubbies or earning half what a guy earns. Or kept out of the pulpit or out of church decision-making bodies.

If a woman can speak, she can preach. If she can think, she can write church policy.  And it is offensive to our sense of fair treatment and non-discrimination that we recognize that modern civic laws and the values that mandate equal treatment.

Why is the Bible allowed to present a conflicting view to what we know is wholesome? Why are men ruling the roost in the most dominant of Filipino churches?

The Catholic Church adheres to the old Bible and refuses to follow the same laws that corporations are required to follow. Non-discrimination by gender.

So we deal with pigs differently in modern times, but not women? Women are considered diseased and dangerous, or what?

It grates on the brain, like running fingernails across the chalk-board. This is not right.

Here are the offending sections of the New Testament, which, as we learned above, supplemented or struck out many of the weird and out-of-sync rules of the Old Testament:

• 1 Corinthians 11:3-10  But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.  Every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying, disgraces his head. But every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying, disgraces her head; for she is one and the same with her whose head is shaved. For if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut off; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man.  For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man;  for indeed man was not created for the woman’s sake, but woman for the man’s sake. Therefore the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.

• 1 Corinthians 14:33-35  . . .for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. Let the women keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but let them subject themselves, just as the Law also says. And if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church.

• Titus 2:3-5 Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good,  that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children,  to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be dishonored.

Boy howdy, and that Titus, he brought age into the deal, too, a double no-no, as if old women were by definition malicious gossips and drunks.

I'm sure fewer than half are.

So we need to correct that. We need a book of the women, for the women, by the women.

If we popularize such a book, the Catholic Church will have two options:

1. Ignore the new book, as the Jews ignored Jesus, and see the confident and competent women within their congregation trample the men to get to a church that recognizes the new book.

2. Revise their discriminatory doctrine and practices.

Either is a right and proper result, so it is up to those Old Guys of the Church to see if they have the wisdom to grant that God can think modern, and reasonably, and gender-equal.

Well, we need our own profound prophet, and she has to be she. My wife is not adept at this kind of critical thinking, being totally subservient to me only on writing and lording it over me on all other disciplines. I'd ask Cha, but she is very busy, I know. Fortunately, Cousin Maude said she would be happy to take on the task of providing for her sisters.

Here is her fine work in draft form. She says she welcomes edits by the Society's cerebral men and women. She apologizes for how short the book is, but says, rightly so, the whole American Bill of Rights, Constitutional Amendments 1 through 10, can be written on the head of a pin.

The Book of Maude (Version 1.0)

Chapter 1

1.1 Let the Good Word ring true, that God our Maker is vast of being and vision and act, able to cast stones from the mountain toward the sea on rivers of  churning water or flumes of fiery rock. Let no man or woman question the power of His Holy Magnificence.

1.2 Let us know as well that Our Father is Himself no stone. He is not a chunk of granite pushed upright and rigid from the bowels of the earth to sit unbending and inert for all eternity. Nay, he is heaven's Master, fluid and forceful and mindful that he has spun upon the earth a journey for us, from dust to dust, and the paths we may choose, free of will, are gifted by Him to us.

1.3 We would be in error to believe that God holds us to one eternal course, inflexible as to knowledge or decision, bound by Man's interpretation of good as though it were a fixed picture caught on one well-defined day on historical earth.

1.4 Nay, God challenges us to think, to have heart and kindness, to face the challenges He sets before us with intelligence and new knowledge, to strive for the richness that can only come with compassion and enlightenment and the ability to think for ourselves.

1.5 Our Mighty Maker does not say "bow to the cloth", or "bow to the crown", or "bow to the pulpit of Senatorial confusion". He says bow to goodness, to kindness, to love, and to the enrichment of explorations and learning and personal growth.

Chapter 2

2.1 Many men on earth, God's servants, have held to inflexible rules, words that bind mankind to behaviors meant only for a time, their time, man's time.

2.2 Cast out these blind enforcers, the men whose works benefit their own interests, the maleness amongst them, rather than the whole of mankind, which includes womankind. Shout to them, "Get thee out of thy darkened male closet!" "Remove thy mask of male insecurity!"

2.3 Men who insist that men define God's place on earth are men of little reason, little courage and even less comprehension.

2.4 Cast out those who would restrain the good works of woman. Woman was not meant for bondage any more than Jesus was meant to rest upon a wooden cross of man.

