Therefore, it isn’t that less bureaucracy is a good thing; we just need a high-performing bureaucracy. We really need to quit sabotaging our organisations, public and private.
All in Politics
Therefore, it isn’t that less bureaucracy is a good thing; we just need a high-performing bureaucracy. We really need to quit sabotaging our organisations, public and private.
So, as we aspire to be “innovative” or “creative”, we must learn to be better at evaluating plausible useful counterfactuals. Playing too safe doesn’t really get us anywhere beyond what may be in textbooks. And being too unanchored just creates arguments as useful as those in YouTube comments.
The best part about reading stuff is learning new ideas and seeing how they might connect to other ideas or be applicable to certain situations or circumstances. So with that in mind, I thought I would just share four of the most interesting ideas I learnt in 2023, be it from books or articles.
It isn’t just our national finances that can ill-afford such populist measures, it is our entire development path. Can we come together to better understand our elite social terrain, and make moves towards a more sustainable future?
Global politics have historically coincided with the advancement of science and technology, in large part because global competition — be it among companies, firms or individuals — allows for greater funding of innovation. We are in such an “era”.
The point of the article was to figure out, in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner, some better indicators for Malaysia’s economic development as opposed to the more popular ones. And so, in a further adaptation of Blattman’s concept, I have proposed a further 10 “indie” development indicators.
Survival requires adaptability and agility, making full use of all the tools in our toolbox, instead of being a hammer treating everything as nails. And our longer-term future depends on our ability to grow, change and innovate — we should take a cue from nature and be as creative as we can be.
Those in power typically prefer the status quo; after all, rules were made by those who were powerful enough to set the rules in the first place. And while rules are ostensibly made for the benefit of all, they are rarely, if ever, made at the expense of those in power.
The reality of economic development is that, however we feel about them, elites exist and the elite bargain does matter. And an elite bargain that accelerates economic growth may not necessarily be the same bargain that maintains that growth.
“New blood” necessarily means going against the status quo. That status quo can be entrenched for a variety of reasons, among which are the types of bonds developed since teenage-hood, forged in boarding schools across the nation.
It is not enough for policymakers to announce important ambitions and policy promises, we need all of Malaysia’s collective brain — our institutions, our cultural norms — to want to change as well. And that can be difficult.