Is
the status quo in fact our be-all and end-all because it serves our
purpose? And that we weathered the Great Recession while the rest of
the world tripped? More so since we believe that our faith holds the
keys to heaven? Yet the status quo is also the reality of hapless
Juan de la Cruz who can’t call the shots? [Thousands of miles away,
while sitting through 2013 budget reviews, it wasn’t surprising
that some of my Eastern European friends would reveal their inability
to visualize the future – given their dark past – even when many
of them have already benefited from the continuing education their
leadership has put them through.]
But
back to PHL: The good news is global finance types are talking about
us as the next tiger, thanks to "daang matuwid.” Yet we
ought to be circumspect given how they also saw Russia as part of
BRIC, the supposed tigers? People in this part of the world who know
what Russia is like take that BRIC label with a grain of salt. Russia
is still very much driven by oil and Putin, and when oil is over $100
they are prosperous, and Putin is a hero – but not to the
protesters in Red Square. What about PHL? Indeed we must be
circumspect about being the next tiger. Fortunately we have "daang
matuwid" instead of a Putin. Yet we can't take the status
quo as our ticket to truly becoming a tiger, precisely why we needed
"daang matuwid." We can't be like a house that is
built upon the sand? And our elders drilled into us what that meant.
In the hierarchy of needs, for example, they preached that we must
recognize that a roof over our head comes before a car. [And which my
wife repeated to our daughter after she got her driver’s license
and thus had to make do with what was available in the garage, going
against the American convention.] Of course in the modern era that
has been supplanted by the credit culture peddled by bankers . . .
until the bubble burst and plunged the world into the Great
Recession. And my Eastern European friends would remind themselves
that indeed there are risks in being roped into the credit culture of
the West – as they witnessed how a property boom could turn into a
bust.
But
bad credit comes in different forms. And the Dutch have become the
classic example of what is now known as the Dutch disease. And the
best way to explain that is our OFW remittances have kept our
consumption-economy humming; and we think its manna from heaven. And
this has been reinforced by our half-a-dozen dominant entities that
continue to prosper principally due to these remittances – and the
simple arithmetic is reflected in our local economy being more than
twice our export receipts. And we’re proud of it, making it our
Dutch disease?
And
that house upon the sand becomes glaring given the absence of
something as fundamental as basic infrastructure. Add to that the
absence of an industrial base of strategic industries that have a
greater multiplier effect than our consumption-driven economy. And
because our export history is one of third-party contracting, the sad
reality is innovation – which directly impacts competitiveness –
is a major gap in our capability as an economy and as a nation. And
we gloss over this reality and look at an economy either as
consumption- or export-driven. While nations that are steeped in
innovation and competitiveness generate greater wealth; and why
international agencies are preaching innovation and competitiveness
especially to developing countries. On the other hand we like to
think that our handful of dominant enterprises are great models
failing to recognize that they are such not because of innovation and
competitiveness but rather in our parochial society they are dominant
in a market that is fairly large – of 100 million consumers. And
thus we've remained poverty-stricken. To be parochial, as the last 50
years bear witness, can't make us a developed economy or raise our
per capita output 10-fold. Meanwhile our neighbors who took the
outward and global view developed their competitiveness and simply
left us behind.
And
which brings us to the status quo, which in this day and age is not
what we must preserve? What we need is to build our house upon a
rock, one that has its basic infrastructure in place as well as its
strategic industries that are sustained by continuing investments and
innovation. We have no choice but to learn the ropes and move up the
learning curve. We can't be an island unto ourselves, especially as
we discourage foreign investors, the surest way to perpetuate
hierarchy and oligarchy (and turn back the hands of time) like they
do in Russia.
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