Chapter 3

3.1 How did God bless woman? He blessed her with the triumph and exquisite joy of bringing new life onto the earth.

3.2 God did not bless her with a mop or a bucket or a spatula welded to her hands. He blessed her with intuition and insight and intellect quick with wit, words and ideas.

3.2 Let it therefore be known that the women among us are commanded to walk upright, equal in calling and capability to the men who would have them sit down. They are commanded not to let a period in history define them, limit them, restrain them.

3.3 God commands that you go forth, good women, heads up, eyes clear, pure of heart, striving for good works and higher enlightenment, equal in all material ways to the very best of men.

3.4 Let not the preachings of the insecure and confined hold you back. Let not any man say you are the lesser of God's children.

_______  &&&  ________

Yeah. That should do the job just fine.

Thanks Maude.

Philippine Class Structure, Revisited

The core of this article ran about a year ago. I've since added the class "Rational Climbers" and will now try to put it into a context that is useful.

This article is commentary. It does not pretend an academic or statistical foundation. It is a westerner’s impressions of Philippine society gleaned by living in this beautiful, vibrant country. Joe's aim is to understand the Philippines and contribute to the pool of ideas that encourages continued progressive development.

There are classist societies and there are classy societies. The trick is to get from one to the other by making sure there is an upward drive so that people gain by helping their nation gain. Helping it to be more productive, safer and wealthier.

As I observe the Philippines, it seems to me there are clear class distinctions defined by a person’s wealth, geography, education and power. Some are large, others small. There are walls between some of the classes and that is troublesome. It means people have a hard time moving up and the nation's character comes to lack the drive that is needed to progress with determination.

Going from bottom to top, hidden to visible, non-influential to influential, we have:

• The Tribal Class: The mountain or island tribes. Almost no wealth, geographically isolated (a blessing and a penalty), limited education, and no influence outside the local community. This is the invisible class of Philippine society. Members have few roads and limited utility infrastructure, weak law enforcement, and no health care. They are the families washed away by mudslides and poisoned by mine effluents. And the rest of the nation forgets about them until there is another disaster that thrusts them onto the front pages of the newspapers.

• The Subsistence Class:  The agrarian and laboring workers. This is the vast, sweaty core of a thin but broad Philippine economy. These are the people who work for P200 or less a day, with no future job promised. Career is an unknown word. Forget social security and health care. They work the rice fields, fish the seas, dig the foundations, haul the cement, climb the coconut trees, whack the weeds on the side of the road, drive the Jeepneys , staff the local stores, provide household services, and pedal tricycles. They are the Philippines, in its most honest, hardworking, fun loving and sustaining self. They don't have enough money to be corrupt but they have so little money they will sometimes "innovate" to get some more. They have lots of kids and send them to the fields early to help put rice on the table. They are the worker bees of Philippine society, locked into poverty by an overabundance of mouths to feed and almost no way out. That needs to end.

• Low-End Skill Workers:  Masons, carpenters, call center workers, store department managers, small store owners, shop foremen, bus drivers, military men, policemen. People in this class can support a family and send their kids to public school. They are the entry point to ambitious self-improvement, and could succeed if the points of progression were not all blocked. And if aspiration, like career, were a prized concept in Philippine society. It is not. But kids born to these parents do have a small chance to break out. They would have more of a chance if the public schools weren't such a mess of overcrowded, under thinking pools of obedience. Low-end skill workers cluster around large towns and urban centers. TESDA is crucial to their success and growth.

• The Rational Climbers:  The class of Rational Climbers encompasses overseas workers and Filipinas who marry foreigners. Climbers boldly seek exit from three other classes: (1) The Subsistence Class, (2) Low-End Skill Workers, and (3) Professionals. They are rational because they intuitively do the math and decide the reward is worth the risk to embark upon a radically different lifestyle, and they are climbers because they have the clear aim of improving their lives. The motivation that drives them is best summed up in the statement: "Enough of this!" For professionals, the second part of the statement might be: "I have skills and am tired of struggling along on this measly income." For a young, single woman, it might be: "It is a choice of security and money, or babies, and I want security and money." For a worker, it might be: "Canada may be a giant ice cube, but businesses there pay real money", or : "The Middle East is strange, but they have oil and gobs of cash; I'm going to go get some." How do we bring them home? Bring families back together? That would also contribute to the character of the nation.

