Squarepusher - Hello Meow

Big Problem, Small Solution

A fire gutted Metro Gaisano three days ago. While the fire is now under control, the incident revealed that the city's firefighting capabilities may not be up to the task when it comes to fires in large buildings. It's a sobering thought: what if there's a fire on the tenth floor of a building? How will our firefighters handle it? Why are we only thinking this now!?

I wrote before how when the government is faced with a problem, it always takes dumbest and most oppressive approach to deal with it. Like clockwork, the mayor is now mulling a temporary ban on the construction of tall buildings. Again, the answer is always to enact small-minded policies which hamper the Filipino and the development of the Philippines. Instead of upgrading our firefighting capabilities, developers will just have to limit themselves to however many floors the government decides is best. Metro Gaisano only went up to six floors. Coupled with his penchant for closing establishments, Mayor Osmena could be the most anti-business leader in the whole Philippines.

How depressing. Whereas high-rises and skyscrapers were once symbols of progress, they're too scary and daunting for us simple folk.  I don't get it. Is this timidity, no, cowardice a common Filipino trait? Do we even dream big anymore? I digress.

Our ladders are too short. Therefore, we just need to build smaller and shorter buildings. Got it. It's totally not subconsciously emasculating at all. Gosh, we're so smart. How silly those people in Tokyo and New York must feel when they see how much smarter we are. We've figured it all out.

I love and hate being correct.

Willie Nelson - Crazy

Torment for Our Own Good

The Sinulog festivity this year is supposedly going "hi-tech", with the passes for the main event being chip-encrypted bracelets instead of ID cards. At the same time, the geniuses in government are talking about shutting down cell sites during the festival for security reasons. "Hi-tech" my ass. A cellphone isn't the only way to trigger a bomb and a bomb isn't the only way to do violence as the truck attacks in Europe show. But sure, let's shut down a vital service which would, in all likelihood, hamstring the police force just as well as it would inconvenience the local populace. The terrorists win without even having to do anything.

Thinking about this proposed measure had me thinking about how the government always seems to take the most insensitive, uncreative and clumsy measure to solve problems. Many years ago, there was a spike in the amount of murders committed by assassins riding in tandem on motorcycles. Enough people complained about the rising pile of dead bodies that the government finally felt compelled to do something. The brilliant solution proposed? Ban motorcycle helmets. The way our masters explained it is that since the murderers could no longer hide their faces, they would be more easily identified and caught. Where does one even begin to explain how stupid the idea was? Not all people who ride motorcycles are assassins. They have to know that, right? They have to know that people need to wear helmets to not die in accidents, right? Oh, they went further. They seriously considered banning people from riding in tandem altogether. You better not have a wife or any friends. It's for security purposes you see.

Fortunately, good sense prevailed. Instead of banning helmets, they only banned those which cover your face! So if you ever get in an accident, make sure you fall in the correct angle like a good citizen. Compromising the safety of everyone is necessary to lessen the risk of a statistically tinier percentage off people getting shot. The murders still happen anyway because the assassins, shockingly, don't obey the restriction. The terrorists win without even having to do anything. As for the ban on riding in tandem, only a few places have ordinances against that and even then it's not enforced because it's impossible and stupid.

The takeaway from these examples is that whenever the government is faced with a problem, their first instinct is to either impose restrictions or take away freedoms that the Filipino people enjoy. The demand is always for the long-suffering peasant to suffer even more for his own good. The attitude of our leaders is power-centric, not people-centric. Ours is a heavy-handed state. Instead of exploring options that would be least intrusive to the daily life of the citizen, the option that is most intrusive, and often the easiest, is taken. Police power is brute force and brute force requires little thought. Thinking is hard and nobody has the patience for that, least of all politicians.

Just think of any problem in society, how the government plans to tackle it and you'll realize I'm correct. Look at Manila, my favorite example of piss-poor urban planning and mismanagement. The traffic situation is apocalyptic. What's the government's solution? Does it invest in road-widening or new infrastructure? Does in invest in mass transit or expanding the rail system it has? No. The solution they went with years back is some cockamamie scheme wherein if your car has a certain number on its license plate, you can't drive it on some arbitrarily designated weekday. What a joke. What are they cooking up now? More arbitrary number schemes? Color? A ban on cars?

Drug menace? Just shoot 'em. The safety and security of the country demands it! Again, insensitive, uncreative and clumsy measures first. Power-centric, not people-centric. A million is a statistic. Etc, etc. Do you see it now?

I wouldn't be surprised if the government's solution to poor healthcare is to pass a law making it illegal to be sick. 

Happy New Year?

"Happy new year!", huh? Talk about putting the cart before the horse. Happy? I guess we'll just see about that.

Who knows what'll happen, really. Some freak earthquake could kill us all in any moment. Maybe we could contract a terminal illness. A stray bullet could do you in. Who knows? Might as well go on pretending like it's going to be peaches and cream.

Maybe it isn't what we know but what we'll do about it.