The Philippines and the world
My mixed perspective when it comes to the Philippines and the world does show me that the relationship between the two can be strange.
This is also visible in Philippine politics. Marcos Sr. was very eager to show a positive image of the Philippines to the world. Some Filipinos loved Duterte for thumbing his nose at Western powers. The old Philippine Left is stuck in anti-American reflexes. As individuals, Filipinos are all over the world, but many seem unhappily adrift.
Now, of course, this has deep roots. I shall give a brief idea as to why.
Historical origins
The early 1500s had Luzonians trading all the way to Malacca, as noted in Portuguese records. The book Raiding, Trading and Feasting by Laura Lee Junker notes how some chiefs protected craftsmen to have goods to sell, already value-added, not merely export of natural resources. The archipelago dealt with the world on equal terms.
The world it knew then didn’t include those who crossed the Pacific to land back in 1521 and started the galleon trade around 50 years later. Other trade either was reduced or was a privilege of colonialists only. Natives were conscripted for forced labor. The plantation economy of the 19th century created a mainly extractive, rent-seeking elite. In American times, consumerism was adopted but little entrepreneurship.
Relationships between chiefdoms before were loose alliances based on advantage and/or kinship. Spain superimposed a feudal model on it, creating patterns of inward and outward subservience.
Taking charge today
Among Filipino seamen, there are more captains nowadays, and among Filipino professionals abroad, those in top positions like the son of Senator Maceda exist. Migrants increasingly use social media to inform each other about host countries, including work and earnings there. There is way more agency nowadays, even as many are still struggling.
It would be best if going abroad was an option, not often the only way. Value-added industries would create career opportunities at home. The Filipino music industry’s success abroad is far from sure, even as it can boost confidence and build transferable capabilities. There should be more industries built up. That it will take time to accomplish is a given.
Some Filipinos in today’s difficult times look at national interests, partnerships, and alliances in a more mature way than ever before.
Conclusion
Can the Philippines become a country that deals with the world with more agency than it has done until now? It can, but that will take time.
Successes, like Olympic gold medals, motivate along the way, for sure.
Irineo B. R. Salazar, Munich (image source: Wikimedia Commons)
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
Always amazed with how tight your writing has become. The brevity makes everything more powerful
Thanks. It does take longer to write shorter, and the evolution is clear to those who have read me since back then..
1. Four years and almost 300 very spontaneous articles in my old blog. Half articles and half journaling try to make sense of the “old country” and the reign of Raja Matanda II, aka Dutz.
2. Karl recognized “The National Village” as a summary (it was an involuntary one, as the stuff I had written had settled and structured itself) of the old blog. “Going Home” series with Karl as a pandemic era set of reflections on the Philippines.
3. Half A Millenium After Magellan as a result of two months research and five kilos weight gain, still in the pandemic era.
4. The stuff I wrote in the wake and aftermath of the VP Leni presidential campaign.
5. The blogging equivalent to dealing with sorrows by singing karaoke starting 2023.
Shout out to Karl, whose writing has become extremely structured now.
Props to you as well for writing more and to all here for reviving the blog in spite of the hard times, not just the Philippines but the whole world is in now.
Thanks. So many mentors in the blogisphere but you Gian and of course Joe are the best there in mentoring.
Note: Indonesia also had a plantation phase in the 19th century:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultivation_System
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/indonesia/history-dutch-4.htm
As for the 19th century Philippine economy, After The Galleons by Benito Legarda is THE book.
What many don’t realize is how parallel many things in SEA developed.
I am looking for the differences that kept the Philippines more passive and others less.
Many don’t know that Spain helped the French invade Da Nang in 1858. There was a huge contingent of Tagalog soldiers among the Spanish troops. Some stayed, married Annamese women, and some of their sons were musicians for the Cambodian king.
This was way before PHILCAG in Vietnam under FVR with my late uncle, future general Javier Carbonnel in it. It was officially an engineering battalion but who knows.
can you provide a book or link for this Cambodian connection, Ireneo? thanks. as well as the Tagalog contingent, I ‘ve read the eskrima connection Spanish to Visayans was thru this, when the Spanish organized a similar contingent but to Sulu. with Visayans as their accompanying troops.
This FB post..
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/ekXbA4stQBJJHzqw/
Text for those who can’t see embedded FB:
“Phnom-Penh. N°28, métis tagal. Annamite, musicien du Roi, né à Saïgon, 29 ans, père Tagal né à Manille, mère annamite de Saïgon (42m/m) / [photogr.] A. S[alles] Salles, André (1860-1929). Photographe.
In other words, this is a musician of the king (i.e., the king of Cambodia, King Norodom, reigned 1860-1904), and he is a metis, or half-caste, his father being a Filipino (Tagal, from Tagalog), and his mother Annamite (Vietnamese). Photographer Andre Salles, from the French National Archives, found on the Gallica site.
The history of the Filipino community in Cambodia and Vietnam would be a fascinating study. It seems to have begun, for the modern era, with the Franco-Spanish invasion and conquest of southern Vietnam from 1858 onward. The Spanish brought Filipino troops over from Manila, and many stayed on after the conquest. In south Vietnam they became household servants and policemen and bandits, and some moved up to Cambodia and became the royal guards for King Norodom. They also became the royal musicians, though I don’t know how that happened – military bandsmen perhaps? they were very loyal to Norodom, intermarried with the Khmers, and their descendants largely melded into the Cambodians.
As with just about any study of 19th/20th century Cambodia this would involve multiple languages – in this case, Khmer, French, Spanish and maybe Vietnamese. Which is why I’m not going to take it on personally.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tourane
Quote follows, my very bad for overlooking the Visayans, I hope kb will forgive me:
“..The transports carried a landing force of two overstrength battalions of French marine infantry (1,000 men), a marine artillery battery and 1,000 troops drawn from the Spanish garrison of the Philippines (550 Spanish troops and 450 Filipino light infantry, mostly Tagalogs and Visayans, known to the French as chasseurs Tagals)..”
ah visayans, warays specially, like to go where there is good fight and think themselves more like gurkhas.
In the early 19th century, Cambodia was essentially a rump state of the former Khmer Empire. Cambodia (along with most of modern day Laos) was annexed by the Dai Nam (Empire of Vietnam) following Vietnam’s “Nam Tien” march south to the Mekong Delta. The Vietnamese’s old enemies the Thai were resurgent under a re-constituted Siam boxed Cambodia in from the other side. By this time, the Burmese Empire which enjoyed a period of expansion (previously conquering Siam down to the
Malay Peninsula) was in a period of wane, then irrelevance after a series of bad rulers.
To note, if Dai Nam’s ruling dynasty didn’t have an internal family civil war which weakened it, French chances of taking over first Cochinchina and then Tonkin may be up in the air. The civil war weakened the hold on newly annexed Cambodia and the looming conflict between Dai Nam and Siam. At this time, Siam wasn’t as strong as Dai Nam but the Thai king played his cards better and avoided colonization (famously romanticized in “Anna and the King”). Cambodia ran to the arms of the French willingly more or less due to Vietnamese annexation, while a weakened Nguyen dynasty was not able to put up a fight against the French expeditionary force. The first attack at Da Nang was repulsed, but the French proceeded to attack Saigon (which as a fishing outpost was less heavily fortified). Norodom has achieved near “saint” founder status in Khmer society for saving Khmers from Vietnamese and Thai domination, by capitulating to the French.
In 19th/20th century Cambodia, they spoke Khmer with many traders and officials, or people living near the border being bilingual in Thai and Vietnamese, as it remains today in Cambodia. My barber is Khmer and we converse in Vietnamese/English.
Just a question, as the Cambodians went way further than the Dutertistas in acting out their hatred of “elitists,” as we know what Pol Pot did..
I have read the explanation that the Cambodians always felt their elite had sold them out: to the Thais and Vietnamese before and to the French later, or at least the Khmer Rouge sold that narrative to them. How true?
Trying to find a unified field theory of sorts for why some cultures prevail in learned helplessness like Cambodia (and I guess the Philippines) do until today, while others in similar situations like Sokor and Poland thrive inspite of having been victimized repeatedly?
Well, it depends if it was the view of someone interested in history, or someone who harbors Khmer nationalistic views writing the explanation.
Norodom started off as a Siamese subject, then Vietnamese subject. It was through the French intervention after the successful concessions against Dai Nam that Cambodia gained titular autonomy, though still with a heavy Vietnamese influence.
In the 1960s there was a ideological fight within the Soviet Communist Party between the factions of Khrushchev, who advocated for the “vanguard” theory of urban proletariat led by intelligentsia and the other factions controlling the majority seats in the Soviet Central Committee who said the vanguard had failed for decades, thus needing a party led by the peasantry. Pol Pot, who was previously a member of the French Communist Party and then Khmer Viet Minh, rejected the vanguard model of Khrushchev and developed a new model based on the Khmer peasantry (he originated in the Chinese-Khmer peasantry). Pol Pot also didn’t agree with the Vietnamese Communist Party’s goal of creating a Socialist Indochinese Federation of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos that would be dominated by the Vietnamese Communists.
Pol Pot was later heavily influenced by Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which covered up the failures of the Great Leap Forward. His Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Genocide was the result of mainly his ideology evolving into a Khmer-specific form of Maoism. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge was also a reaction to the briefly existent Western-aligned Khmer Republic, since he was a communist. In the Cambodian Genocide, combined the worst aspects of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, where intellectuals and bureaucrats were rounded up and summarily executed. Executions followed for the educated, even if they had only finished primary school. Anyone who wore eyeglasses were branded as intellectuals and killed. Without a bureaucracy, and with many peasants themselves dead a famine followed which killed more people, culminating in the Cambodian Genocide.
Pol Pot finally started targeting ethnic Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese-Vietnamese, also conducting cross-border raids into Vietnam to try to annex “Khmer” land that had been lost under the Khmer Empire centuries prior, which provoked the newly unified Vietnam under the Vietnamese Communist Party to invade, ending the genocide. China’s 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War was a reaction to Vietnam removing Pol Pot and destroying the Khmer Rouge (who were the PRC’s Maoist allies vs the Vietnamese Communist Party who were Marxist-Leninists). Vietnam stopped the Chinese invasion and dealt a heavy blow to the People’s Liberation Army, who retreated (replaying many historical invasions of Vietnam, almost all were successfully repulsed).
The Khmer Rouge manufactured that narrative that the elite had sold Cambodians out. The Khmer Rouge narrative actually closely mirror’s Mao’s narrative from the Great Leap Forward, to Chinese Famine, to Cultural Revolution. The Khmer Rouge was not only a Maoist communist movement, but also a nationalistic one trying to recapture ancient lost lands and reconstitute the Khmer Empire’s extent.
In terms of a people being victimized, Vietnam was “dominated” by various Chinese dynasties (not necessary Han Chinese) for 1,000 years. The Chinese are the longest running imperialists, and still have imperialist attitudes. Same thing happened more of less to the Koreans. But the main difference is that while there was some adoption of aspects of Chinese culture, the core Vietnamese and Korean culture survived. People accepted rule over them on the outside, but on the inside they waited for an opportunity to fight back. There are many famous heroes (and heroines) in Vietnamese and Korean history who led successful rebellions against the Chinese and re-established native culture. Vietnam beat the Mongols 3 times, the Koreans beat the Mongols twice.
