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Should We Wait Until All Filipinos Straighten Up Their Act Before Opening Up the Economy to 100% Shares Ownership for Foreign Investments?

CoRRECT Movement

I remembered how often I complain about the lack of discipline in the Philippines. I went to Singapore in 1998 and it was a very disciplined, clean country. In fact, it's a very fine country because petty offenses do get fined such as littering. Doing such will encourage peace and order. I felt it was what Filipinos needed--more discipline! I was only 13 years old when I first went to Singapore. Even worse, high school economics was only taught during the graduating year--something that felt stupid and very last minute even if it was one whole year of discussion. It was a waste, really, to have a teacher who was as brilliant and strict as the late Miriam Palma Defensor-Santiago (MDS), if economics was taught as a "last-minute subject". I even flunked the first grading though I did get better with her help. I even feel that teacher of mine is better off teaching abroad because she was too brilliant to be left in a dull country. Education should've been upgraded to K+12 years ago. 

I only learned more about economics in college. I did get better grades in college economics but I still felt stupid that, somehow, schools just fail to impart economic knowledge. I had my international marketing subject which I did well but not too well. I graduated from the University of San Carlos last 2007 with a Bachelor of Business Administration.  I ended up taking my Master in Business Administration degree last June 2011 and graduated around October 2014. However, I didn't march on to my graduation due to real-life issues. 

A check on the current dominant dysfunctionality with Filipino culture

I decided to recall some stuff I learned from the international marketing class. We had a professor who was strict as she can get but at reasonable levels. I remembered how students complained about her because she was strict. I felt like I had my old economics teacher in high school so I decided to study harder. Some stuff in her syllabus wrote, "Filipino time is not acceptable." which is just one. I don't want to call it "Filipino time" but just being tardy. Filipino time should be simply said, "Filipinos on time based on Philippine time." She rose the passing rate from 50% to 60% which I think was a bit just. Sometimes, standards need to be raised and I decided not to protest like the others. I only protested when teachers started to go against the school rules. Too often, the teacher said that the country doesn't improve because of its bad habits. Bad habits like habitual tardiness and mediocrity hold the Philippines back. I remembered how I kept saying such habits are holding the Philippines back from becoming a first-world country. I even felt that investor confidence may be lowered due to bad habits which almost feel very cultural in nature. 

Somebody might say that Filipinos need to change their bad habits first before the government should open up the Philippines to 100% shares ownership to FDI from multinational corporations. It's because there are so many bad habits that are very common among my fellow Filipinos. Some of these habits are such as a poor understanding of basic business principles and economic principles. Some people display it by blaming presidents for the prices of gasoline, wishing for more government subsidies, thinking that only foreign investors will get rich if you let them invest here in the Philippines, and demand for salary increases while lowering the prices of finished products. Poor monetary habits are very hard to deny such as blowout during payday, spending one's paycheck on nonsense stuff instead of paying the important stuff, borrowing tons of money (seldomly from five-six lending) to celebrate the Christmas and New Year lavishly, and getting into more debt than one should support a lavish lifestyle one can't afford. 

It would be very easy to give out more excuses. These excuses can be like:
  1. "Filipinos have poor money habits and they will just waste the money offered by MNCs like they did with the money from local investors. It will never change!"
  2. "Filipino businesses have no power to last against MNCs. Do you want them to get squashed? Let's wait for them to get better before letting MNCs enter!"

What international economics did in regards to their wayward countries may surprise some

Reading the late Lee Kuan Yew's book From Third World to First (which can be ordered online such as Shopee and Lazada) has given me newer insights. In fact, Lee even stated on page 66 of his book the following about MNCs:
Our job was to plan the broad economic objectives and the target periods within which to achieve them. We reviewed these plans regularly and adjusted them as new realities changed the outlook. Infrastructure and the training and education of workers to meet the needs of employers had to be planned years in advance. We did not have a group of readymade entrepreneurs such as Hong Kong gained in the Chinese industrialists and bankers who came fleeing from Shanghai, Canton, and other cities when the communists took over. Had we waited for our traders to learn to be industrialists we would have starved. It is absurd for critics to suggest in the 1990s that had we grown our own entrepreneurs, we would have been less at the mercy of the rootless MNCs. Even with the experienced talent Hong Kong received in Chinese refugees, its manufacturing technology level is not in the same class as that of the MNCs in Singapore.

