Reformasi in the economy. Part 3. Devil's advocate series no 13.

1. If the PKR people think reformasi is the shouting and shrieking part, it's misplaced enthusiasm and excitement.

2. It's not about getting mass feel good feeling or hysterical orgasm - the doing part is more important 

3. It must be the surgical overthrow of the 'ancient regime', it's political culture and in this particular instance, the specific economic model 

4. An economic model based on 3 principal elements. 

5. A pick and choose business model which is discretionary , depending on the leaders' despotism and never principle based. 

6. Buttressed by a host of preferential treatment and affirmative policies. Challenge to them is regarded defiance, disloyalty and unpatriotic. It's essentially class protection. 

7. It's a model based on the zero sum principle. Non Malays can only gain, by depriving Malays economic opportunities. 

8. The enabling superstructure is of course, central command economics. 

9. That is why, you see most civil servants mythified as technocrats are cocky bastards 

10. This pick and choose winners economic model must be done away with. Just so you wouldn't think we are envious these people got rich because the government picked and chose them, we will give economic rationale 

11. This model prevents the rise of resilient, competent and genuine entrepreneurs in the economy 

12. This holds back the Malay economy as the genuine entrepreneurs, not artificially created ones from emerging. 

13. The pick and choose economic model creates a new putera class from the bumiputera hoi poloi. 

14. The putera class is incapable or rather do not want to produce the trickle down effects expected of them by the voodoo economics planners 

15. They are more interested in lining their own pockets rather than uplifting the lot of their fellow beings 

16. Uplifting others are only spoken words by sly politicians wanting to calm them and secure their support 

17. Have you seen these puteras helping out the bumis? 

18. Empirical evidence will show ,the income disparity between the T20 and the B40 remains unchanged. 

19. The average monthly income of the T40 is now probably RM12000 while the average monthly income of the B40 is around 2000 Ringgit. 

20. The income disparity between interracial and intraracial will likely remain because we got it wrong with our basic economic model. 

21. As long as the pick and choose winners economic model remains, there will be no economic redress. 

22. From the heydays of this economic model ( starting from the days of Mahathir) till now, our economic set up remains unchanged 

23. Now, we have the chosen and picked like bestinet, nexG and others that carry the pick and choose flag. 

24. After enjoying initial successes, they will eventually fail because the patronage with which they initially grew is no more. 

25. Most of those picked and chosen by Mahathir failed. The same fate or end awaits those now nurtured by Anwar. It's destiny. 

26. They failed because their strengths and competences were built exogenously instead of endogenously . 

27. If the 2nd line leaders in PKR especially and PH in general, don't realise that economic reformasi require a radical change in the basic pick and choose winners economic model, things will remain status quo. 

28. How can there be? If these leaders don't know and understand what economic reformasi entails, how can they in turn communicate what are the changes needed? 

29. I have been saying this repeatedly, if these leaders approach their portfolios, without a reformasi state of mind, things will be the same. 

30. We must also reject the zero sum mentality. 

31. We can't go around with the idea, that economic gains by non malays mean depriving and robbing Malays of economic opportunities 

32. That would mean that we are at constant loggerheads. Instead of finding ways to expand the economic cake, we are always fighting over an assumed constant economic pie. 

33. That by the way, is the economic thinking that predicates the economic agenda of UMNO and the Malay supremacists. 

34. Therefore there are valid reasons to do away with the zero sum mentality. It at once remove the
source of much racial tensions as well as prevent the overall decrease of national productivity. 

35. There's an added incentive to do away with the zero sum mentality. It removes the arsenal from parties like UMNO from using the technique to gaslight Malays. 

36. The zero sum mentality and the pick-and-choose- winners economic model come together in the embrace of Central command economics. 

37. This is the belief that the greatest of economic achievements are determined by the dictates of central command, i.e. by politicians and bureaucratic brahmins. 

38. Accordingly the politicians and bureaucratic brahmins focus not on economic achievements but on the rules and clauses that permit them to regulate and control. 

39. Rather than finding ways to secure economic achievements, the focus is on preferential clauses, affirmative clauses, entitlement clauses etc. Form over substance . Insisting adherence to these are more important than real economic achievements 

40. To me, economic reformasi involved 3 basic things. 

41. Getting rid of the politically motivated pick -choose-winners economic model, get rid of the zero sum mentality, and most important of all getting rid of the restraints imposed by central command economics. 

42. My verdict: sorry sir, no economic reformasi. It's more of the same.