I see a lot of criticism on greed and corruption, which is
morally encouraging but intellectually challenging. Intellectually
challenging not because it is stupid to say something like that,
but that solving the issue requires intellectual capability
currently beyond us.
Mr David Marshall mentioned of the Chinese race, and since
Singapore is ruled majority by ethnic Chinese, I shall start my
argument with the Chinese. Through out China's history, I have not
been able to find a single dynasty or era where there's no or
little corruption. Traditionally, the pay of Chinese official had
always been around the middle class income, but they are living the
life style of the super class. Culturaly, it also seems to be the
expectation of Chinese for officials to be rich. I guess this is
the cultural dilemma and conflict of the Chinese, at one end, when
someone become an Official, we expect him/her to Yi Jing Huan Xiang
(return home in glory), but on the other hand, we praise people who
Bu Wei Wu Dou Mi Er Zhe Yao (refusing to give in to monetary gain).
We give praises to the historically poor such as Yan Hui but enjoy
showing off our present wealth. Perhaps one can argue that its due
to our twisted culture that through out the entire history of the
Chinese civilisation, nobody can bring forth a body of officials
that are clean. Even at present days, the corruption level in both
Taiwan and China leaves much to be desire.
One might argue that this is due to what Marshall called
confucianism authoritarian. What about Taiwan then? Its demoracy is
very much modeled after the US, and still there is no end to the
corruption scandals.
Speaking of US, the world's leader in democracy, is its corruption
well under control? How often is a politician's action being
interfered by those who sponsered their political campaign? By the
rich Churches, NRA and other enterprises empires. Has Dick Cheney's
position in the Defence industry anything to do with him advocating
war?
We speak of putting the morally superior in our parliament and
government, are there indeed so many morally superior persons? How
many can retain their moral superiority when they are in the
position to be tempted? Is cutting the pay of our ministers going
to solve the problem of corruption? How many of them will stay in
the political arena? If they leave, people may jeer at them, but
who's going to take their place in Parliament and Cabinet? Can we
be sure that there actually exist enough morally superior people
with the required capability to occupy the positions?
How many countries in this world has a clean government in the
first place? Perhaps not a lot. Of course the argument can go into
the line of "what should" instead of "what is", but if the model of
"what should" does not exist other than in Utopian stories and our
imagination, what will happen to us when we implement it?
Greed does not equal to corruption, but many had drawn them
parallel. Some one earlier said that greed is worse than
corruption, because greed is unsatisfiable. This would probably be
where we draw the line. Lets face it, reality is, the majority of
the population has greed, each has a different level, if its not
satisfied and one is in the position, chances are, corruption will
occur. The extremely greedy, as the extremely not greedy, are
extremely rare, and the former will be the ones that we can, will
and must get rid from our governmental bodies. The latter are those
we desire, but their lack in numbers and perhaps abilities do not
make up the required numbers we need. So we need to draw from the
bulk of the normal greed people in the society and satisfy these's
people greed to the extend that the society can bear. At this
stage, I think that their pay is still sustainable by our society.
Cutting their pay will not necessary free up a lot of money for the
rest of us, and I would not predict a good outcome.