Instead, what Lee did was invite MNCs while Singapore was still a third-world country. Waiting for Singaporeans to learn to be industrialists before opening to the MNCs would be economic suicide. It was already a country in need of more money. Lee needed money before he could even green up Singapore into a cleaner country. Lee didn't wait until the Singaporeans became better in economics and business. Instead, Lee decided to invite more people such as the late Albert Winsemius to help out. Both Lee and the late Go Kweng See weren't impressed at what the "development economists" of their time said about MNCs. They knew what they were doing by inviting MNCs to invest while Singapore was still in shambles.

Deng Xiaoping was left with a China that was culturally crippled by Mao Zedong's rule. Mao's Communist regime ended up punishing the diligent and rewarding the lazy. Mao's rule ended up introducing impunity. Deng was 72 years old when he ruled China. Most people would've wanted to retire. Instead, Deng was focused on modernizing China from the culture Mao gave it. What Deng did was go to America and told them, "China is open for business." He never waited for the Chinese to be better after Mao's poor economic policies left them ignorant. Deng, as an old man, went all the way to invite MNCs to China to do the same thing. 

Vietnam was also a country once of a lower rank.  Yet, the economist who is known as the late Do Muoi (perhaps where Doi Moi program got its name) also didn't wait for the Vietnamese to be more business savvy. Reading Chapter 19 of From Third World to First can introduce one to what Vietnam was and became. Vietnam became another economically successful country because of free markets. Vietnam became another manufacturing hub.

The countries I just mentioned didn't wait until their citizens "straightened up". In contrast, they decided to get people to straighten up their act by introducing free markets as part of their plan. Lee couldn't have established Singapore the way it is by discipline alone. It's almost impossible to discipline the poor especially if they have to work several jobs a day to feed their families. Some become Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) which separates them from their families just to earn money. How can these families really discipline the family if they're hardly there? 

I could also answer the objectives I get by saying this. True, Filipinos might waste their salary from the MNCs that they're employed. However, if there were more job opportunities then more Filipinos will start to develop a sense of self-sufficiency. More Filipinos understand economics better if they are seeing it applied all the more. If OFWs started to return home and get locally employed because MNCs are now in the Philippines--they could now start to teach their children how to value the money. That means the days of free riding on the OFW family member will come to an end. The leeches will have to look for jobs when there will be more job opportunities available. The norm of being jobless will no longer be the norm when more people have jobs. If more people have jobs and have money then that will actually lessen crime. Some people enter into crime because they're easily manipulated when they're starving. They're also mentally weaker because being hungry also makes one stupid whether one notices it or not. It's like how studying on an empty stomach is really just as ill-advised as doing heavy cardio or heavy work in that condition. 

Instead, let's talk about the symptoms and the cause of the symptoms. A person is sick but you need to understand if it was a symptom or not. A person may just have a fever or the fever could be a symptom of something like dengue. If a person has dengue then hospitalization is urgent. I believe that a lot of problems of Filipino bad habits stem from not having a competitive free market. Why would people want to do business properly or work properly if the economy is restrictive? If the local businesses have very little competition then would they want to be competitive? A weak boss will have a weak system creating weaker employees. A weak boss is a result of a weak economic system. However, in a competitive economy, local businesses will need and want to do better. Besides, some local businesses are now world-class such as Jollibee is no longer confined to the Philippines but has become a worldwide franchise like its competition McDonald's. Bo's Coffee Club is still standing strong even after Taiwanese milk tea franchises entered the Philippines. The only businesses that die (whether local or foreign) are those that don't improve themselves. 

If we had to wait for Filipinos to straighten up their act then that will take several generations. Yes, I'm not kidding. How are we going to even get each and every Filipino to straighten up? In my experience, no matter how I stressed dup, "People like you are why we don't improve!" to such people is just stressful. Do you think they could even change if there's hardly any free-market competition? Not everyone will change but introducing a change in the economic system can change things. It can take a way that the majority will swing in the right direction. What used to be a majority of people who are unruly will either change their ways or perish. This change may introduce change without waiting for several generations before it would ever happen. 

References

Books

"From Third World to First--The Singapore Story: 1965-2000) by Lee Kuan Yew
Harpers Collins Publishers

Websites

"5 Primal reasons why is competition good for business"

"DENG XIAOPING'S EARLY ECONOMIC REFORMS"

"Glocalization" by Adam Hayes, reviewed by Gordon Scott (Updated: March 26, 2020)

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