With regard to Cambodia, the Khmer Empire was once quite powerful. But that was the only period of Khmer cultural domination in mainland SEA. Following the collapse of the Khmer Empire, the Khmers went back to a society of sometimes and sometimes not confederated tribes.
Also interesting is the Cham connection, since the Khmer Empire and Champa (Indrapura) were both Hinduized societies, although Khmers are Austroasiatics like most mainland SEA peoples and Chams are Austronesians. Cham society also followed the the Austronesian political model of chieftains and paramount chieftains, with polities being similar to ancient barangays. The Champa Empire was essentially ruled by a paramount chieftain leading a confederation of lower chieftains.
Compared to the other countries you mentioned such as South Korea (a culturally unified since 2nd century BC), Poland (culturally unified under the Polans — ancestors of the Polish, since at least 10th century AD), Vietnam (culturally unified since 7th century BC under Van Lang), China (since 2nd century BC. Vietnamese are actually an older culture than the Han Chinese). And so on.
Not sure if a unified theory would apply to the Philippines, which was not unified in polity or culture prior to Spanish Philippines, and I guess, still isn’t unified. It would seem that a modern-ish unified culture never existed, which is why I find it to be a huge mistake by the founders to fabricate an entirely new national identity based on Tagalogs. Nationalistic narrative and undertones still pollute Filipinos understanding of themselves and the Philippines. If the Philippines must go with an ethnic model of unity, then find a common cultural thread at the point the Central Philippine languages split off into the major branches of Tagalog, Visayan, Bikolano. But that would be very unwieldy I think. Better to create unity based on an idea, like the idea of what it means to be an American. Even an American child can grasp a large part of the meaning of America.
EDSA 3 could have been anti elite.
But it was manufactured and who would believe now that Erap is anti elite with the developed bully attitude of Jinggoy which manifested time and again.
I’m struck by how global the Philippines has become whenever I trek through an airport. Swarms of people going to work, taking the Philippines with them, sending a little something back. Sometimes leaving for good and disappearing after a generation or two into the fabric of the host country.
The nation lacks imagination and execution. Rather than leading the world on seaman skills, it fails to follow through to meet global training standards. Head slapper.
There are many ways to become seriously global. The strong consumer franchises are building overseas. BPO is a global business. Manufacturing does not have much Philippine branded output. It’s a natural considering the low labor costs, but government has zero imagination. No commissions, no work.
People work as commissioners.
Atty. Leni Robredo had a complete concept for Blue Industries in her program:
https://mb.com.ph/2021/11/18/vp-leni-wants-to-prop-up-blue-industries-says-ph-can-be-leading-maritime-power/
She had a plan for other colors of industry too and for jobs:
https://www.rappler.com/philippines/elections/robredo-job-recovery-plans-2022-polls/
To this day, it pains me to think about who and what possibilities the Philippines (including most Pinks) overlooked.
good on leni, pity about our seamen, many just want a job, not a career. and dont want to spend money to further their seamanship, dont want to invest on themselves and their employability. so if they stay at the near bottom of the work ladder, they knew why they are there and what they badly need to improve their work prospects. the few who did manage to stick their necks out and invest time, money and efforts to further their maritime education not just here in philippines but also in other countries found how lucrative a maritime career can be, how challenging and fulfilling.
chill lang po. philippines is no different from other countries whose people left their land of birth for richer pickings overseas. in london, nhs filipinos health workers are outnumbered by the indians, filipinos come 2nd and nigerians 3rd.
here in our country, we have koreans, indians, chinese, etc. living and working among us and sometimes, bringing their families along. they have enriched our way of life, infusing our tradition with their own.
In the 1970s, Sokor and Filipino nurses were recruited to Germany.
The Sokor nurses mostly went home in the 1980s while Filipino nurses stayed.
Germany is recruiting nurses again, from the Philippines, but also Mexico, etc.
The Indian software industry sells entire projects to Western customers.
The Philippine software industry usually subcontracts AFAIK.
Rwanda has been building its own mobile phones for some years.
Some manage to level up while the Philippines seems not to.
Except in the music biz, which now creates export quality stuff.
Jolibee could easily dominate the USA as KFC sucks nowadays.
But they won’t go out of their comfort zone, Filipino overseas barangays.
Maybe the foreign PPop fans who now want to try Jolibee will change that.
A Latina SB19 fan went to Manila for their concert and now has a Filipino jowa.
There are foreigners who will fly to Manila for the BINI concert in Araneta.
I have heard, though, that what holds Filipino tourism back is the service.
So yes, it is a mixed bag. The Philippines could do more, but will it?
@KB, That’s true, yes. Europeans who settled America were OFWs, and the US had rolling waves of Chinese, Irish, Italians, Germans, Jews, Arabs, Russians, Cubans, Mexicans, Africans, Latinos from Central and South America. Armenians. Vietnamese. Cambodians run the donut shops. Filipinos draw blood at the medical lab, and are scattered throughout American industry. Normally the impetus on the “send side” is poverty or war. The Filipino exodus continues because poverty and lack of opportunity here drive people away. The argument Irineo makes is that the global Filipino ought to have reasons other than desperation to go global. He is right, and there are numerous avenues to take. Music, sports, technology, getting rich here and traveling there. Cure corruption and you cure poverty. The world becomes a playground for talented people on the move.
I still think boycotting remittances and balikbayan boxes should be in play, Ireneo. AB Filipinos for sure know they’re global. C are out there, DE Filipinos though think all this global stuff is manna from heaven thus they keep doing shabu like money will never run out. If you wanna show how global Filipinos are, have those global Filipinos turn off the tap (for a bit) and really show their countrymen of their potential. like owners of the mall playing loud music. i think Inday Sara was gonna organize BPO and OFW into a more solid block, but since she’s lost her juice, someone else should take up that mantle.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luzones#Contacts_with_the_Portuguese_(1510s_to_1540s) more on the Luzones and their contact with the Portuguese.. this part I can confirm as I read the original already, well the PDF English translation of the original):
“..Descriptions of culture, social organization and trade activities
Pires noted that the Luzones were “mostly heathen” and were not much esteemed in Malacca at the time he was there, although he also noted that they were strong, industrious, given to useful pursuits. Pires’ exploration led him to discover that in their own country, the Luções had “foodstuffs, wax, honey, inferior grade gold,” had no king, and were governed instead by a group of elders. They traded with tribes from Borneo and Indonesia and Philippine historians note that the language of the Luções was one of the 80 different languages spoken in Malacca[16] When Magellan’s ship arrived in the Philippines, Pigafetta noted that there were Luzones there collecting sandalwood.[9] Pigafetta noticed the presence of Luzones who were loading their ship at Timor..”
This following stuff I can’t vouch for, though possibly the Luzones in Malacca were similar to the more enterprising Filipino migrants of today:
“..Naval and military actions
When the Portuguese arrived in Southeast Asia in the early 1500s, they witnessed the Luzones’ active involvement in the political and economic affairs of those who sought to take control of the economically strategic highway of the Strait of Malacca. For instance, the former sultan of Malacca decided to retake his city from the Portuguese with a fleet of ships from Lusung in 1525 AD.[18] One famous Luzones was Regimo de Raja, who had been appointed by the Portuguese at Malacca as Temenggung (Jawi: تمڠݢوڠ [19]) or Governor and General. Pires noted that Luzones and Malays (natives of Malacca) had settled in Mjmjam (Perak) and lived in two separate settlements and were “often at variance” or in rivalry with each other.
Pinto noted that there were a number of Luzones in the Islamic fleets that went to battle with the Portuguese in the Philippines during the 16th century. In 1539 Filipinos (Luções) formed part of a Batak-Menangkabau army which besieged Aceh, as well as of the Acehnese fleet which raised the siege under command of Turkish Heredim Mafamede sent out from Suez by his uncle, Suleiman, Viceroy of Cairo. When this fleet later took Aru on the Strait of Malacca, it contained 4,000 Muslims from Turkey, Abyssinia, Malabar, Gujarat and Luzon, and following his victory, Heredim left a hand-picked garrison there under the command of a Filipino by the name of Sapetu Diraja. Sapetu Diraja, was then assigned by the Sultan of Aceh the task of holding Aru (northeast Sumatra) in 1540.
Pinto also says one was named leader of the Malays remaining in the Moluccas Islands after the Portuguese conquest in 1511. Pigafetta notes that one of them was in command of the Brunei fleet in 1521.
However, the Luzones did not only fight on the side of the Muslims. Pinto says they were also apparently among the natives of the Philippines who fought the Muslims in 1538.
On Mainland Southeast Asia, Luzones aided the Burmese king in his invasion of Siam in 1547 AD. At the same time, Luzones fought alongside the Siamese king and faced the same elephant army of the Burmese king in the defence of the Siamese capital at Ayuthaya. Luções military and trade activity reached as far as Sri Lanka in South Asia where Lungshanoid pottery made in Luzon were discovered in burials.
Scholars have thus suggested that they could be mercenaries valued by all sides. The Luzones had military and commercial interests mainly across Southeast Asia with some minor reach in East Asia and South Asia, so much so that the Portuguese soldier Joao de Barros considered the Luções who were militarily and commercially active across the region, “the most warlike and valiant of these parts.”
Luzones as sailors
The Luzones were also pioneer seafarers, and it is recorded that the Portuguese were not only witnesses but also direct beneficiaries of Lusung’s involvement. Many Luzones chose Malacca as their base of operations because of its strategic importance. When the Portuguese finally took Malacca in 1512 AD, the resident Luzones held important government posts in the former sultanate. They were also large-scale exporters and ship owners that regularly sent junks to China, Brunei, Sumatra, Siam and Sunda. One Lusung official by the name of Surya Diraja annually sent 175 tons of pepper to China and had to pay the Portuguese 9000 cruzados in gold to retain his plantation. His ships became part of the first Portuguese fleet that paid an official visit to the Chinese empire in 1517 AD.
The Portuguese were soon relying on Luzones bureaucrats for the administration of Malacca and on Luzones warriors, ships and pilots for their military and commercial ventures in East Asia.
It was through the Luzones who regularly sent ships to China that the Portuguese discovered the ports of Canton in 1514 AD. And it was on Luzones ships that the Portuguese were able to send their first diplomatic mission to China 1517 AD. The Portuguese had the Luzones to thank for when they finally established their base at Macao in the mid-1500s.
The Luzones were also instrumental in guiding Portuguese ships to discover Japan. The Western world first heard of Japan through Marco Polo and then the Portuguese. But it was through the Luzones that the Portuguese had their first encounter with the Japanese. The Portuguese king commissioned his subjects to get good pilots that could guide them beyond the seas of China and Malacca. In 1540 AD, the Portuguese king’s factor in Brunei, Brás Baião, recommended to his king the employment of Lusung pilots because of their reputation as “discoverers.” Thus it was through Luzones navigators that Portuguese ships found their way to Japan in 1543 AD. In 1547 AD, Jesuit missionary and Catholic saint Francis Xavier encountered his first Japanese convert from Satsuma disembarking from a Lusung ship in Malacca..”
