Everywhere you look — physically or conceptually — in the Philippines and you find systems and solutions that cannot scale. The most famous of these is the jeepney. The jeepney “system” (if you can even call it a system) is a public transport solution that requires more labour input with every unit of capacity expansion. This is why as the populations of the Philippines’ cities ballooned to their enormous sizes today, so too did their jeepney infestations.
The same can be said about the country’s economy. It is a predominantly labour-added value and consumption-driven one. It needs disproportionately more warm bodies to churn out every additional unit of the low-value commodities the Philippines is renowned for. It also needs more people to keep spending to prop up the consumption pyramid scheme.
Worse, aside from being labour-intensive, the Philippine economy is also extractive. It relies on stuff being dug out of the earth and pulled out of women’s wombs for much of its exports. Because these economic models are such strong traditions, the Philippines’ crooked politicians know nothing beyond extracting their wealth in similar fashion to fund their worth — pretending to be “concerned about the poor” (the greatest political resource of all) while colluding with one another to channel the fruits of labour export, mining, and mall development into their secret bank accounts.
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Why can’t Filipinos’ spot this pattern and act on the insight in said patterns? Perhaps it is because they are inherently incapable of wrapping their pointed heads around the bigger scheme of things. Systemic thinking necessarily requires broad cognitive vision — perhaps a mental skill that decades of habitual small-mindedness had irrevocably atrophied in the Philippines. One, after all, needs a strong grasp of large scale systems in order to take a long view on cause-and-effect relationships.
Engineering is, at its core, the systematic study and modelling of cause-and-effect. In this definition lies the answer to why Filipinos fail to innovate at every corner of their collective history. Much of what hampers Philippine progress begs engineering solutions — turning input into greater output at scale. Because Filipinos aren’t engineers they are, perhaps, doomed to forever fail at what is, essentially, the ultimate source of per capita wealth growth.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
I have a friend couple whose family lives in Prague for 4 years (5 years in Dubai previously) but still decided to go back to the Philippines with the 2 sons but left his accountant wife there. Their sons are receiving Very High Honors in a private PH currently. I wonder what’s the motivation but clearly he is losing the promising potential and education of his sons (The dad said his sons will not go back). Who gives up living in Prague?!
I guess they wanted their sons to be treated like kings in said Filipino private school, rather than having a comfortable First World lifestyle in a European country but otherwise are nobodies
The Banaue Rice Terraces are an engineering marvel that rivals the pyramids.
On that, Nick Joaquin had this to say…
Well why do you think this archipelago was an easy conquest for European explorers? The tranvia built by the US in Manila was never restored after World War II and we’ve been dealing with this ergonomic abomination called the jeepney for decades afterwards
If engineering, or science for that matter, were really the basis for decision-making, would things be as dysfunctional as they are now? A lot of science gets ignored when it doesn’t serve capitalist interest. Is large-scale planning to secure your own economy even possible with this machinery? Cause and effect is not just on the surface. What kind of people do we empower (politics) in this kind of economy?
> Why can’t Filipinos’ spot this pattern and act on the insight in said patterns? Perhaps it is because they are inherently incapable of wrapping their pointed heads around the bigger scheme of things. Systemic thinking necessarily requires broad cognitive vision — perhaps a mental skill that decades of habitual small-mindedness had irrevocably atrophied in the Philippines. One, after all, needs a strong grasp of large scale systems in order to take a long view on cause-and-effect relationships.
Most Pinoys around me can’t even bother applying a bit of brainpower to solve mundane problems. As an everyday example, the hinge at the front door of my family home isn’t properly aligned, which means the door doesn’t close in right inside the jambs. My sister kept brute-forcing it one time to close it, and you can imagine how loud the sound must be when the door’s edge keeps hitting the jambs. All I did was to lift the door by the knob so it can be properly aligned with the hinge, and it closed properly. It doesn’t take UP Diliman level of genius to fix this problem but most Pinoys would act like dumb brutes in this situation.
If the people of this country can’t even grasp analyzing small-scale systems then they can’t be expected to be able to comprehend bigger ones.
