Just my 2 cents.
There are indeed two slippery slopes that one might see from the
dialog:
1. the first slippery slope is that there will be people who can
conveniently use the govt or whatever as their crutch (being the
word of the day) or excuse to just wallow and not work their way up
ie. use their own determination etc.
This position assumes firstly that the people have the wherewithal
to do it (i.e. innate intelligence, skills) and that the innate
potential "fits" into the existing rules.
2. the other slippery slope is that the elite, the policy makers
etc can continue to blame the "poor" people for being lazy without
relooking at current practices.
While it is important to be objective and pragmatic, the govt has
the understand that it hands-all-over manner of governing and
managing the country AND the economy has severe repercussions for
the growth and development of the people.
The second slippery slope that many in this dialog have pointed is
more salient, IMHO, than the first which is what hardhall was
trying to push hard on. Why?
In academic terms, Anthony Giddens, Bourdieu and a bunch of other
European sociologist have long pointed to the power of structures
over human agency and actions. Albeit humans have its ability to
influence and mold structures, structures and the inherent values
have powerful consequences over human actions as well. They refer
to this as the duality of structures i.e. they are created by and
yet at the same time recreate by influencing human actions.
in our case, the all encompassing structures imposed by the
government in all areas of our lives be it in education, economy,
even sports does and will have powerful influences on all levels of
society, especially those in the lower rungs. That, I think is what
many of the contributors are pointing to in their various
vignettes. Regardless of what hardhall thinks - ie. actions and not
speech, there are enough evidence - go talk to social workers, go
talk to primary school kids in neighbourhood schools - to show that
it is not easy (though not impossible) to break out from these
cycles.
The government's role can therefore be:
1. To listen closely and rethink and relook at all issues and
continue with their tinkering. This decision however will be
continually plagued by grievances - simply because they are not
omnipotent. Theory and practice in both societies and business have
shown that there will be always unintended consequences. This is
inevitable due to the complexities of issues at hand. Unlike
financial market management where transactions can be reduced to
numbers and dealt with alogrithms, governance inexplicably involves
human emotions, thoughts, aspirations and actions. This requires
ongoing actions to keep things moving on an even keel.
2. The other option is to adopt a cultivation approach and this
requires a major shift in govt mindset i.e. a less hands on
approach. This approach recognizes the failings of human cognitions
and rationality. This approach accepts that inevitable unintended
consequences will arise. However, this approach takes a bottom up
view and intervenes to cultivate the growth. It is analogous to
growing plants. You can cultivate it (to the extreme would be
bonsai planting) knowing that the plant has an innate life force
with its ability to thrive with or without your intervention. Yet
your interventions while at the one hand may not aid terribly in
its growth can have severe ill repercussions that will either
hinder or in the worse case destroy the plant and its growth.
Because of this understanding, a govt will use kid's gloves to
handle the ongoing interventions that it introduces and not
slipshodly try to bulldoze its way onto the country that it tries
to govern. This is probably in line with Catherine Lim's point to
the govt i.e. mind the affective gap.
Sorry for the long post but this is something that is close to my
heart.