• Professionals: Teachers, doctors, lawyers, business owners, tech workers, call center managers, government officials, higher ranked military and police officers, engineers, journalists, bank managers. They have college degrees and generally must know somebody to make the leap from sluggish career to meaningful career. Their family ties help in many ways. Funding their schooling. Opening doors. Establishing an ideal of a higher standard of living. They form a sound middle class with potential to move up. They look down on a lot of people for they know they have power over their clients, and a better education. Their professional skill levels are often, ummm rudimentary, but the country does not demand more. The professionals need to be challenged by competent competitors. They should not be able to get rich and be lazy just because they have a diploma.

• The Priests, Imams and Assorted Other Men of Cloth: This is a small, isolated class of faith-based leaders. Each faith claims to have the sole ticket to heaven, and each condemns people who won't buy that ticket. It arches over the Professional class, from priests to archbishops. The ever essential problem is, as near as I can tell, there is only one God, indivisible. So someone has to be blowing smoke. Religion is a big deal in the Philippines, even if Superstition is the master religion that overlays all other faiths. Catholic priests, Muslim imams, Protestant pastors. They have such influence in the Philippines, but I know of none that claims any responsibility for the outcome. For the condition of the land. For the poverty. For upside down values that find cheating acceptable. This class can take care of itself, for it has institutions behind it. It is best ignored.

• The Entertainers: This is another isolated class, pretenders (not meant in a disparaging sense) who are held in extraordinarily high esteem by the masses. A boxer, singers, actors. They are rich and live well. Their kids can attend the best schools and many move easily into the Connected class, spreading their wealth amongst their family and favorites. They live a life as far removed from the subsistence class as Neverland is from London. They pretend to be one of the people, for they must do this to succeed. But they are not. They are on pedestals. It is fantasy for them and it is often fantasy for their audience, a dream that people of little opportunity might also become rich and famous. Entertainment shows and advertisers leverage this dream for profit. Poor people remain poor.

• The Connected: These are the movers and shakers of the Philippines. Legislators, business owners, media executives, judges, governors, mayors, generals. They thrive on favors and somehow get rich even if their salaries are not rich. They are all well schooled and well traveled. Their kids will be, too. Some have the same names as the streets in Manila. The Connected people make sure the Philippines does not change because they would be threatened by a system that demanded capability over favor as the basis for reward. It is important to open pipelines into this group, break down the country club atmosphere and mediocrity that thrives.

• The Oligarchs: These are the parallels to the kings, queens, princes, earls, dukes, duchesses of the British monarchy. Their wealth is enormous. They are an amalgamation of historically powerful landed families and big business moguls. They own the television stations, the telephone companies, the financial institutions, the shopping malls, the beer company, and the housing subdivisions. The oligarchs fund the politicians and, under the system of favors granted and received, get laws favorable to their continued enrichment. And the public, and the well-being of the Philippines, remain stuck in place, static, years behind the rest of the world. We should do a parade for the oligarchs and ask them to wear bejeweled crowns, they are so anachronistic. Then ban nepotism.

So now the question becomes, okay, we see the different classes, what are we going to do about it? How can we build a dynamic that allows people and families to work upward based on aspiration, skill and effort?  How do we get to production based on aspiration, and wealth based on production?

• Minimum wage. This is a classic two-edged sword. If you raise the minimum wage, businesses cut jobs. Much of the Subsistence Class works at unofficial wages, unreported, untaxed, below minimum. A constructive approach is to move in small steps to implement and enforce employee welfare laws. Edge toward formal wage practices nationwide. Establish government unions for certain laboring classes such as farm workers. The goal should be substantial reduction of the underpaid subsistence class in 20 year by pushing in small steps toward formality and a higher minimum wage that can be supported by the nation's growing wealth.

• Education is fundamentally important to give young citizens the knowledge they can build on in order to move up the ladder. Broad-based schools, disciplined, with good teachers and fewer than 45 kids per classroom. The framework is there, and the budgets are generous under President Aquino. But the schools can't keep up with the birth rate. Plus, the curriculum is stale and argued anew every year.  Here's the secret. RH Bill or executive order promoting rational birthing levels. And the internet as a teaching pipeline. It can be the way pressures is released from facilities and teachers to focus on knowledge. 

• TESDA is critically important to teach skills and to open an avenue up for the subsistence class and for low-skill workers to become high skill.  Fund the department generously and hold the leadership accountable for certain standards and results. Don't ignore this "applied" piece of the educational pie. It is hugely important as a migratory path bridging classes.