Re: Seaman or seafarerers
Sharing my articles.
https://maritimereview.ph/the-magna-carta-of-filipino-seafarers/
https://maritimereview.ph/our-maritime-industry-and-seafarers-education-training-and-safety/
last I heard, president marcos is yet to sign the magna carta for our seafarers. there are contentious issues that need to be removed to protect our seafarers from ambulance chasers. apparently, that did not please maritime firms as they want those contentious issue to remain in place so they can recoup on appeal the payments or parts thereof paid to seafarers injured while on duty.
He returned it to congress before it lapsed into law.
Because if he does not even veto it it will become law much to the chagrin of some interest groups
Re: Seafarers
Chat Gpt answers on Ratings and Officers.
As of recent estimates, the Philippines continues to be one of the largest suppliers of seafarers globally. Filipino seafarers are typically classified into two categories: **ratings** and **officers**.
1. **Ratings**: These are crew members who perform general shipboard duties, such as maintenance and operations. They are typically considered non-commissioned personnel and often come from vocational or maritime training institutions.
2. **Officers**: These are seafarers who hold higher-ranking positions and have more specialized duties, such as navigation (deck officers) or engine management (engine officers). Officers undergo more formal maritime education and often possess licenses and certifications.
The latest estimates suggest that there are over **380,000 Filipino seafarers** working internationally, with about **70% classified as ratings** and **30% as officers**. However, these figures are subject to variation depending on the source and the latest employment trends in the maritime industry.
I often wonder why filipino seamen ended up working on ships and tankers plying the red sea despite the danger to themselves and all the warning and prohibitions posted. and how we ended up repatriation-ing them time and again, traumatic experience and all.
High hazard pay.
https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/pinoyabroad/dispatch/911843/dmw-only-78-filipino-sailors-refuse-sail-red-sea-gulf-of-aden/story/
I am going to do a LCPLX and post this link:
Claims about Ireland (from the comments) – Marginal REVOLUTION
a commenter wrote it:
Ireland fact of the day – Marginal REVOLUTION
We have to look at all of these are interlocking and competing systems.
None in isolation.
There are path independent based on human nature stuff like the preference to inaction as a means to conserve energy and we also have path dependent stuff like stuff that is due to our history.
Every little thing makes a picture clearer but we have to always see the essence. Thanks for trying to distill the essence.
Welcome. First, some additional stuff on Ireland:
1. Of course, they were very poor for a long time and migrated to the USA en masse. Often, Catholic German migrants and Irish migrants intermarried.
2. Until the mid-1990s, the Green Card Lottery program for Europeans had huge quota for Irish. Woodside, Queens subway was where Filipino, Irish, and Latino neighborhoods intersected and all went to the same Catholic Church nearby. There is a Jolibee in the area now, BTW.
3. Until the late 1990s, a lot of women serving in Bavarian beer gardens were Irish earning extra money as a summer job. Well, St. Patrick’s Day in Munich is a significant event until now.
4. Don’t know when exactly the “Celtic Tiger” phase started, but definitely, there was this time when the major US Internet firms set up their EU offices there.
5. There is now a bigger Filipino community in Ireland. The rise of that community seems to coincide with the end of 2 and 3 plus the start of 4. Romania’s Filipino community also grew when that place worked itself out of post-Communist poverty.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filipinos_in_Ireland
Maybe the link relates to Ireland being still very service dependent, little real industry?
Second, there are enough examples of countries getting stuff done “INSPITE OF”:
A. India has a “very big government,” ethnolinguistic and social divides bigger than those of the Philippines, but they send rockets into space and have a serious software industry.
B. Indonesia builds own ships and planes. Their approach was the kind of forthright, agreed upon technology and skills transfer JPilipinas prefers – mostly with Germany. They have an entrenched upper class, especially among the Javanese, who it seems, dominate the country.
(Check out the song Luck of the Irish for the sense of victimhood they can have, not necessarily unjustified, but sometimes what you believe or don’t believe you can do dominates, possibly that is much of the essence and also the switch one has to turn – in whatever way, see below)
(Fortunately, we don’t have Prohibition preventing us from distilling whatever essence we want, but that is more Scottish, I guess)
That stretches my brain. “The wealthy and influential networks in society use moral-sounding concepts such as environmental protection and invoking famine-era evictions to establish legal frameworks that protect existing capital by preventing growth.”
I don’t think environmental protection is moral. It is science. Statistical. Keep it up and suffering will be immense. Do the wealthy and influential use it to establish protective legal frameworks? Hmmmm. I think the left uses it to establish protective legal frameworks, and more power to them. Like stopping the gold mines from polluting communities.
Moral is good or bad in some framing context, like a bible or freedom or survival. Are all wars immoral? Not in the context of survival. Someone steals your food, you are right to punish them. Humanity’s problem is agreeing on the context, and then establishing a system to hold all peoples to it. The UN illustrates the futility of the task. But as long as evil exists, opposing it will be moral.
On further thinking, power is a recognized context for moral decisions. The UN recognizes it by having a security council, and recognizes that power can be abusive, so has a General Assembly so the powerless have a voice. So there is good and bad within the power hierarchy, depending on if the power is used to help or harm. China and the US are powerful. Both do good and they do bad, in circumstances. Without question, China is willing to harm the powerless. The US is less abusive.
Within the Philippines, dynasties are considered a problem. It’s in the Constitution. I’m not so sure. Corrupt dynasties are a huge problem, for sure. But the context for moral judgment is honesty, not being a dynasty. Oh, I have a headache.
You did write an article once on priorities versus “goodness” and red tape:
I think Gian is also trying to ask what higher priorities exist as of now.
Agree with your characterization Irineo.
As I shouted in out group chat. I am now a growth maximalist.
Anything that may impede growth I will most certainly be against unless it is something immoral like killing poor people or old people to save resources.
Growth masks a lot of things while Degrowth reveals problems underneath that we can overlook.
something from LKY
We have a real-life problem to solve and could not afford to be conscribed by any theory or dogma.
Unfortunately our elites really not like this.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/b37CJDpKTqAQvHjUA
We really need to study Japan Taiwan Singapore South Korea and China
then find a way to adapt those lessons to the unique path the Philippines has taken
Where do I sign up? I’m pro-oligarch and for agribusiness over farms and where the hell is the manufacturing, anyway?!?!
Well, it is long ago that I commented to exhaustion that a balance between being overly 🐕-matic and overly 🐸-matic is important.
The latter is being completely unstructured, going to Popeyes College of Hard Knocks, even being Juan Tanga by ignoring lessons others have learned. If one says the lessons from elsewhere are not applicable, one should analyze why and still try to extract possible lessons.
The former is being like Rizal’s Placido Penitente, who can’t tell the UST professor (yeah, we know Rizal’s pet peeve was UST) in his own words what the two types of mirrors are as he only memorized the definition, and fails when asked about a metal mirror with glass on it.
Regarding the EU that you mentioned in the other comment, there have been examples of both attitudes in 2010-2016 (🐕) and 2016-2022 (🐸) – alleged blind compliance on one hand, and tang inang EU on the other.
Indonesia shows an adult way of dealing with such stuff. See the video below:
Re studying the North Asian models, the Philippines is already at a stage where it can learn from the SEA neighbors “educated” Filipinos mocked just 30 years ago, and I witnessed it.
Vietnam mocked for many bicycles in the streets, and Indonesians mocked for their English..
I mentioned African innovation in a Going Home article as a jab against DDS who mock blacks while thumbing their nose at whites. They can teach us lessons in doing more with less. Nigerian MPesa was there long before GCash.
Eddie Murphy, as shown above, is the appropriate meme to all that, if the context is applied..
BTW, Placido Penitente was a classic example of Filipino one-upmanship at first, practically calling his classmate bobo until his professor decided to play a nasty game with him. Rizal had understood way about his people than he is given credit for. But then again, a lot of Filipinos are not able to read the Bible properly to extract the appropriate lessons, so can we expect understanding of Rizal’s two novels. Well, fortunately, we are at least trying to think here. 🤔
Africa is definitely on the rise. It’s hard to believe the number of African (mostly Nigerian, Kenyan, South African) engineering, nursing, medical students are in the US nowadays. My brother went to a HBCU (historically Black colleges and universities) for his masters program. All of his masters program peers and colleagues were Nigerian or Kenyan. They shared some of the smartest and most profound thoughts I’ve interacted with. Some stay in the US to work for a while, but most return home with a mission to develop their country with their new knowledge and skills. No one is really directing the African students to return, but it seems they independently concluded that they must.
I haven’t experienced too much of mocking neighboring countries, probably because by the time of my first visit the first signs of the impending Asian Financial Crisis were bubbling at the surface, followed by rapid decline. These days Indonesia is far ahead, with Vietnam rapidly gaining. Heck, Vietnam has so much money to invest among their business class that they tried to make their own Tesla cars (Vinfast). A ton of money was involved, and their first models bombed of course due to inexperience, but they went back to the drawing board and are iterating with lessons learned. There are Vinfast cars now in US streets.
The specific time I experienced those incidents of yabang were indeed in the early to mid-90s and especially during the short-lived boom in FVR times, when people in Manila flaunted their new cellphones and were proud of new malls. An American-educated Filipino MBA friend told me, “I have the feeling they are gonna screw it up again,” and they did, just shortly after. Again typical of the tabula rasa Filipino way of forgetting lessons that could be learned is that after late GMA plus PNoy era econ reforms brought wealth, Filipinos acted again like “yehey mayaman na tayo gastosin natin”. I am not a budget specialist, but it just takes common sense to see that a 3 trillion national budget growing to around 4T in Duterte’s time was wrong and was probably living beyond one’s means. Filipino middle class 1970s to 1982, very similar. They started to hate Makoy only once da party was over. Come on, I saw them splurging in Makati and Greenhills. Or even at the then brand new Ali Mall.
Well, even Quezon was not free of the Filipino yabang disease as he once dreamed of annexing Indonesia after independence.
Of course, the Indonesian military in 1965 didn’t even have radio and used runners like in WW1 to communicate during the military coup. Look at them now. The Pinoy excuse “mahirap lang tayo” is bullshit if one looks at people who have even “browner skins and flatter noses” char.
One bad habit of less educated Filipinos is trying too hard to be white-adjacent, which is probably a byproduct of the Spanish colonial caste system. I saw Xiao Chua’s explanation that Filipinos feel not quite Asian yet not quite European. That shouldn’t be an excuse people in general should make though. It shouldn’t take me as a “foreigner” to kindly remind Filipino friends that they should be proud of their own achievements, no matter how small. Need to make small accomplishments in order to build up to big ones.
The blatant racism is also quite apparent even now. Heck, even until recently I met many Filipinos who felt superior to non-whites, like Koreans and mainland Chinese… then a few years later when the Koreans and Chinese started flooding Manila and Cebu, suddenly the smell of foreign cash being spent made those same Filipinos act subservient to the very people they looked down on previously. I certainly met some Filipinos who were racist towards Vietnamese (not knowing I’m Vietnamese-American), to which I think “bro, unified Vietnamese civilization existed for nearly 3 millennia haha.” They’re not laughing that much anymore as they now look in envy at the rapid economic growth across the WPS.
