Rimmed Potatoes

Minimum wage hike? Comments I put in a thread.

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If I actually think about it a little... I think the issue is thus: we're  discussing the actuation of gross levers  like "minimum wage",  when the net impact on the economy also bears non-trivial impact for the overall design of the economy on a national scale. This isn't to say we should be Stalinising the place.  I mean... if you consider the cascade of government spending, and how it ends up in the pockets of the citizenry (or not), there are layers and  layers  of  diversion which subvert any intention to administer welfare via a  single gross tweak. I'd be very interested to see (or build) a model of Malaysian public sector expenditure, with somewhat fleshed-out budgets and programs, and the laws surrounding each program/entity at each tier, and then to have this discussion about gross levers in the context of such a model.

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Back to gross tweaks (huge caveat, I actually know very little about how federal funding is divvied up, but I don't see encouraging effects as a layperson)...  I propose (instead of a higher minimum wage),

(i) {{turn the nation into a giant dormitory}}
an expansion of the BR1M into a blanket universal basic income program. [In contraposition, all subsidies on basic necessities should be removed.

(ii) {{{make discretionary spending expensive}}}
We should tax the shit out of water, petrol, electricity (it's all too cheap in Malaysia).] The UBI fuck... just change the name and call it UBI-R1M instead, should cover regulated  accommodation and hygiene, regulated nutrition (not just any food, that's stupid), and unlimited educational opportunities specifically designed to flow downstream to industrial requirements via standardisation of skill-job protocols (a language framework).

(iv) {{{make knowledge transfer more agile, because we have  a shit for beans education system}}}
MOE funding: funds for non-industrial disciplines (liberal arts and sciences)  should be reassigned to MOTAC or MOSTI; funds for industrial education should be reassigned to MOHR; a fraction of MOD funding needs to be re-apportioned for military education.  The functional managers should be  managing their own budgets in the development of their talent functions. In fact this should happen across the board... and MOE should not be managing pedagogy, instead moving into an administrative role, such as is played the administrative office in a school - the actual budgets and programs for upskilling meat should be parcelled up and shoved into all the respective MOXs.

I like Israel, I like Singapore, and I like China... and you know what they have in common? More sticks, and  less sugar... hahaha."

Epistle to the Disenchanted

I've been thinking about how to connect with your emotions. That's the point of this, isn't it? Otherwise I serve no purpose to you.

(a) You seemed interested to hear about my lovers, and dates. Will say more about the fun ones.

(b) I know what it's like to never get to do what you consider important. I like math. But I earn a living as a business generalist and creative. Perhaps you are the opposite.

(c) What does one do with the feelings, you ask. How does one not despair? I can only speak for myself. I integrate my preferred activities into the operations I work on - patterns are administered into accounts, conversations, documentation, and designs. Paradigms are "imputed" or projected onto the substrate of work, whatever the work is.

(d) Superduper random: I was thinking about art and computation, so here's a computational paradigm of what art is (as opposed to science). All thought can be modelled as information processing, which is the occurance of operations upon data. Scientific thought analyses large concepts into smaller ones, and the operations upon those small datums are then as simple and quick as possible. Art is the opposite: the datums are large, irregular, and often irreplicable - and the operations upon those datums are therefore significant only in their idiosyncracy. A moment in spacetime, a state of civilisation, that is an example of a complex datum: and to do art, is to choose an operation to perform in reaction upon that datum, given it and other influences. Set A becomes Set B.

(e) Back to the photo of the lillies. That's what I saw when I was cleaning the windows this morning. Cleaning windows: a singular task, to operate upon a soiled substrate - to unsoil it. The game is small, like go. But like souls, no two stains upon glass are precisely the same. To study this is the greater game, and in that I find a good way to while away my retirement.

(f) You seek perhaps to become invisible among the wealthy. I seek perhaps, invisibility among the poor. Our aspirations were always different. I always did, however, enjoy walking with you, despite our varied interests. Perhaps one day our interests will differ from the present and we shall find newer ways to get along.

(g) The lilies. A gift from a partner's date, to the partner. She had nowhere to put them, and so they have been adopted by the commons. She visits to tend to them, every day. I have been thinking that as far as plant genitalia go, lilies have a very masculine look about them. Like men in drag.

(h) The partner. She has struggles we have spoken of elsewhere. We are all exploring fields that are new to each of us, where we are inexperienced. Nothing fun is ever too easy. We can discuss this later.

(i) I remember your infatuation with visual textures. Send me one of your recent favourites!

That's all for now. An end-of-week brain-dump. I do look forward to news from you. If you are tired of my rambling, but want to hear more, simply type the letter of the section above. I'll try to write soon.

Much love, old friend.