Letter: We can Improve Regulations for Sexual Harassment Whistleblowers

In Malaysia, talk of a Sexual Harassment Act (of law) has been bandied around by various bodies, hitting the press over 2017 and 2018. As of November 2018, this has not yet been tabled in Parliament *sic*. However, we already have Act 711, the Whistleblower Protection Act, which points complaint about improper conduct in general to "enforcement agencies," under a so-called "no wrong door," policy. These are relevant, and they can be improved.

Problem statement

The problem I would like to raise about a "no wrong door," policy is that there remains a general sense among powerless citizens that the enforcement agencies are "all wrong doors." This remains especially true of sexual harassment. This is evident when complaints about bad behaviours of citizens and corporations are sent,

- - to the unregulated networks of social media, where they take on great momentum, resulting in extra-judicial chaos, and

- - to mass-media organisations which have graciously take on the responsibility of coordinating a response from enforcement agencies.

In the interest of emboldening the public to increase its volume of complaints, while ensuring that complaints are processes in an orderly fashion, I briefly propose an improvement to the whistleblowing protocol for improper conduct in general, to be cooperatively regulated by the federal government, and civil society. Act 711 can be extended to include three things.

Solution statement

First, a formal and independent Commission of Complaints, with a commissioner of complaints, should be created, with minimal cost and staffing, to administer the two items below.

Second, a protocol. It seems like a double-blind architecture would work best, the sort of thing commonly used to reduce prejudice in scientific data collection, via anonymity.

- Types of parties: Improper People, Complainers, Collecting Agencies, Reporting Agencies, Enforcement Agencies

- - Improper People are those accused of improper conduct.

- - Complainers are whistleblowers, the people making the complaints.

- - Collecting Agencies would be responsible for taking named, and anonymous complaints, and collecting them in a regular format, while hiding the identity of Complainers, keeping Complainers updated on the status of their complaints, and advocating for complaints to be dealt further along the chain. Lawyers' offices are suited for this role.

- - Reporting Agencies would be responsible for consolidating anonymised complaints from Collecting Agencies, and coordinating a response from Enforcement Agencies. Lawyers' offices are also suited for this role.

- - Enforcement Agencies, as already assumed by Act 711, are the specialised agencies which handle law enforcement of various subsets of the law.

Third, a blockchain. Technology has recently graced us with this marvel designed to keep track of things so that they are never lost, easy to find, and always checkable, by anyone, at any time. All complaints should be consolidated on a blockchain upon arrival at the Commission of Complaints, and the maintenance of the blockchain should be assigned to the Commission. Public access to certain types of information on the blockchain should be updated in real-time: the identities of all Collecting Agencies and Reporting Agencies, the number of complaints and the type of complaints that have arrived at Collecting Agencies, and the current ticket status of each complaint as it is passed through the protocol, for example. [All of this mirrors how court cases are tracked on a court docket, but here we are talking about complaints which have not yet become court cases.]

That's all. I want to keep this brief.

Thanks for reading.

On the Automation of Labours

On the automation of labours.

I was talking to a friend about business today. People who talk to me about my work seem to find restaurants inherently interesting. It takes them a while to brain that I have no long-term interest in restaurants as a human activity. And while I believe restaurants and retail are always going to get more and more mashed up until we all live in resorthotelmalls, I have no long term interest in retail as a human activity, either. *

Retail is dying - we have all known this for a decade, but some of us choose to procrastinate about the impending fate of these jobs. As alien as it may seem to most civilians, the rudimentary interaction between human beings in casual settings, the gist of personalised service, is ridiculously easily automated. The oldest profession, the encultured gestures, the flirty melodies of speech, the diversity of human personalities - these will all be automated at fractions of the cost of human labour in the present. To cut a long argument short, skipping moreover the demonstration of robots that break the Turing test, consider this: interactions with service staff are often such that the service receiver classifies the service provider as the least complex of human interactors, having the lowest value of all their daily human interactions. The expectations for humans in the service sector are the lowest that we place upon humans in any business. This is why their jobs will quickly be eradicated. **

-

(* Why I would bother to run an operation that I have no inherent interest in, is simply because (i) I view it as a means to the end of building a long-term interest in being a service provider to restaurants or the neologismic (and neologistical!) resorthotelmall, (ii) as a business owner, I would not want to outsource my supply chain to someone who hadn't demonstrated a comprehensive understanding of my value chain and operations.

** Don't ask me what what we're going to use the humans for unless you want to discuss other business models. Lol. Maybe we should leave it to the politicians - but probably not.)

//

Follow up comments:

In case it's not clear, I'm not saying that customer service is bad. I'm saying that customer service is expensive. One day a robot will do better than a human at a fraction of the cost.

We're probably not on the same page as to how likely this is to happen. On my end, it's not even the best example of how redundant human talents will become.

I expect extremely cheap creative services, art, mentorship, counselling, teaching, and even parentage at some point from robots which will be delivered cheaper than most humans can do it.