Ipon… I tried a few times to teach basic financial literacy to my ex’s family. Ipon doesn’t exist as a concept. They spent every single peso by the day after payday. “Salary na!” Often they would need to use more and more of their salary to pay 5-6 loans, or more recently to coworkers who “hold the ATM” debit card as collateral for personal loans. Extra money leftover? “Let’s go out to eat or go to the resort!” Saving part of the salary for me is both an American and a Vietnamese habit. After all, how can I buy big things and invest if I don’t save? So eventually those Filipinos live paycheck to paycheck. Easy pickings for politicians who scatter around some pesos, so they become “bobotante.”
Sometimes OFW/abroads don’t want to support as much anymore, so they try to help their family create a business like a sari-sari. Well, the family back home treats the store like a part-time job, to be opened when they feel like it. And to top it off, they will cite Filipino hospitality and generosity to hand out free products. In actuality, they were giving out free stuff as just a way of boasting that they’re rich. Then the business dies.
Greenhills and similar places still exist! Utang plans for secondhand iPhones are downright predatory, yet I’ll see a tricycle driver’s child holding an iPhone… The palaces of consumerism (malls) are in my opinion one of the worst aspects of the Philippines. Just wanton and debased consumerism. But hey, that’s what earns money for the rich whose families own the malls, all the domestic brands, and shop owners who sell imported products. There’s no coincidence that domestic brands needed to build more and more malls to offload the imported goods.
Speaking of imports, I have yet to see a clear picture of the components of the Philippines GDP, but I have a strong suspicion that without tariffs on imports and remittances from OFW/abroads the Philippine economy would probably collapse the next day. Regressive taxation on consumption is another way the government funds itself and its corruption, without doing the hard work of building industries.
Maphilindo was just another example of pie-in-the-sky thinking that has no basis in reality on the ground. It’s like trying to ride a bicycle, before even attempting to learn how to run, or even to walk. The pie-ful thinking is also so detrimental in my view, where people go as far as praying for their wishes to come true as if they’re summoning a genie. Yet no effort to do the hard work is invested. Then when inevitable failure comes, make up excuses like “mahirap lang tayo” to self-victimize.
Wow this sounds very anti-Pinoy. Sometimes the truth needs to be told so that some can wake up. It’s just sad that from my observations, the Filipinos who “get it,” find ways to migrate away from the Philippines because they just don’t see any way for things to get better at home.
Anti-Pinoy paragraph follows, and then I will come back from The Dark Side:
Acting subservient after having looked down upon whoever previously.. I have experienced how some upper-class or upper middle-class Filipinos see Germany. Pre-1989 Germany was NOTHING to them, and one would hear stuff that was true but in the Filipino context and based on tone clearly a put down like “Germany only has partial sovereignty.” Merkel’s Germany suddenly was respected because “malakas”. The malakas/mahina mindset at work, which is NOT a mindset of strength. In any hood, someone who acts like that is a “pusa,” and in jail, that is the one who is regularly shifted. Does the Philippines really want to be seen as that nation?
I could have written THIS article in such a tone and titled it “Is the Philippines the world’s b?” but we want to stress the right way for improvement and not nag the country and its people. Of course, it is occasionally good to hear the truth so we don’t fall into illusions.
One does not tell a person on rehab every day how out of shape he or she is, but one does try to push certain actions, measure improvements, and say what still needs improvement.
Of course, it won’t help if all that person or nation we are helping does is just pray.
Pro-Pinoy ending, as to Master Yoda listen we must, Edgar Lores who is now a Force Ghost. Financial literacy courses like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, or books like Atomic Habits are the rage among the Filipino New Middle Class now it seems. Maybe Gian or Karl can confirm this?
RE RDPD
From National Bookstore
“April of 2022 marks a 25-year milestone for the personal finance classic Rich Dad Poor Dad that still ranks as the #1 Personal Finance book of all time. And although 25 years have passed since Rich Dad Poor Dad was first published,readers will find that very little in the book itself has changed — and for good reason. While so much in our world is changing a high speed, the lessons about money and the principles of Rich Dad Poor Dad haven’t changed. Today, as money continues to play a key role in our daily lives, the messages in Robert Kiyosaki’s international bestseller are more timely and more important than ever.”
Re Atomic Habits
From the Librarian of Ateneo Grade School
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What is the book that changed your life?
23 Apr 2024
The written word is one of the most powerful things on the planet. It can change the world. It can change lives. Today, on World Book Day, we asked several members of the Ateneo community to tell us what book that was for them — and why.
Jethro Tenorio poses with a copy of Tuesdays With Morrie
Jethro Tenorio, Associate Chair, Kagawaran ng Filipino
Marami akong paboritong libro, pero kung may kailangang iangat na isa sa bisa ng iniwang talab nito sa buhay ko, siguro ‘yung Tuesdays with Morrie ni Mitch Albom ang magiging sagot ko. Bagaman pangarap ko na noong bata pa ang maging guro, mukhang itong librong ito ang nagtaga niyon sa bato. Sa kuwento ng muling pagtatagpo ng isang dating guro at ng kanyang dating mag-aaral, dahil sa napipintong pagpanaw ng nauna, naipabatid sa akin ng librong ito sa mura kong edad, na ang buhay pala ay maaaring maging isang kapana-panabik na danas ng mga pagkatuto, magpahanggang dulo nito.
Sa kabila ng nakatalagang papel ng dalawang tauhan sa naging regular nilang “teaching sessions,” kapwa rin sila gumaganap bilang mag-aaral na natututo mula sa mga hagod, hiwaga, pighati’t luwalhati ng buhay. May pagpapakumbaba sa pag-akong iyon ng papel bilang mag-aaral ng buhay, lalo na sa yugto ng katandaan. At sa kapakumbabaang iyon natutuklasang hindi pala atin para sarilinin ang mga pagkatutong ito. Nagkakaroon lamang ng halaga ang pagkatuto kung naipapasa sa iba. Kaya ang habambuhay na mag-aaral ay habambuhay na guro rin pala. Ipinabaon sa akin ng Tuesdays with Morrie na ang mga pinakamahahalagang pagkatuto ay nagaganap at nagiging ganap sa mga sandali ng pagbabahagi nito. Kaya sino tayo para ipagdamot ang mga pagkatutong ibinahagi lamang din sa atin ng mga naunang napukaw at pumukaw rin sa atin?
Pamela Albania poses with a copy of Atomic Habits
“Pamela Albania, Librarian, Ateneo Grade School
As a school librarian, I have read many books after more than 25 years of service to the Ateneo de Manila Grade School’s Katigbak Educational Media Center (KEMC). One of the books that helped me improve my life is a self-help book entitled Atomic Habits by James Clear. The book presented easy-to-follow steps with a summary at the end of each chapter which I find useful in tracking previous chapters when needed.
It’s very interesting to know how small changes in our old habits can make a big difference in our lives. I learned that even though I’m not that young anymore, I can still build good habits and achieve wonderful results. Though change does not happen overnight, Clear said repetition is needed to become a better version of yourself every day. Atomic Habits also encouraged me to make use of my time wisely for better productivity. My favorite takeaway from this book is to use the Two-Minute Rule, which states, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.” The first two minutes should be easy so it’s much easier to continue doing it. Breaking our bad habits by creating good habits is a commitment. When I feel like I am losing motivation, I need to keep going even if my mood isn’t right.
As is the case with Ignatian spirituality, reflection helps us to look back on our own experiences to see how God is present in our lives. Atomic Habits pointed out that without reflection, we have no process for determining whether we are performing better compared to yesterday. We can make excuses, create rationalizations, and lie to ourselves. Change is a continuous process, with no finish line, and no permanent solution. I hope this quote from Clear inspires us to begin tiny changes: “The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements.””
yes.. Always feel that most of metro manila is like a bubble. At least that is how I feel about the CBDs.
Personally I think there are broadly classified multiple maybe 3 or 4 Manila’s
You have the CBD Metro Manila of Ayala CBD, BGC, Ortigas CBD, Eastwood CBD, Alabang.
You have the barrio like MM with lower, middle , and upper class versions
then you have the free for all MM, mostly composed of those living in esteros and squatters areas.
The when I was in HS then College almost 3 decades ago CBD areas had book clubs and stuff like that. I remember going to a spanish learning group meetup, etc.
Distinctly remember getting invited to an afternoon play through of the rich dad poor dad cashflow game. Being very socially anxious I went to the Starbucks near UA&P and was in an adjacent table but never had the courage to join and introduce myself. I remember my relief when the organizer started shilling a networking thing after a monologue about the rat race.
Live in a CBD and you can cocoon yourself from a lot of the irritants of Pinoy MM living. Even those who live in upper class modern day barrios/community go to work and the mall or to church or a sports club by car and their inconvenience is mostly traffic, traffic enforcers, flooding.
The people outside the gated communities are the ones really affected by the MRT breakdown, affected by the Jeepney modernization, unsafe streets, etc..
Thanks. One can indeed delude oneself into believing the Philippines is like Singapore if one lives in BGC. The worlds of Batasan Hills, Happyland Tondo, and Baseco are very different.
EDSA is, of course, one of the places where everything mingles, well described in Pablo’s song:
I do occasionally see videos like the one below when I look at OFW vlogs. Seems the new middle class is trying to teach itself certain skills they were clearly not born with.
Just one pahabol for Joey: Greenhills now is indeed different from Greenhills of the 1970s and even 1980s when Virra Mall came up. It is astounding, though, if one looks at Metro Manila’s history, how fast places get old and laos, for example, Harrison Plaza that no longer is.
As I observed the Leni Robredo Presidential campaign quite closely, I saw the vast difference between the Ortigas and the Camanava rally. What is totally alien to me is the new world of Metro Manila condos, clearly space-driven. Hopefully, earthquake-proof, unlike Ruby Towers.
Hmm.. I wonder who still knows Ruby Towers. Or what typhoon Yoleng did to Manila.
The elites and nouveau riche who live behind high walls of gated subdivisions in the Philippines have in fact created a modern Philippines for themselves, while ignoring the daily life of the masses outside the gates. They have the immediate power to be leaders and transformers, but alas, that would be too difficult and inconvenient. My first visits, I stayed at my friend’s father’s compound in a gated community in Batangas (his father is a doctor), and I was positively shocked the first time I saw Happyland, Tondo. Happyland and Smokey Mountain were my first experiences with the extreme poverty many face in the Philippines. In most of my travels, I mainly spend time with and interact with the lower classes, so my sympathies lie down the economic ladder.
The Greenhills I visited first in the early 2000s seemed quite chaotic to me with the packed tiangge area that normally be open walking space in American malls, but in the 1980s Virra Mall must have been seen as amazing, alongside Harrison Plaza. I associated Virra Mall mostly with shady electronics vendors, selling stolen phones shipped from other countries. Plenty of sim-unlock devices being sold for iPhones and Samsungs last time I was there.
