Surat Dari Pembaca

I received an interesting e mail from a Blog reader in the United States today. The sender is a former head of a US Intelligence Agency in the 80s (not CIA but close). Terkejut juga saya. I thought only you and me read my Blog. The subject is interesting. We discussed Malaysia. I want to share some of the things I said in reply.

Thank you for your e mail. It is a little out of the blue for me but I enjoyed reading it. I am just a busy body Blogger with time on my hands to write things on my keyboard. Thank you for reading my Blog.

I believe in competition. The best place to be exposed to competition is of course the market. Other than text book type ‘free markets’ we see that guided competition (Japan, Korea, Singapore and now China) has produced a lot of useful goods and services not just for their people but for the rest of the world. ‘Guided competition’ with well monitored milestones can propel emerging economies to their eventual destination - free market competition with other countries in the world.

Japan, Korea, China and even Singapore achieved stable, educated and relatively homogeneous societies (sharing one culture, language, religion, state ideology) which enabled them to focus their energies better on competing with other nations.

In Malaysia there are easy and not so easy issues that have to be handled expeditiously. Our problems are complicated by race, language and religion with members of one race, language and religion being vastly more or less advanced than another group of a different race, language and religion. As a result inter-racial (and now inter religious) competition inside Malaysia makes it that more difficult for us to emerge as a united nation which can focus all its energies on competing with other nations.

However there are ‘low hanging fruits’ even in Malaysia. For example I think we should allow the economically advanced communities free rein to achieve their maximum potential. This has helped our people tremendously thus far. That is the easiest thing that we must do and help expand even further.

The more pressing issue is to bring up the less advanced communities in Malaysia up to par with the rest in the quickest time. This is where the problem (as well as the required clevereness) really lies. There are no textbook prescriptions here. As another example, I believe that getting rid of superstitions and belief in black magic may be a part of the solution to achieve economic, scientific and technological advancement for a very large number of Malaysians. We also have to remove the negative effects of religion which I believe is also contributing to making some groups of our people poor. One way to achieve this is to remove religion from the public sphere. Keep it at home. I think this will have a positive impact on the scientific and economic advancement of our people. This is my view. I don’t think the textbooks say anything about this.

I quickly surfed your background. I have read about the ...... Agency. I really feel that countries should stop looking at propriety over technology as a defense matter. If we extend this logic, reading and writing (in other countries) should be considered threats to national security. They will eventually compete with us technologically.

I believe that the decline in America’s underlying competitiveness is also caused by the predominance of unbridled and poorly regulated speculative behavior in many parts of your economy. Especially in your financial sector and even in your defense industries. The debacle in your housing sector is a direct result of speculative lending by your financial lending system.

The other weakness in your economy is that you use up too much resources to produce goods that have limited multiplier effects throughout the world. We should produce goods and services that continuously add value to the entire human race. Its like skipping stones on the water. You want the maximum number of skips. Although not an economist at all, I would like to term this ‘value economics’. If there are multiplier effects, they will come around to enrich you.

If the US can make a Mustang that can give you 50 miles to the gallon I will buy one. But if you use your most brilliant minds, your most brilliant science and your most expensive resources to make a fist sized bomb that can kill 50 people – you have just lost 50 customers. (Thomas Robert Malthus got it all wrong).

Lets focus on ‘value economics’ – applying our minds to create continuous value through products and services that will enrich the human race. Where does the ‘speculation’ come in? Well if you manufacture a new candy bar, you can throw it into the market. You can evaluate your chances. But if you make a new hand grenade that can kill 50 people, where would you throw it?

We also really have to stop looking at our fellow human beings as threats and usurpers. We have to compete but let us compete in doing righteous works. Lets compete to feed the world as cheaply and nutritiously as possible so that people eat healthy and also become rich. I think the road to prolonged economic wealth is righteous behavior.

I think the US should stop fearing “China's rise to dominance”. If one country fears ‘China’s rise to dominance’ then extending the logic, the rest of the world would have been justified if they had feared ‘America’s rise to dominance’ in the 19^th and 20^th centuries?

I also think that you will find it difficult to elicit good response in Malaysia to help you check the ‘rise of China’ simply because seven million of our people (25% of the population) are Chinese. With another four million Chinese in Singapore – it means that there are 11 million Chinese living on the Malay Peninsula. They contribute extremely very significantly to the prosperity and well being of this region.

If you would still like to meet me when you are here ..., please let me know. It will be good to discuss some of these things.

Sincerely,

Syed Akbar Ali.