• If education is a constructive plank, it is also important to do some deconstruction. The Philippines is too much a closed society of good old boys and girls plugging up opportunity and ensuring mediocrity; you see this in the family names plastered on Manila street signs and in the legislature. A Fair Employment Act that discourages hiring "friends, family and favorites" and focuses solely on capability can fix this. Anti-dynasty laws in governance can help. Anti-trust laws in business. Break the barriers to entry to the Connected Class and rebuild the commerce of the nation on the energy of capable, ambitious people. Let the oligarchs die off in favor of a new breed of honestly competitive managers.

The "Bring 'em Back Act"

 I wonder what is the truth of the matter. Do top Philippine leaders want to bring overseas workers back home, or is the revenue generated too valuable?

Do leaders set aside the knowledge that citizens face broken homes, loneliness, and dangers of harassment and discrimination, or rape, so the Philippines can gain from the remittances which help build reserves and fund the drive to a higher ratings on debt?

That is, are citizens a commodity? A product the nation willingly manufactures through high birth rates? It "markets" the commodities by giving them training and setting up official links to other nations to open the pipelines to jobs for Filipinos?

Or are they citizens whose well-being is not being well cared for?

I wonder. I wonder.

There is no question that the number of overseas workers and the value of their remittances is a competitive advantage, economically, for the Philippines. It is a revenue stream that other nations cannot match, and it is one reason why the Philippine growth rate is second in Asia only to China. It is a big reason why S&P just upped the Philippines another notch on creditworthiness.

But the notion conflicts with what you hear about "Filipino pride".  How can you remain proud, but send your citizens away to be welcomed by, and often absorbed by, other nations?

Well, I sift through all the schtick on this matter and estimate that, best case, the boom in overseas workers is a temporary phenomenon to help jump start the economy in what we hope will soon be the "post corruption era". When the economy gets going for a few years or 20, we'd expect not so many Filipinos to be forced overseas.  Some will return.

"Yeah, right, Joe." That economy better really rip given the 1.7 million new babies born last year. If that birth rate continues, people will never get to come come home.

Worst case, therefore, is that nothing changes much.

The status quo is extraordinarily damaging TO FILIPINOS AT HOME. How many doctors and engineers have been driven out? How many capable business executives? How many potentially fine legislators?

Thousands.

 I make the distinction between a "brain drain", which conveys a rather passive meaning, to DRIVING OUT talented people by social and economic conditions that the nation's leaders simply can't get a handle on. Yes, citizens are DRIVEN OUT when its President and legislators can't do what needs to be done. When excessive birthing is seen as a religious virtue rather than broad-reaching social punishment. Indeed, I fear that leaders are living in Nevernever Land. The Philippines people will never have enough to eat and the nation will never get its citizens back to their families.

If nothing changes, it remains a fundamental given that talented Filipinos simply cannot earn what their skills are worth if they stay in the Philippines. How can we ask them to stay "for pride" when their whole family is living on the edge of poverty? Or in poverty.

So, simply following the line of logic, it is natural to ask next, "Okay, well, what can we do to bring the talent back? The doctors and engineers, the business managers, the professional or trade-skilled workers? The potentially capable legislators?"

There are two barriers.

• One, the economy is so very thin here. The industrial core is not deep enough and the middle class  is not rich enough to absorb the talent. Take doctors. Clients can't pay them enough; the market of rich people is not deep enough to fund more than a few well-paid doctors. Similarly, there is not enough money around so that companies can pay people well yet remain cost-competitive. So they don't pay them well.

• Subordinate to this is the ridiculous level of birthing, a condition resting squarely at the feet of the Catholic Church with it's stealth "doctrine of devastation". In the name of the pro-life movement, millions of lives are destroyed in slow motion under the cover of blindness to the effect doctrine has on real people. Think of kids digging through trash piles for food and the picture will slam home. Just connect the dots. Doctrine . . . starvation.

• But also subordinate to the thin economy is the fact that overseas many doctors step back to become nurses and many professionals step back to do service work (in restaurants, for example). Perhaps doctors and professionals don't have to make full western-scale wages to find returning the Philippines attractive. Maybe they just need the opportunity for a decent wage and the satisfaction that comes with being employed in the job for which they were trained.