On the new middle class teaching each other on YouTube and TikTok about life success skills… I had noticed a rise of this too in the last half-decade. I especially enjoy the videos where young people are explaining why no one will care about boastful behavior of expensive clothes or gadgets once the hambogero is broke (and the ass-kissers can no longer leech “libre”). A people need to start somewhere to learn good habits. If family and society can’t teach good habits, then I’m glad there are people making such videos.
Saving up for a condo loan is also popular now in the BPO world. Some just rent (mostly boasters), but there are a decent number of BPO workers who are thinking ahead to secure their own land in a condo development. The little 3 or 4 story single-family buildings are quite cute, and occupy a small space. I guess the impetus is that these BPO workers are tired of living at home in a traditional multi-generational Filipino household, where there’s a higher chance that parents, siblings and relatives will slowly leech off the earner’s salary beyond what’s necessary for basic support.
Of course I’ve heard many stories of Filipinos looking down on other peoples or nations because of supposed superiority of the Philippines, which to me seems to be a combination of the tendency to boast (boasting could be a form of power projection in the absence of actual power in tribal times), and sometimes being the shameless “talking first, thinking later.” Eventually, those people making a boast may end up eating their own foot. Not to mention that the nations that I’ve personally heard Filipinos looking down upon previously often have had centuries, or even millennia of being “great” before the recent hard times. In the late 2000s, I often still heard Filipinos looking down on South Koreans. Now they idolize Korean culture. Some of this behavior could also be the result of echoes of the Spanish caste system causing Filipinos to try to become more adjacent to powerful cultures.
Actually I don’t really consider it to be anti-Pinoy to simply point out truths. Sometimes Filipino culture can be very sensitive to criticism, especially constructive criticism as the person offering constructive ideas are usually “nice,” and become out-shouted by the offended. Accepting hard truths creates a base level where one can only rise up, especially if they are humble enough to accept help to do so. I’m an optimist on the Philippines, even if sometimes I feel extremely frustrated, haha.
Most people (Filipinos included) learn better by being shown how to do something. As I’m guessing most of us here in the comments section are educated, sometimes educated people can get carried away with overthinking about what we can collectively do to help the situation, When problem solving is reduced to idealism, nothing will ever be begun, much less resolved. For the Philippines, with its many problems, I advocate for just “doing something” as long as the action has good intentions. Show people that things indeed can be better if they’re willing to modify their thinking or behavior by providing examples they can see, and they will follow the lead.
Yes, there is an echo of the colonial past when, according to MLQ3, the sacristan was the most arrogant native, as he was the all-powerful parish priests right hand man.
The way Filipinos roll as a nation and as people when dealing with foreigners is very much characterized by near magical thinking. Amboy Pinoys of the 1950s and pro-China Pinoys of today are similar in thinking subservience will bring huge blessings, for instance.
Some UN Pinoys will have US padriños in NYC or French padriños in Geneva.
The reverse attitude of constantly wanting to challenge certain foreigners or nations is also an attempt to show up perceived “white gods” as human. Like in a corny 1950s island drama.
The more Filipinos get a sense of can-do, the less they will tend to be toxic.
I agree that every small step counts, showing people in a concrete way what is possible. Seeing is believing, especially for very jaded people. The small steps the new middle class are taking in terms of financial literacy, for instance, may yet build up a new confidence, so let’s see.
I’ve been thinking about what you shared about the Luzones mercenary campaigns and the Visayans who also willingly went along with the Spanish to attack their cousins in Maynila. I’m also a member of /r/FilipinoHistory and there is a definite latent nationalistic bent there, grasping at sometimes small fragments of history to justify some latter day Filipino greatness. While the forgotten prowess of Tagalogs and Visayans as excellent navigators is true, could it also be true that the natives at the time considered the incoming Euros as just another datu that was worth of being followed due to their “power?” After all, the prior societies followed whoever was strong and can get them “stuff.” Perhaps Lapu-Lapu opposed his paramount datu and relative Rajah Humabon simply because Lapu-Lapu thought it was he who should be the paramount datu. There seems to be some credence to this in the diary of Pigafetta.
By extension, the magical thinking regarding foreign relations could also be an expression of wanting to be on the “winning side” of the rajah, regardless of skin culture. For a long time the major polities were dominated by the Bruneians, for example. In Pigafetta’s chronicles, he also spoke of how Hara Juana enthusiastically took up the offered religious trinkets, including the figurine of Santo Niño, seeing magical properties within that may grant her husband Humabon more power. The Spanish, it seems, simply had more “powerful” stuff that the locals wanted to control.
Outside of subdivision walls and pristine malls, I still see a lot of the mendicant attitude of trying to associate with more powerful people or groups to get “stuff”. Towards family, towards the community, towards Filipinos in power, towards foreigners (especially if it involves donations of money). In a way, Marcos Jr.’s constant whirlwind world tours was also mendicant behavior on display, even if I agreed in principle about the tangibles promised to the Philippines.
Today, I see two pulls on the younger generations, especially Filipino Millennials. On one side, through BPO this generation can finally get decent jobs in the Philippines. Who wants to earn P25K a month in the Middle East as essentially a servant, when one can earn P20K a month in BPO and be at home? For more industrious BPO workers, of which I know many, they are surviving the extremely toxic BPO industry to attain supervisory or management positions with the attendant salaries being around P50-100K a month with good benefits.
On the other side some spend all their money on payday, but others are doing side hustles to invest and socking their savings away for vacations and investing in small homes. There are BPO workers who have graduated from the industry and branched out to VA work, finding and developing their clients online. I know quite a few that earn P300-500K or more a month on VA work. There is a vibrant VA industry based in Cebu with circles of former BPO workers teaching each other how to find Western clients. With online payment processors such as PayPal, young Filipinos are figuring out that they don’t need to play the game in the system they were born into.
VA is what? Virtual associate or online worker? Thanks.
Virtual Assistant. That’s what Filipinos call online gig work. It has existed for nearly 20 years by enterprising young Filipinos using platforms such as Mechanical Turk, Fiverr, Upwork, but has really taken off in the last half decade. At the beginning Filipinos weren’t that good at completing tasks, accepted pay as low as sometimes 50 cents an hour, but they have been getting better at negotiating rates and doing higher quality work.
For example, typical entry level BPO pay in Cebu Metro is about P15K. Minimum daily salary is P654 now in Region VII (Central Visayas) I believe. Workers need to consider expenses for travel and wasted time in traffic. If they live in Talisay or Lapu-Lapu sometimes the jeepney ride to IT Park can take 2 hours. By working from home as a VA, they can easily earn P40-50K a month, accepting gig jobs for $4-5.50/hr.
Terrific, thanks. Good to know there is an entrepreneurial collective in Cebu. I also passed the info on to JoeJr, who is interested in computer science as a possible college major.
If JoeJr isn’t a shy type, going towards management is much better since he’ll work with both the technical and business sides. Project management doesn’t necessarily need CompSci, but it helps to know the basics. I have English Lit and Linguistics degrees and I did fine. A colleague has a degree in dance theory. Self taught mostly due to necessity. Why be a cog when one can manage the resources (including programmers) and control the budget? Information security is my specialty, and InfoSec will continue to be a hot field for years to come.
Ha, he is definitely not a shy type, and appreciates your guidance.
Over glorifying the past is what authoritarian regimes often do, and it usually is useless.
Well, even Socialist regimes used similar imagery, as did Hollywood, and the Bulgarian crossover below is simply hilarious:
What liberals – including Filipino ones – often lack is mythos. That is why I support Dr. Xiao Chua, who admits being “dilawan” even as many use it as a badge of shame, for bringing history into the conversation. People need a sense of home, not just money.
It is like I, as an agnostic, understand the value of prayer in steeling resolve TO DO SOMETHING. Definitely don’t subscribe to my father’s quip that praying is just for women, especially after meeting Will Villanueva here. Both mythos and prayer can MOTIVATE.
It is good to know history, but it is also good to have a present- and future-oriented American like Joe to remind us that the past is long ago and where things are going should be the focus. The different time perspectives of Zimbardo are very instructive, BTW, as shown below:
A people who lack a sense of home, and only value money. This describes the current state of things in China, where culture was suppressed by the Cultural Revolution. The result is gratuitous and often cruel worship of money for money’s sake, the lack of morals and the subsequent bad manners. A dangerous path to tread upon for a nation.
Most of my views are congruent with Joe’s views. We probably ended up with our views taking separate paths though. My path started off being active in socially conservative, economically libertarian youth politics which extended past my university years. So I was immersed in nationalistic views for a long time. I later concluded that nationalism often is in the service of elites, not the people, so I changed my views. Spent some time on the far-left listening, but remembered why I consider them distasteful with their polemics from a position of privilege. I’m pretty much a New Dealer, a classic progressive or modern social-liberal (not the current Western progressives hijacked by far-left anarcho-communist entryists). There is danger in allowing both radicals and reactionaries to have a platform.
To me, I feel that the biggest roadblocks of the Philippines entering the modern age for all Filipinos are the radicals and reactionaries on the fringes who always act in bad faith, yet are still included into coalitions. The communist views of Joma and his comrades in academia, as well as the authoritarian undercurrents of the nationalists both are dead end ideologies for the Philippines. Both radicals and reactionaries want all of their political goals, without doing any work. Better to just cut them out of the equation and build a coalition consisting of the social-liberal to center-left, and the center-right, as for these groups policy differences are usually quibbles of “how much to do” and “how fast or how slow” rather than the burn it all down attitude of the fringes.
Start by showing Filipinos that government can work for them, rather than only showing up for election season or for ribbon cutting. Kitchen table issues are the lowest hanging fruit that can be solved, yet provide the largest effect to the voting population, and something they won’t forget as it helped them. Help people with social works if needed, within reason, but even better be a leader and show people who they can help themselves. Too often Filipino politics and society is one of scolds that is quick to point out deficiencies and flaws in people, yet acts in hypocritical ways. Leaders should be moral, willing to do the hard work and not just pontificate, but most importantly like a mirror, they should be an example of what other citizens should strive for. After all, a nation and its people are a reflection of its leaders.
I can tell you that Filipinos over here are really fond of https://rainbowsystem.com they buy it then to recoop they get convinced to do sales door to door. but before they do so they get herded into meetings to get taught how to be sales persons, and in said meetings similar stuff happens as you’ve described, gian. either church or more pyramid schemes unfold. very similar to that make-up and tupperware pyramid scheme, but Rainbow vaccuum seems to be monopolized at the bottom wrung by Filipinos. i’ve always wondered who was on top.
Insurance policies were the thing in the 1980s over here for some Pinoys. it seems it was usually you got more incentive if you recruited new salesmen. Maybe that is also Ponzi? Nowadays, lots of Pinoys here seem to be into selling condos back home as many retire.
My impression is that all this doesn’t follow the basics from What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School – if 100 bills fly around, 98 are one dollar bills, two are 100 dollar bills, go after those two first. Looks like those who sell snacks in the office or have sari-sari stores. Over there, where it is hard to find jobs and commutes take forever, I get it. Over here might be more effective to just work on a second job, if ever. Or do they want to feel they are hustling?