No one even thought of coming up with the idea of a freight rail network to reduce the cost of transporting agricultural and other products over trucks, and then we see all these social media posts of farmers’ hard labor being in vain when their crops get spoiled because no one is willing to transport them to Metro Manila. But forget freight rail, our passenger rail is even paltry up to this day to the point that PNR is now forced to halt operations until 2029 just to perform line extension projects.
And did I say “UP Diliman genius?” Oh no I’m not really impressed by that campus over the 6 years I spent in my engineering undergrad. Maybe because those who don’t emigrate or go for the big corporations in the NCR instead join the Nice People Association and get turned into corned beef by the AFP in the mountains
There it is… at the core is a lack of curiosity and inquisitiveness into how things work. Without that core mental character, people don’t go on to develop systems thinking and innovate off the back of that.
“No one even thought of coming up with the idea of a freight rail network …”
Well, I guess you cannot claim to a monopoly of an idea (re freight rail), not just yet, based only from an assumption.
Philippine Freight transport services has been around in the country, but varying factors such as World War II, natural calamities, underspending, and neglect all contributed to its halting decline.
And you probably just haven’t paid much attention to the direction the country managers is headed for or which way the new government is steering the nation.
For one, there’s what is called the Luzon Economic Corridor (LEC) development project. One of its flagship project being a new cargo railway called the Subic-Cargo-Manila-Batangas (SCMB), connecting Subic, Zambales and Batangas.
Then there’s also the Philippine National Railways (PNR), investing P5 billion to retrofit the railway line between Laguna and Albay for cargo transport. This will provide a cheaper transportation option for farmers, manufacturers, and traders.
Of course it will take time but when things go as planned, the project will connect all major ports in Luzon and allow seamless movement of containerized cargoes by rail improving traffic flow.
If we look back, there seems to be this problem of continuity. With every change of administration there comes a different approach in direction and priorities.
Indeed, an administration takes initial steps for something but then the next administration deciding not to continue on but starts with something different of its own. Each administration only has a six year term limit.
Recall:
The LRT Line 1 is considered to be the first LRT system in Southeast Asia. Manila’s Light Rail Transit is the oldest rapid transit system in the region, opening in 1984. Next administration wasted valueable time but not in nation-building.
Bataan nuclear power plant is South East Asia’s first nuclear power plant, completed in 1986. Except it has never produced a kilowatt of electricity. Why? Next administration simply did not want to. (“I want the Filipino people to suffer, so that they will hate Marcos.” – Corazon C. Aquino said in front of Senator Francisco “Kit” Tatad …)
The Iligan Steel Mill was a steelworks in Iligan, Philippines. At one point during its operation, it was considered as the largest steel mill in Asia. What did Boy Benta do when he assumed power?
In the 1970s, the Philippines had built the region’s first expressways and its first elevated railway systems. Manila, under Delta Motor Corp., was producing the region’s first auto engine blocks outside of Japan.
The Philippines has been ranked among the world’s five largest ship producers in terms of gross tonnage, with locally manufactured vessels sailing to such markets as Japan and Germany.
The Philippines was an industrialized country before many of its neighbors, notably, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam became democratic independent states. Manila was also the center of culture in Asia. It had built the Cultural Center of the Philippines, in 1969, and the world-class Philippine International Convention Center in 1976. The same year, Manila had built more five-star hotels than did Vietnam or Indonesia or even Malaysia.
“Why can’t Filipinos’ spot this pattern and act on the insight in said patterns?”
Perhaps because we haven’t learned culturally to embrace ourselves. The Pinoy dysfunction of colonial mentality is stronger than pride.
how about the demolishing of perfectly passable concrete roads to pour new roads.
this is foolish and a tremendous waste of public funds, not to mention the resulting traffic jams.
road maintenance in other countries is done by pothole repairs,black topping , or scarifying.
if i were in government, all public funds should go to road right of way, clearing of informal settlers and sidewalks, road widening, and new road openings.
this is fukked up, dpwh. do something.
and how many real transportation engineers are there in the philippines?
in most cities, the roads and traffic administration is most probably headed by a fukking LAWYER, no offense meant to fukking lawyers
Something to reflect about…
Do you agree with this? It may not be something grand, but, still, it is what is! Benign0 is, making it in Australia, one of them.