• The third subordinate matter is that, as the peso strengthens, overseas workers are not able to send as much dollar-wealth back. For many, it will make less sense to stay overseas to work. So once the economy gets ripping, there will be a natural drift back to the Philippines.

• Two, the social framework in the Philippines does not nurture talent. It nurtures friends, family and favorites. And the whole social structure, the employment structure, is autocratic, not motivational. It does not recognize and promote talent. It doesn't excite and challenge good people with a steady upward track. It isolates them in a desert of no promise.

Well, let us presume that the Philippines is changing dramatically. The economic foundation is sound and getting more sound as tax leakages are stopped, the drains of corruption end, the offshore worker base expands and sends back billions each month, and some valuable commercial anchors are developed: agribusiness (e.g., rice as an export rather than import), gaming (casinos), call centers and more active tourism. Maybe the disjointed government effort to provide condoms and counseling, over the howls of the Catholic Church, will bring some reduction in the destructive over-birthing.

This is good. The economic half of the picture is moving the right direction. Just keep it cooking.

But what about the social half? The part that provides no hope, no promise for aspiring, capable workers to grow richer in job title and pay?

I have previously proposed that a "Fair Employment Act" be passed to end the hiring of people by government offices and big business on any basis but competency to do the job. People's eyes glaze over at the notion. This SOUNDS like so much Polly Anna gibberish. It's hard to relate to the dynamics of productivity that exist in the United States unless you have worked in the United States. The idea of a "Fair Employment Act" fizzles and falls flat.

So I propose re-naming the law. Giving it a decidedly Filipino twist. Call it the "Bring 'em Back Act". Establish something that is called a "career in the Philippines" that means something to those capable people overseas. Give them something to come back TO:  opportunity, for example. The chance to grow and have a career and get richer over the years. The same thing they left the Philippines to find.

Turn the tables. Flip the flapjack. Present them with "opportunity" in the Philippines.

Under this act, restrict the hiring of friends, family and favorites in government and large businesses. There should be only one criterion for hiring and promotions. Competency. The ability to do the job better than anyone else. When this is the law, companies and government officials will see the advantage of nurturing its own capable people, because they are the best pool of resources to draw from. They will see the advantage of looking overseas to find Filipino talent they can bring back to the Philippines. They will learn to be less autocratic because they will quickly see that they lose good people when they do not properly motivate them.

Both workers and employers gain by an individual's hard, productive work, and his promotion to greater and greater responsibility.

That's what we want to bring overseas workers back to.

The opportunity to grow. To know that good work returns a reasonable wage and, beyond that, recognition and promotion, prestige and wealth.

One simple step can be taken by the legislature to compliment the natural progression of the economy:

Pass the "BRING 'EM BACK ACT!"

One Nation, Under God, Absurd and Infinitely Divisible

Author's Note: You may have read some of this before. What I'd ask that you keep in mind is how straightforward it can be to do what is good for the Philippines if the goal is simple yet profound.
________

Philippine society has a split personality, one wholesome, fun-loving and family oriented, the other a pyramid of dysfunctions built on a base of personal insecurity and greed.

The good one is most of the people on most days.

The bad one SEEMS to be most of the government on most days. I know there are a lot of good people doing a lot of good work in government, but the ineffective seems to bubble to the top where we can see them.

Quick digression. Kudos to the Aquino government for holding 31 DENR officials to account for the killer flash floods that ripped through Cagayan de Oro last year. The 31 lost their jobs and some are likely to be prosecuted. It is good that the President got angry that his Executive Order on illegal logging was ignored. A law without enforcement is not a law.

For the good Philippines, the main currency is the peso, and there are far too few to go around. For the bad one, the main currency is power which lubricates the trade of favors from which so many pesos derive.

Let's deal mainly with the bad one since our aspiration is to emulate the sensationalist Philippine media. Joltin' Joe Muckraker at his best, offering up unproved deductions in the guise of knowledge.

The horribly broken down Philippine institutions are: the courts and the legal structure that feeds them, the education system, the framework for taxation, Manila's infrastructure, local zoning departments, justice and NBI, Customs, and DENR. The health system exists (hospitals exist), but nobody can afford care, so the infrastructure is dilapidated and weak, especially in the provinces.

Tourism and business work pretty well. They are getting better, deeper, more competitive. Agribusiness does its thing, a tad under-mechanized, but not wholly broken down. The military is stable and improving. The police do what they do, sometimes half-assed, sometimes well. Utilities need a lot of work but they aren't the cause of the State's dilapidated state. Transportation is a hodgepodge but generally moves better than Los Angeles Freeways, and a lot more cheaply; the variety fits the economy where only a few people own cars.