I’m not super familiar with the Rainbow System, but I can attest that Fil-Ams really love buying stuff from television commercials (back then) and FB ads/IG ads (nowadays). I can’t say how many Filipina titas spent all day watching Home Shopping Network and QVC, just buying stuff. It was many.
“There are BPO workers who have graduated from the industry and branched out to VA work, finding and developing their clients online. “ I heard this one’s actually fruiting a lot of marriages thus living abroad especially EU, and they continue their industriousness then actually buying up real estate. where before it was teachers via penpals who didn’t really improve much after K1 visa (or similar in EU), but with tech savvyness, this generation once they’re placed in 1st world setting they are really kicking ass. and then some. natural assimilation. Ireneo, are you tracking these folks? former BPO to usually its English tutors for East Asians but also as assistants to EU/American types. kinda like that movie HER but not AI. then similar progression in relationship i guess.
First time I heard of these people – from Joey in general, then from you. When I asked whether there were Internet based gig workers on this blog around 2015 when I was still a freelancer, crickets are what I heard. Good to hear that there are people striking out “like pirates of yore.”
What I also have heard of is microfinance via GCash with foreign sponsors. Better deals for Filipino small businesses than the local 5:6. How exactly this works I don’t really know.
I like the true exchange of information that is flourishing here recently, lots of inputs.
Re your Aeta and Lumad stuff, there was a recent news report that there are now 130 Philippine languages and 4 have died – all Agta languages and most in Bikol if I remember right, and 40 are on the verge if of extinction, one with just 4 speakers, I think Bataan Agta. Most of the languages on the 40 dying ones were Agta and Lumad languages if I am not mistaken. The YouTube video is above.
What Joey said about linguistic concentration is also shown by some comments to the video saying that the Pangasinan language is also losing speakers. Most probably to Ilokano, and I now wonder what has become of the peculiar Bolinao language, aka “bird talk.”
There are tribal dominance hierarchies everywhere. For instance, I have heard of Javanese aristocrats (a class that it seems dominates Indonesian government) haughtily commanding some folk dancers from Irian Jaya, similar to Papuans, during an Embassy culture festival. Javanese run the government, and no single President in Indonesia ever wasn’t Javanese, they also ran the Majapahit empire. Sumatrans who ran Sri-Vijaya are like Visayans settling in many places as part of the Indonesian transmigrasi program. Bataks dominate the military there.
Well, I only am quoting the half-knowledge I have of Indonesia. Concur with you, LCPL_X, on Joey enriching the conversation. I like it that I actually get answers, especially on the reality of the Visayas and the history of mainland SEA of which we all know way too little. That is WAY more productive than the mostly theoretical and dismissive attitude of Micha. The second relaunch of this blog spearheaded by Joe after Micha’s block is very successful. The first relaunch from Easter 2023 onwards didn’t quite get off the ground, but this one is.
We’re all just trying to figure stuff out here, even if I may sound otherwise at times, I am happy if my knowledge is added to. Edgar Lores, may the Force be with him, taught me a lot about logically breaking stuff down and putting it together again. I wasn’t that structured at the start. Sometimes, I even dose my contributions in terms of articles and comments as I don’t want to intimidate. We still have to get more Filipinos in the Philippines to participate here, by the way. Where is Andrew Lim now? This is mainly for them, even as it is great that JPilipinas is back.
VA work was a natural progression from the previous online English teachers for East Asian countries earning the equivalent of pennies about a decade plus ago. In fact there’s a clear connection I saw, as many of the early VA workers were former online English teachers who entered the BPO industry, then went back to online work once foreign clients started pouring into platforms. Many of those English teachers are self-taught in entrepreneurship, as well as the current VA workers. They don’t accept being caught up in the rat race. Working independently probably is better in terms of toxic work environments especially in the BPO industry. I’m quite familiar with BPO, and the stories I’ve heard and personally seen would make typical Filipinos clutch their pearls. Workers engaging in relationships, sexual harassment by both female and male superiors, authoritarian yet incompetent Filipino managers, a culture of spending every centavo on payday. No wonder enterprising Filipinos desperately want a way out.
I haven’t heard about GCash microfinance by foreign sponsors. I can’t imagine foreigners willing to invest even small amounts of money to people they’ve never met. What I have heard though (and have met some in this industry who are friends-of-friends) is the shift in the Filipino prostitution industry from “walkers” and go-go bars/discos to online sex work. It’s safer for the sex worker, and while online clients may pay less, the pay per view is still magnitudes larger than even entertaining the flushed with cash mainland Chinese and South Korean sexpats.
I’m happy to share anything I know, and more willing to learn what I don’t know. One of the nice results of growing up poor was that the only companions I had besides sports were books. I’m also widely traveled. Perhaps sometime we will do a deep dive on Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, all countries that I visited many times while working in Japan and South Korea. I had a Cham ex before long ago, so I became interested in the history of Austronesian peoples through that as well. The Chams were once a great civilization, more organized than the Tagalogs and Visayans, possibly on the level of organization of the Bruneians and Javanese. Champa formed the critical link between mainland SEA, island SEA, connecting to China, India and beyond (possibly to Madagascar).
I wonder if /r/Philippines and /r/FilipinoHistory could contribute some participants here. Like I mentioned, it’s a bit tiring to get flamed out by anonymous DDS and AFAM hunters downvoting over on those subreddits. There are curious people there who want to learn, and I’ve read some quite interesting things there before.
Something I plan to learn.
Japan Taiwan South Korea SG
What can we learn?
Even Thailand Vietnam Malaysia.
GC, since I have a bit of knowledge here, I will try to address this topic today, time allowing.
Maybe also Indonesia. I have noted some successes like Dr. Habibie’s industrialization via technology transfer, or in my article about Metro Manila how they managed to make something similar to jeepneys (existing since WW2, now mostly replaced by something similar to UV vans) work in Jakarta – by subsidizing them and forcing them to run on schedules instead of on a boundary like system before which clogged the streets. Of course, Indonesia has a strong central state controlled by the Javanese elite, which is very old, and that is a major difference.
Malaysia might be a better comparison as it is basically a federation of Sultanates. Well, the Philippines is a de facto collection of datus and rajahs under a weak central state, so can one compare it to the Malay cousins? East Timor, I know nearly nothing about it, except they have a Portuguese speaking elite and are extremely poor. Brunei has oil. Awaiting your analysis whenever you are able to put it down, as I am also curious about this. Thanks in advance!
So I started writing what I intended to be a short summary, with a summary of each country, common themes, examples of industries and how they got there, and what ph can do, but it has gotten long now haha. So I’ll need some more time to finish the word vomit, then restructuring the thoughts since it’s too long now to follow a conversational style.
Short thoughts though on Habibie. Habibie is an example of a government being serious about industrial policy, similar to Malaysia’s Ministry of Science. Though many saw Habibie as a magician, nothing he did was that revolutionary. Most were contract manufacturing and importation of assembly kits. The rest is just logical conclusions, like with the traffic.
Malaysia’s federations of sultanates have a few big distinctions though. The number of sultanates is just a few. The sultanate families agreed to take turns sharing power. All the sultanate families recognize that by increasing the economy, the states they control will become more rich, and thus they will also become more rich.
The Philippines is heavily fractured regionally, with hundreds of mini-datus and mini-rajahs, none of who agree with all the others, and would rather rent seek than increase their economies. They act no more than pre-Hispanic raiders, except now they have a captive people under them to raid. Then the people are stuck in between.
Culture —
Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and Singapore have strong traditions of Confucian meritocracy that are strongly ingrained upon the culture. Singapore in addition had melded British meritocracy into their culture as well. In Confucian meritocracy, it is possible for the lowest member of society to rise to be the king/emperor’s advisor or representative if they passed the state civil exam. For example, both of my grandfathers having passed the civil exam had the Vietnamese imperial title of “đại quan” (great scholar/official), the word being cognate with the Mandarin Chinese “guan” and the Korean “kwan.”
Thailand —
For Thailand, there are still benefits derived from Rama IV Chakri’s Western-looking reforms, which allowed Siam (Thailand) to escape colonialism with his headfake against the British and French, even though Siam at that time was actually a much weaker state compared to the rising Đại Việt, which was poised to conquer Siam and parts of Burma before the internal family civil war happened. Thailand also benefited from immense American investment during the Cold War, similar to the Philippines.
Thailand has a big manufacturing industry and are the largest non-Chinese manufacturer of computer hard drives, as well as being the biggest ASEAN manufacturer of automobiles.
Funny sidenote is I actually had planned to move to Thailand in 2006, but then the coup d’état happened and the military reduced entry visas to 3 months. After the next coup d’état in 2014, the Thai Junta has been moving steadily towards being influenced by the PRC so the economy is increasingly dependent on China, but previously built manufacturing industries are still there.
Malaysia —
Malaysia which had benefited from importation of Western ideas through the British, has a huge manufacturing industry that is further overseen by the Ministry of Science. Malaysia had started off assembling simpler electronics (a big one are computer hard drives), and in the 2000s going forward expanded into advanced manufacturing (smartphones, fiber optics, LED displays, photovaics), as well as a large electronics packaging industry (combining the computer chip with the substrate to create the chip package that is installed on circuit boards). Through Proton, Malaysia can also design, engineer and manufacture automobiles natively, including the most complicated parts (the engines). Proton learned by manufacturing vehicles from complete knockdown kits, imported from foreign manufacturers such as Opal and Renault.
Japan —
Japan modernized and industrialized under the Meiji Restoration. After WWII almost all industries were destroyed due to Japanese recalcitrance and refusal to surrender even when it was clear Japan was going to lose the war. Here, there is the importance of the guiding American hand and generosity to help old enemies rebuild in the name of nurturing peace, similar to the help given to West Germany. Japan also had a scientific and engineering base that quickly moved to producing items needed for civilian life, such as the introduction of microcars (kei cars) and mopeds that were popularized first in Japan, then the rest of Asia as “hondas.”
I think the important factor is that the Japanese are not prideful enough to recognize that they needed to start again with what they had, rather than envying outsiders and trying to jump back up to the top of the technology ladder. They started from the bottom and slowly climbed up over decades, allowing them to eventually penetrate global markets. Humility and quiet hard work are an important virtues in Japanese culture, something the Philippines can learn from.
Taiwan —
Taiwan both already had a concentration of engineers and technologists, guided by consistent state manufacturing policy. Following WWII and the Chinese Civil War, respectively, the US invested heavily into helping rebuild Taiwanese industries. Most of the industrialists were anti-communist, and escaped to Taiwan. But once in Taiwan, they had to rebuild from scratch.
For years, the Taiwanese manufactured cheap products (I remember many of my cheap toys being “Made in ROC” back when I was a kid). An important pivot happened when Taiwan established the Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan’s “Silicon Valley.” This establishing was envisioned by the Ministry of Science and Technology, supported by the Legislative Yuan. Over the years, Hsinchu has served as an incubator for many top Taiwanese technology companies through its Industrial Technology Research Institute, TSMC and UMC being the most well known. Taiwan decided that given their population and meager resources, instead of trying to “do everything,” they would “do a few things, but do it better.”
