Double Conundrum

I’ll assume you read the whole essay below by Prof Bryan Caplan. If you’ve not, please do. Otherwise, thtre’s no point in continuing with this post.

I’m not going to rubbish it, if that’s what you’re thinking. You might want to try the TOC for that, you’ll find that there are many angry people hanging around that site who are glad to oblige you.

I’m especially pleased by the fact that we had managed to, quite independently of each other, I might add, made similar observations and conclusions on the city-state conundrum. Flattering. Unfortunately I don’t lecture senior civil servants.

A little background on the man as well. He is a libertarian, which means that he holds that all things being equal, minimal government intervention is ideal. I can’t say for sure, but he also has a reputation for mildly anarchist tendencies. That such a person could resist spitting venom at Singapore’s big-government situation is already remarkable in itself, let alone his series of lectures and interactions with civil servants.

Which brings up another matter. Not to question his credentials as an academic, but by his own admission he spends 80% of his time in Singapore around our civil servants. I can only wonder if such a non-representative circle could had presented to him an accurate picture of our island?

Not that it matters, given the subject content. He has, as a academic rightly should, chosen to focus solely on the principles and methods of our frankly autocratic governance, as well as their apparent theoretical irreconcilability with economic success, which the PAP has over the last 50 years gone out of its way to disprove. He isn’t commenting on the effects of specific policies, nor the calibre of our MPS, and only indirectly addresses the state of the local opposition. He has concerned himself only with the government model, which in any case can only be understood in an abstract sense, and anything so abstract removes the ground to irrelevance.

But it doesn’t end here. As an external observer, it would not be much to ask to agree that he would likely to more impartial than most local political pundits, given his lack of sympathies. then again, there is the age-old argument that in being removed he lacks an intimacy of knowledge and sentiment necessary to form an accurate picture.

Hence the conundrum. Perfect impartiality versus perfect information, and we may choose only one. Much like how standing close to a painting affords you to scrutinize even the minutest brush and detail, but standing further away would give you the full picture.

This question is an age-old one for a reason. There is frankly no satisfactory answer I can offer, but the onus is on each of us to bear the problem in mind while we chew over our thoughts.

Leaving such whims aside, there is one way to completely smash the entire argument from Prof Caplan. One need only accept that the organs of our city-state, the civil service and judiciary, are illegitimate extensions of PAP power.

It is, however, a premise which begs the question. In attempting to show that the PAP is corrupt, or actually a totalitarian dynasty in disguise, one makes the claim that it has illegally co-opted the organs of the state. In order for such a claim to be true, the PAP and the organs must either be corrupt, or attempting to maintain a totalitarian dynasty. The premise presumes the conclusion, and I find that the statement cannot be accepted as an argument.

True, that the reverse is true if we are to try and make a case that says the PAP is not corrupt, and is fully democratic. But unfortunately for the detractor the onus is on him to prove the guilt and not on the defendant to prove his innocence.

Prof Caplan’s view that Singapore’s civil service is by and large incorrupt, or at least has suppressed corruption to barely noticeable levels, easily draws immense ire from detractors, who self-righteously point out that the same civil servants draw fat pay packets from the government, funded by taxes. Prof Caplan stands accused of neglect in his analysis. Not even an academic can claim protection.

But the detractors miss the point. For one thing, they have again begged the question, this time using the wrong premise for the same conclusion. Ensuring that the top remains well-paid is the main strategy adopted for staving off corruption; indeed, there is much evidence to suggest that such was the primary reason for the fat pay packets in the first place. It is otherwise difficult to explain away why MM Lee and SM Goh routinely stress to Chinese ministers the importance of paying their civil service well to keep corruption at bay.

For another, in corruption and bribery the issue is that the official is accepting revenue from an unofficial source, one that constitutes a conflict of interest with his job. Then a government’s generous pay cannot be considered corruption or bribery at all, in fact there is no problem with it, since the government is the paymaster anyway. There is no conflict of interest.

Certainly, there exists the counter-argument (which I frankly doubt the vast majority of the hotheads have the perception, intelligence, temperament, postivism or simple good sense to see it for themselves) that given the dominant-party system, there is no distinguishing from the Singapore government and the PAP, so the high pay can also be seen as a ‘bonus’ being dispensed by the party for its own benefit, using tax money.

Valid? Yes. Convincing? If you begin from the assumption or premise that the PAP is essentially malevolent, then certainly, but do be aware that you and the pro-PAP man now have nothing more to say to each other, you may as well be living on entirely different planets. Strong? No, tenuous at best, even if it is impossible to disprove, but it is also impossible to prove.

Prof Caplan’s essay may have its bases covered, but not really by its own virtue, more by the fact that it hasn’t been properly challenged. It’s winning by default, or perhaps by walkover.

It’s OK if you don’t detect the sarcasm.

Prof Caplan in his essay entirely neglected the GRC system. That cannot be forgiven, even for an academic in his ivory tower. GRCs are so unique to Singapore that I fail to understand how he could had missed them.

Here, the claim that it was imposed with the aim of ensuring that the PAP would remain in power, is at least as credible and as strong as it officially declared notion of being a bulwark against racial politics.

There has never been a satisfactory answer. It is not my business today to offer one, but only to offer some balance for both sides. That seems to be about done. Have I missed anything?

Piaroh-Cze:

The perpendicular view.