Moral values are frozen leftovers imported by the Catholic Church from centuries ago when the earth was huge and the population was but a fraction of what it is today. Now the seas are rising, the storms are raging and the resources are shrinking. Babies and kids swarm everywhere; where are their jobs? Overseas?

This is the last nation on the planet with no divorce outlet for a failed marriage. Scroll the title . . ."Of women's bondage . . ."

It seems like the nation simply cannot get unstuck from its massive absurdities.

• Manila is 10 separate cities, each with its own agenda. You can drive from Makati to Kaloocan and see the patchwork of good and bad, mostly bad, and rich and poor, mostly poor. This is Europe on a minor scale, each civic entity arguing for its own right to run things, thus consigning the whole to divisive spats and herky-jerky progress. No one can muster the consensus to change this, to make Manila once again the pride of Asia. It rots, sewers plugged, traffic jammed, broken pavement and buildings everywhere, and those slums, the worst of the worst, here and there. It is the pit of Asia, no longer the pearl, and no one has a master plan. That's absurd.

• The Catholic Doctrine is driving the nation to out-of-control over-birthing and poverty-stricken ruination but accepts no responsibility for this. The Church evidently cannot multiply 8 (sets of parents) times 8 (kids) and come up with 64 young, hungry mouths with nowhere to go and little to eat. They see birthing as addition, 2 + 1 = 3. Nothing scary about that, eh? Women are considered subordinate to men. And the nation's leaders continue to bow before priests. That's absurd.

• Education should teach creativity and achievement, but the Department of Education can't DO creativity and achievement. They do autocratic, and they do whining for budget. That's absurd.

• Never has so much intelligence gone to waste as in the Judiciary and the inept lawyering that is the legal foundation of the Philippines. Inefficient, illogical, political. Wasting effort on annulment hearings whilst murderers go free. No sense that speed is important for justice to be just. It is the biggest mess in the world. They are paper-pushers, that's all. "Stalling for cash". It oughta be a TV game show hosted by Kris Aquino. Lawyers pass the bar and then seem to go zero on us, demonstrating no passion for RIGHT over WRONG. That's absurd.

• No one sees that the difference between American productivity and Philippine ineptitude has to do with motivating individual workers to perform, to grow, to gain rewards of wallet and esteem, to climb careers built on opportunity. The U.S. is a firestorm of well motivated, hard driving workers. Here? Hire Uncle Manualo for that plum supervisory job and watch him flop about. Appoint the wife there and watch her arrive late and leave early. Bring Junior up the ladder and watch him party with the stars. Ignore the lower class workers. Never mind that all this squashes the ambition and opportunity for Jose Genius and chases his brain and talent overseas. It isn't a brain DRAIN, actually. It is a CATTLE DRIVE, a stampede, a social system that assures talent must go elsewhere to succeed. That's absurd.

Kafka would love it.

He wouldn't have to write books about absurdity, like "The Castle". He'd just invite people to the Philippines.

And the root of the power pushing is self interest, too often founded on insecurity. That is not a healthy mix. It assures lots of angry power struggles. It seems like there are win/lose tussles at every turn. Enemies at every corner. Saving face. Punishing those who offend face. Biting and bitter, the mood of most moments.

Few people seem to have the tools to generate harmony under pressure; to debate; to problem solve. They tear others down.

Harmony is built on trust. It requires that people accept responsibility for the good and the bad that flow from their decisions, not dump on innocents. It requires the graciousness to concede arguments and authority to others who may do things just a little differently.

People are trying so hard to be winners here that they trample on others. And we all lose

Maybe the solution is to help people understand that winning is not the goal. Because you are only defeating other Filipinos, thereby defeating the Philippines. Building is what is important.

I hope the huge mass of good Filipinos can master the techniques of power pushing, maybe under the direction of social-media opinion leaders, to claim back the nation that is rightfully theirs. I do hope so.

The good people could do this . . . take RESPONSIBILITY for doing this . . . by voting well in 2013 and 2016. Toss out the old, ineffectual barriers to progressive thinking. Bring in new, fresh thinking that is not automatic for re-election. Make 'em EARN re-election!

Here's to the rise of the responsible Filipino! The good Filipino!