South Korea —
South Korea was actually the weaker state following the Korean Armistice, with North Korea being leaps and bounds more advanced. At the time of the partition, most of the industry was concentrated in what’s now North Korea, as are also the major universities. South Koreans were considered “hillbillies,” and their major industry was farming and fishing. They started accepting contract manufacturing work from the US and Japan in the 1970s, but were known for shoddy products.
The South Korean government and chaebols (conglomerates run by Korean oligarchs) changed their policies to support industry. Famously Samsung’s chairman ordered every Samsung mobile phone to be recalled, refunded, and burned in public pyre on Samsung’s campus. The reason? He was infuriated that 10% of Samsung’s products were defective and demanded higher quality. Same thing happened with Hyundai, whose crappy cars were re-engineered and given 100K mile warranties, which was unheard of in the 2000s at a time when car warranties were around 30K miles. They focused on quality and affordability.
South Korea’s cultural exports actually had started off as a government-sponsored program to bring a positive light to their country, so their companies could sell more products. Over time, their cultural exports became a huge industry in itself.
Singapore —
Singapore, lacking land and population, is situated at a strategic choke point in the Malacca Strait (which was the reason the British took over the “worthless” territory in the first place). They began their economy by providing trading facilities, storage, logistics and vessel refueling support for goods transiting the Malaccas, an industry they are still active in. Due to lack of resources, Singapore’s next strategy was to be the “value add” in the product chain, importing raw commodities and processing into more valuable end products (chemical/oil refining and semiconductor final packaging comes to mind here).
LKK is often ascribed to be the reason for Singapore’s transformation from a poor backwater surrounded by unfriendly countries to a developed country. However this ignores the larger picture that LKK’s government was serious about modernizing, and were willing to develop local talent as well as invite experts from across the world to Singapore to help develop the economy. These experts were able to rapidly train the population, who despite their culturally different origins, decided set aside differences to join together into one Singaporean people.
Vietnam —
The industrial heartland of Vietnam was in the Northern provinces, which during the Vietnam War was heavily bombed. Industrialists escaping communism in the great migration to the Southern provinces in 1954 (they are called “Bắc 54,” or 1954 Northerners) set up new industries in South Vietnam, planting the seed that later flipped the manufacturing industry to the south. After 1975, all parts of the country were devastated and exhausted by war. The Vietnamese Communist Party’s guidance was decidedly Marxist-Leninist in nature, and when combined with the millions of Vietnamese who became refugees (many of who were industrialists and capitalists), was a complete failure. This changed with the weakening of the worldwide Comecon, and in the 1986 Đổi Mới policy (“Change” or “Renewal”), which went even further than Gorbachev’s 1985 Perestroika. Perestroika was a loosening to the planned economy vs Đổi Mới being the embrace of certain capitalistic economic principles.
US-Vietnam relations were normalized in 1995, and Vietnam ascended to the WTO in 2007. Today, Vietnam is only Marxist-Leninist in terms of government. The economy is wide open, capitalistic even, with many Vietnamese becoming entrepreneurs, and a favorable environment exists for foreign capital. It’s extremely easy to start businesses in Vietnam, so I’ve heard. Fitting, as Vietnam historically was historically active in foreign trade going back nearly a millennia, with ancient kings and emperors creating special economic trading zones (trading outposts) to facilitate trade as far away as India and beyond.
Common Threads —
While all the countries have different cultures and certainly different forms of government, the common through-line is the governments made it easy for people to start businesses and for foreign business to come in to employ a underemployed workforce. Red tape was minimized when it came to the economy, and the government takes an active interest in how the government could help facilitate business.
The importance of a strong educational system should not be discounted as well. I’ll use the example of the US here. In the “Red States” controlled by the Republican Party, typically education spending is slashed and over time the ability of graduating students to quickly learn concepts for work is diminished. It’s not surprising then, that the “Red States” are supported economically by the “Blue States” taxes, a form of handouts. All the countries here focused heavily on their education systems, while skills needed were learned first from foreign companies exploiting labor and later localized once the native population acquired the requisite skills to propagate locally.
Another important factor for all these countries, besides maybe Malaysia, is that the US and the “West” in general invested heavily in these countries during the Cold War as a form of currying geopolitical favor. Malaysia received a bit less help because they played both sides during the Cold War, receiving a bit of help from the US and a bit of help from the USSR. The Philippines, being one of the major Asian allies certainly received a lot of financial help that isn’t remembered or willfully forgotten by politicians. However the difference is the other countries used the financial support more effectively and with less waste, while the Philippines largely squandered the aid under Marcos Sr. The “golden” Marcos Sr. years were probably largedly buoyed by the flows of American money coming in, so the golden years thing by the Marcos camp is a lie. Other examples of countries receiving massive US development aid that wasted it was Cuba prior to Fidel Castro’s successful 1959 revolution, and Nicaragua under Somoza.
Political Courage —
Here’s what Professor Stefan Dercon, Economic Policy at Oxford University had to say about the behavior of political elites when it comes to lack of political courage:
“Their elite bargains are based on an apparent political bargain for short-term gains by those in the elite who control the state. It is an economic deal with far less interest in creating economic growth and development than in redistributing the gains from controlling the state to the groups that happen to be in control or support those in control. The state structures in both countries are built to serve this purpose through patronage and clientelism. Leadership transitions are possible through electoral processes, but, as described in this chapter, those processes appear to function mainly as a way of simply passing control of the patronage structures from one group to another.”
In short, most countries that are captured by a political elite (as are all countries on this list were during their development, except for Japan), elites want to control a more powerful economy and country, but the risks of failure means they won’t move forward. Failure risks their power. Loosening political power and economic control might give the people independently-minded ideals that would also threaten their power. Elites would only make a gamble to take the risk if they think that they would themselves benefit economically from the reforms if they give up some of their power.
Technology Transfers —
All the countries here started off as contract manufacturers, exchanging their labor for experience in the industry and for foreign investment to build industry in their own country. Over time, the countries negotiated technology transfer agreements and/or bought out the foreign-built factories. By gaining experience and the corresponding local skills, the countries were able to become more self-sufficient, eventually creating their own industries. The US and European countries were more than willing to transfer technologies, if the situation is right, but I often think of the Philippines as a country that wants to immediately vault to the highest level without developing any local talent. A recipe for disaster and disappointment, which seems to be a reoccurring cycle for the Philippines.
When technology transfers are done well, a country can become a global leader in the industry. Any success also requires strong government support. After all, what person or business would take a big risk if there were too many unknowns? A government providing tax breaks or reassurances would greatly boost confidence for a business.
Industrial Policy —
Many of the countries here focused on specific industrial sectors. Taiwan did semiconductors. Japan did electronics. Thailand, Malaysia did contract manufacturing. Singapore and South Korea did value-added processing. Most had the support of some form of Department of Science/Ministry of Science and a strong governmental hand guiding industrial policy. When the countries had cornered the markets they started off in, they branched off into other industries. The South Koreans as I’ve mentioned before, have been a historically backwards country, yet now are able to manufacture NATO-quality defense articles that European countries are interested in buying.
What the Philippines can do —
Well, all I can say is the Philippines should start learning lessons from her neighbors. Since the Philippines is so far behind, it’s easy to watch others who are so advanced and demand to jump to that level immediately. A bit of humility is good for hard work. There’s also a need to work smarter as well, with a well educated workforce. In my view the Philippines is at a large risk of squandering a whole generation of young, working age people with a listless policy.
Start by fixing foreign investment. There are other countries who have local-majority stake requirements for foreign investors, yet foreign investors will still operate there (such as China for many years), but why not in the Philippines? There is too much red tape, onerous requirements, and a generally hostile investment environment. Attract foreign factories and over time create conditions for those now-skilled workers and engineers who can create Filipino companies.
Empower government departments to develop a plan to be executed. This should be led by DOST, but should also include DND, DTI, DICT, DOE.
Partner with Filipino universities to create industrial and technology incubators. A lot of the industrial achievements of the US and countries on this list originated from government-funded research and government-sponsored startups. It’s unacceptable to say “we are too poor.” If a desired technology is too pricey to pursue, certainly there are other things that can be explored. For example, value-added processing of the raw materials the Philippines already has or can import.
Thanks. Very interesting. The example I know somewhat – Bavaria – is somehow a mix of Japanese and Taiwanese examples in that case. Start with small and simple cars like postwar BMWs, and anti-communist postwar refugees played a role in some industries.
To the Philippines: DOST under PNoy had some interesting projects like microsatellites for weather and mapping, Project NOAH, and several train and bus prototypes. For the trains, some were too much, others weren’t transferred to production, possibly there was not enough cooperation with DTI, don’t know. They had a fully operated prototype of a Philippine made train that even was finished some years later in Duterte’s term. Maybe they decided to drop it?
Also, over there, neither statist approaches (tried under Marcos) worked, and as we know, he didn’t ask Roberto Benedicto, Lucio Tan etc. to build industries like Sokor chaebol leaders. Does anyone know when the manufacturing area in Sta. Rosa, Laguna grew, GMA and/or PNoy time?
Yes, one of the biggest impediments to Philippine progress is the tendency to look outward and seeing other nations that are far ahead and wanting to jump to the top of the ladder. Despite the split, sometimes split personality disorder-like nature of Filipino society where the class divide is so great, even leaders seem to want to “jump” as well. I mean, who wouldn’t want their country to be a leading nation? I think that feeling is quite natural. But unlike the Philippines, in post-war Japan and West Germany the leaders recognized the reduced national capacity and pursued policies that were within the nation’s grasp and built up from there.
Japan and West Germany were countries that had already industrialized and developed, yet they had the humility to start again with what they had. Despite having the engineering know-how to go back to making regular cars for example, they had a policy of making microcars to create commonality with parts (early microcars/keicars used motorcycle engines/parts), and to have a lower price that would allow the greatest number of customers to buy the vehicles to jump start their markets. Undoubtedly, West Germany was greatly helped by the Marshall Plan and Japan was also helped by the US. The Philippines received help also… the war devastation caused by the Japanese occupation was largely rebuilt by the US taxpayer. It was squandered by Marcos Sr. a short 2 decades later.
PNoy did indeed initiate transformative projects that were neglected, underfunded and ultimately canceled under Duterte in favor of “Build Build Build,” ahem “Buy China.” The Hybrid Electric Train (HET) project you referred to for example involved technology transfer from South Korea for the rolling stock, while the train car body was designed locally by Filipino engineers. An admirable first effort. The Hybrid Electric Road Train (HERT), an articulated bus intended to alleviate Metro Manila and Metro Cebu traffic congestion along major thoroughfares, was a partnership and technology transfer from Sweden (Volvo I believe). Both projects successfully created one prototype vehicle each, and Duterte let the programs die after using the completed vehicles to give free rides for a few months so he could have an “accomplishment.” Seriously sad.
Our Story – ALLHC Technopark (technoparks.com.ph)
30 years would place it as at the tail end of FVR like a lot of PEZAs. I believe the anchor client is Ayala’s IMEI.