This basically upends a lot of economic limitations because the earth is currently oversupplied with meat, and undersupplied with the ability too upgrade the meat to intelligence.

The robots will take care of the last problem. What happens after that? :P

Letter: The Wage-Talent Gap in Malaysia is Horrible: And Immigrants Are Fixing It Without Due Credit

Dear Kula,

thanks for hitting the news. I've been trying to reach your special committee on foreign workers, but to no avail, so in response to that 3D-quip, let me try and get some publication to put this out there for everyone. Businesses can't simply pay higher wages unless they can raise prices of products - happiness is unlimited, but money is not. We know that Malaysians are willing to do difficult work, and that is not the problem with Malaysia.

The Real Problem: some fundamental economic parameters

The problem is that for the same amount of wages, an expatriate is willing to do more than a Malaysian in almost any role. This is because the quality of life in Malaysia (read: public amenities and infrastructure) is better than the qualit[ies] of life in the countries where many expatriates come from - these expatriates who are very competitive in Malaysia, and Malaysia has proven to be very competitive in attracting their talents. In this letter, I will use "expatriate," and "foreign worker," to mean the same thing.

Of course, many of these expatriates came into Malaysia under the bad governance of past administrations, but that is of no significant at this point in history. So much ill has been wrought by administrations since the 1970s, that Malaysia's economy has become highly dependent on expatriate labour inputs. You already know this. No matter how it is politicised, we cannot simply kick out all the illegal expatriates overnight because it would cripple our economy.

The quality of life in some other countries is also higher than in Malaysia, and so Malaysians migrate there to work - those Malaysians who are too competitive for Malaysia, and there it is quite foolish for any of us to be sentimentally pining, begging, or hoping for their contributions to return. Malaysia's quality of life is unfortunately not competitive enough to retain their talents. Forget it. We need to return focus to the members of society who have committed to delivering value in Malaysia - we need to naturalise more immigrants. This is in-character for our nation.

A Make-believe Solution: new Malaysians in the new Malaysia

My personal request is that we begin by expanding the recent move that now provides "legal" expatriates with mandatory SOCSO benefits. The policy as it stands appears to leave out "illegal" expatriates. But the point of SOCSO is to provide a safety net for the most vulnerable members of society, and so I would like to ask that we extend mandatory SOCSO coverage to "illegal" expatriates as well. This would include those who entered the country illegally, as well as those who entered the country legally but work in jobs which they are not officially registered in. The first obvious criticism is of my suggestion would be that no employer wants to incriminate themselves by registering their illegal expatriate labour with SOCSO - but here is a roadmap for mutual benefit:

Employers of illegal expatriate workers love their staff as much as anyone loves their colleagues. We all want our friends to be safe, and healthy, regardless of where they are from, and regardless of where they are going. Allowing employers to register their illegal expatriate labour for SOCSO benefits improves the data collection capabilities of the federal government. Furthermore, it provides a "point of entry," for new protocols/tracks that can be enacted to naturalise any expatriates who already deliver value to Malaysians, identifying their skillsets, and integrating their gifts with those of natural born citizens over decades. We need plans that span decades - reactionary short-term solutions will not build this nation well. We don't have to give expatriates blue NRICs right away - we already have a huge backlog of red and non-NRIC residents who deserve to go first to the first-class of citizenship. Nevertheless, a roadmap spanning five to twenty years may be appropriate for properly integrate expatriate talent into Malaysian society.

While this is being addressed, we must also tighten our borders and improve labour import protocols to avoid repeating mistakes we have made in the past.

Some Context

I've been working very closely with foreign workers since 2015. I've also been working very closely with the local (staff) competitors for the same amount of time. Over this period, I've observed in detail the economies of what they are each able to deliver at the workplace on a minute to minute, day to day, and year to year basis. At this moment, all over Malaysia, various people are making lives better for Malaysian citizens - we are not all Malaysian citizens who make Malaysian lives better. Some of us came a very long way just to be here. It is high time that expatriate workers are recognised for their contributions to the Malaysian economy.

Please bear with me, as I'm not a public policy professional, and so my data is very limited. I've been trying to form a clear view on policies for how Malaysia should work with these people since June 4. As a natural born Malaysian, 35 years of age, I personally do "3D" work daily - cleaning toilets, wiring appliances, enforcing sleep and waking twice a day, in order to balance the needs of all the stakeholders in my environment. I make less than a quarter of what I did at my previous job in an office - I do my job because I plan fastidiously to cram my schedule with risks and opportunities. Yet most of my time is spent enabling other people to do more - not only do I do this for my staff, but my entire business is geared to do this for society.

Finally, let me say in my Trumpiest voice that I'm a huge fan of your work. I love the hat. It's a great hat, and I hope you help us all, residents of Malaysia, to optimise the labour supply chain. I think co-operation with the Ministers of Education, Home Affairs, etc. is crucial, but I'll comment on those tangents some other time.

Sincerely,