Social Drains on Economic Gains

Why does the Philippine economy persist in failing to generate enough wealth to cut into the nation's deep poverty? It is not a monetary issue, this persistently laggard struggle. It has little to do with numbers.  It is social. It is the people infrastructure that relentlessly sucks the life from wealth-building.

"Hey, Joe! Whatchu drivin' at?"

Well, corruption is a social drain. It is one of the more tangible. But it is not so damaging. Consider when a government contract is let for an amount greater than the true value of the project. The excess covers kickbacks, padding, and "expenses" like travel first class in luxury resorts. The illegal money that stays in the Philippines works to support the Philippine economy. It is not lost. What is lost are the projects that don't get done because the budget is eaten away by the bloated, overbid projects. So the infrastructure that could be built is only partially built. Year after year, lagging, lagging, lagging . . .

Small corruption, the P100 under the table to the LTO lady to get on the top of her stack of paper, is generally spent in the Philippines. It is not lost. It is just "value creation" that is not taxed.

Everyone understands that corruption is bad. But it is not the main reason for the weak Philippine  economy. Indeed, fighting corruption represents a distraction. Leaders get complacent and happy with their showboat achievements on corruption and don't do anything about the more fundamental problems.

Here are the three barriers to wealth-generation that are bigger than corruption:

• Weak employment practices. Gigantic damage.  Much bigger than corruption. It's just that you can't see the tangible shortfall so clearly. Hiring favorites, friends and family instead of hiring for competence. Blocking top performers by giving someone's uncle a job. Not nurturing productivity. No performance reviews. No promotions. No merit increases. No innovation. No fast-tracking of top producers. These good disciplines don't happen enough here. Managers are autocratic straw bosses, not motivators. This simply sucks the good thinking and productive work out of the drive for profit, for wealth. The Philippines flat out lacks the dynamic drive for productivity and success that you can see in the United States. And everyone just shrugs . . . "it's the way we do it, Joe . . ."

Yes it is.

• Catholic values keep the nation forever poor as the over-birthing masses eat away the jobs the economy is trying to generate. This is easy to fix, but no one has the nerve to go against the Great Protector of dark age Philippine morality. Its is not about abortion; that is a flame-thrower the Church uses to blast away well-intended opponents. It is about telling the people it is important that they have small families, for the good of the nation. So simple to fix. So impossible to do, given what appears to be a lack of commitment in the Executive Office to get the birth rate down.

• Education that does not inspire kids to look forward (plan, organize and make good decisions), look outward (ingenuity), or look inward (healthy self esteem). Kids are subjects for authoritarians to rule over. Memorize this. Upchuck that. Sit down, shut up. That capitalistic fire in the belly, the competitive zeal and commitment to achieve, is dead out. Snuffed, grades 1-12. Filipinos create little, invent little, innovate few new processes that are productive. They don't learn how.

"It's the way we do it, Joe."

Yep. You do.

Those are the big three. The big dawgs of economic impotence.

Oh, there are other social flaws as well, but they are not as pronounced in dragging the economy down.

Women are held in check by a warped puritanical morality that says education about birth control is bad because it may encourage sex outside of marriage. As if coat hanger abortions were irrelevant, or as if it were okay that 12 women die daily because of unhealthy pregnancies. Women are held in check by marriage contracts that have no termination clause. So husbands can beat them, have relationships with other women, abandon the wife and kids, and any woman who wants out will found herself attacked in the courts like she is some fiendish criminal. What a waste of judicial resources, what a misguided morality.

Backward is as backward is. Sorry, ladies.

But that's the way it is . . .

The courts are horrible at handing out quick, precise justice. So the wrongs that damage society are never corrected, fostering a slow bleeding of vibrancy from the economy. Case law is so tainted by favoritism that it has the legal weight of a stack of comic books.

Too bad the bar is stocked with drinks instead of attorneys with a fine sense of right and wrong and the honorableness to pursue right with a vengeance.

Some day we will have a Rizal kind of president. A guy with depth of vision who can see what is really going on around here. Not a continuation of the line of presidents who are locked into the very culture that holds the Philippines back. Who are blind to the ways their culture is assured of being mediocre, or even backward.

A president who can see that the Philippines would flourish with employment practices that energize  productivity, with social values that free Filipinos instead of hold them in dark age limbo, and with education that brings fresh, bright thinking to the nation.

Some day . . . it won't be the way it is . . .