This is like the Baguio PEZA it was started during makoy’s time (but I am guessing that TI was only during FVRs time) having Texas Instruments as the Anchor Client. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw3PyWmacU4
Texts Insteuments was indeed during Marcos Srs time.
I have a Fil-Am friend who’s client is TI etc.
1979.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150519007262/en/Texas-Instruments-Recognized-as-Top-Exporter-and-Outstanding-Employer-in-the-Philippines
cebu technohub? sometimes I wonder what is really happening. it was not that long ago that dept of tourism apparently spent 50million for tourism ad and the best cebu hub could come up with were stock footages presumably copied! naturally the ad drew lots of flak, netizens were not impressed. similarly, previous tourism ads allegedly did no better, there were what appears to be shadow finger puppets and some virtual places of interests that did not look that interesting.
when searching the internet for properties and real estate with view to buy, lease or rent, be very careful and dont just trust those pics posted. pristine lovely houses with healthy looking green grass and swaying palm trees may turn out to be not what they are, been photoshopped.
Well there are some reasons, main one being that NCR “ran out of space” (especially in Makati) and the other being traffic in NCR is terrible. Although, the amount of land able to be developed in Metro Cebu is even smaller due to the multiple mountain ranges running down the spine of Cebu island. Cebuanos also speak quite good English generally, at least for younger folks. Compare to NCR, where aside from Tagalogs, many NCR residents are actually poor families from every other province in the Philippines so English probably wasn’t a priority for their children to learn.
Dept. Tourism always comes up with mais tourism ad campaigns though. They’re still running the “It’s more fun in the Philippines!” ad on our city buses here. I often see politicians and officials being cheesy in the Philippines, which I guess works for Filipinos, but here in the US we expect a bit of freshness! a pop and a bang!
Actually I had previously been interested in retiring to the Philippines, in Mactan. I was referred to a few real estate agents who sent me pictures of nice condos in Cordova, but when I arrived to take a look it was just vacant land. Apparently the development had not been built yet haha. It’s built by now.
Joey, if you snoop around your filipino friends house you’ll find 1 or 2 of these, i’m sure. I will guarantee it. if not they’ll be able to direct you to a household with one. there’re so ubiquitous. though I don’t think Filipinos in the Philippines would know about it.
Most of my Fil-Am friends have Dyson and Shark now. They probably sent these crap old door-to-door salesmen vacuum cleaners to the Philippines in a balikbayan box (joke about abroads sending broken electronics back home so that one of the titos can fix it). By the way, the earliest vacuum cleaners were sold by door-to-door salesmen on installment plans, before Sears took over the market and offered vacuum cleaners on their catalogue. Door-to-door salesmen were a fixture of American life post-WWII.
I remember FilAms selling Kirby vacuum cleaners, Tupperware, Avon and Mary Kay cosmetics in the 80’s as side hustles. No more. They are now into bitcoins and cryptocurrencies.
I around in the early days of Bitcoin, when it was still able to be “mined” by regular computers. I got out of the market in 2013. I never had any qualms however, that Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies are the fever dreams of anarcho-capitalists and anarcho-libertarians, intended to replace fiat currency (mainly the USD). The fallacy in crypto is that it needs to be converted into fiat currency in order to have any value, thus providing a simple proof that it is a speculative vehicle. It’s also highly dangerous, pushed by people such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and others. I know quite a few Fil-Ams who got on the hype train, and lost all their savings. The crypto market nowadays is controlled by trust fund babies who have a lot of money, as a way to semi-legally con normies out of their money.
There’s money in art. As digital dries up souls, art puts it back. My theory.
Yes, though fine arts and crafts are also valued at whatever we humans believe it to be valued. The imperfections with things made by the human hand can have a unique value in itself.
Crypto tried to do AI generated “NFT” art, which failed when the laughable algorithms were broken, and the NFTs copied thus not making those works “unique” anymore.
Though, I’d also argue that most artists didn’t intend their works to be hoarded by collectors who place a high price upon it. Art is meant to be viewed and admired. Hoarding art by the billionaires is just another symptom of their piles of money have made them idle besides the pursuit of hoarding more money.
There are some trying. See (2) DRiP 💧 (@drip_haus) / X
“When I asked whether there were Internet based gig workers on this blog around 2015”, i’ve mentioned online English teachers as well as Filipinos teaching English to Koreans and then Chinese (which I didn’t really come across mid 2000s). this was mostly on Mactan. and East Asians back home would to it to prepare for TOEFL etc. but when i heard about this it was mostly BPO workers moonlighting as English teachers on the side. but i’ve been always wary of BPO as just OFWs but exploit us here typa set up. and this was when Mar Roxas was running and Joe would poo poo me as trolling and that BPO was good for the Philippines. well maybe. if it leads to all this as Joey has described. but over here although I don’t know much about virtual assistant gigs I’m familiar with handy man gigs where in theres an app, your sink gets clogged so you contact someone like Uber and a handyman comes in and fix whatever you need fixing. I’m imagining virtual assistant as like the movie HER, but I don’t really know. only that this virtual assistant stuff (English teaching before) is generating more marriages, and how that translates to the bigger picture i dunno. but its interesting. along the same vein a related industry but less related to English/VA work are filipino artists and illustrators collaborating with books published here in the 1st world (mostly children’s books). also weirdly the design of shirts and hoodies that end up at Target and Walmart. which has IP issues legally, eg. how much is art and do you still own it once sold. i’m totally not plugged into this just hearing of it here and there. so my question to Joey is with the increase of this industry are there more shared work spaces type venues so these VA workers don’t have to stay home but can work in more collaborative pleasant environment with more consistent internet access etc. like incubators, etc. oh which I keeping forgetting to ask Joey, are you team Kendrick or Drake? cuz I think Kendrick is pushing Nipsey Hussle’s ideas, like Vector 90: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61FYxvrj4jk so if theres more venues like these i think BPO might just fall and that would be a good thing. like thank you Mar but we’re moving on. IMHO. ps. thanks for the sudlonon and negrito stuff, Joey & Ireneo, not much online Googling so I think i might just cold email anthropologists here and over there and see if theres any response.
„What I have heard though (and have met some in this industry who are friends-of-friends) is the shift in the Filipino prostitution industry from “walkers” and go-go bars/discos to online sex work. It’s safer for the sex worker, and while online clients may pay less, the pay per view is still magnitudes larger than even entertaining the flushed with cash mainland Chinese and South Korean sexpats.“ this makes a lot of sense, Joey, even as I patronized the fuck out of Viking bar on Mango Ave. there was quite a big number of girls moving into the escort seen meaning cell phone based instead of street like Kamagayan set up or bars like Mango Ave. usually theres an experience mamasan acting as hub but eventually the girls figured out mamasan was not needed anymore and them becoming a network themselves would do just fine. weirdly this opened up to non province girls, like med students who wanted extra cash would be on this, so instead of kings court etc. short time hotels the calls for service would originate from fancy hotel rooms so they can decide to service such call or not. more choice. escorts were hotter tend to set their price, bar fine would be P1,500, kamagayan street price P800, escorts put themselves at P2,000 plus and thats all theirs cuz that bar fine would be split like P500 to the house and P1,000 to the girls. all this by the way is all negotiable, eg. if you’re regular if girls know you slow night etc. etc. but that was the heirarchy. zoom would be more like only fans industry, not really sex work imho but more like entertainment with happy ending. the scale would generate income sure, but i’m sure there will always be physical sex workers. cuz although its fun for the johns , you have to consider that its also fun for the girls, especially if they can hedge unknowns. man, i’m trying to focus on Negros island and you guys keep pulling me back in. lol. sorry, Joe. i need to start researching who’s doing research on Sundaland stuff.
I don’t partake in pursuit of those extracurricular activities, but I do know of them. I grew up very poor in the LA area. Crime, violence, neighborhood prostitution was common in my childhood neighborhood. Having been poor, I also identify better with other poor people, hence my preferring to interact with the lower socioeconomic classes in the Philippines.
While I believe that sex work shouldn’t be illegal, to me I think sex work is also easily exploitative and with the sex worker bearing the brunt of the dangers. One of my first friends I made in the Philippines when I was 14 was a Filipina a year younger than me. She was very bright, hilarious, but also a bit sad. I found out later that she was forced into sex work plying Fields Avenue by her parents to help support the family. By 17, she was dead, killed by a customer who was probably upset about something she wasn’t ok with doing.
Anyway, so while keeping it professional, one thing people tend to shut their eyes to in the Philippines is just the fact that there are sex workers in major thoroughfares and working in gogos/discos. If I happen to be nearby they’ll propose a price since they’re fishing for customers too. And the prices you said must have been years ago, because ever since the sexpat scene shifted from Metro Manila (Angeles, Makati) to Cebu, there has been a huge influx of mainland Chinese and South Koreans businessmen on weekend “fun trips,” or sending their sons to enjoy themselves. It’s blatant and right in front of everyone’s eyes, but no one wants to talk about it in Cebu. The flow of foreign money also has quite unattractive women straight up demanding 10k, even 25k if you can believe it. I guess many East Asians are paying, if they’re asking that high. Makes me feel a bit sad since Cebu is my favorite city and running into boastful sexpats misbehaving is annoying.
Most Filipinas who are willing to engage in such activities would rather become AFAM hunters though, milking various foreigners as their ATM until they find the “right guy” and hit gold. Even girls in the bukid who can barely speak English are teaching each other to do this now in FB groupchats. When you see a Filipina from a poor family who inexplicably has an iPhone or Galaxy, that’s probably how they got it. A lot of times their boyfriend or husband accepts and goes along with it, since he is able to enjoy the benefits as well.
The point here is these are signs of society being broken at the bottom, where people feel that there are no other opportunities for them to pursue that are within reach. Add it to the many problems the Philippines faces, problems that need to be fixed.
If you are curious about this you can install tiktok. lots of successful VAs sharing the tips there.
LCPLX early to mid 90s to even 2000s lots of people didnt have a job then.
A good anecdote I have is that fast food companies in Metro Manila had issues with employees because as the case with these things the standards fell a lot as the initial supply of credentialed people were running out.
Know a lot of success stories from UP dropouts who found success in call centers. Have encountered a lot of people who werent able to graduate but became directors, managing directors, operations managers etc.
As call centers created demand for people with some college education it allowed people with a HS diploma to get accepted in manager training in fast food companies.
BPO at least in the first decade was transformative. The MM skyline outside of Makati was mostly due to BPO.
What BPO exposed is that the government cannot do infrastructure. We currently lack state capacity.
90-2000 you would meet graduates becoming HK or SG maids. I remember talking to someone who lived in Dasma and they were saying that their 3 maids were education graduates from the province. This was 2000s.
As more people worked relatively better jobs they then required their maids which meant the rates of maids steadily rose. Thinking back now witnessing this and just having a habit of observing stuff it made me hope we can transform.
My thinking then was. GMAs 10 years entrenched BPO then PNoys 6 years build on it. money allows more college graduates that allows us to have more skilled people then we can keep increasing BPO and OFWs until we have a go back home and build moment.
Honestly I no longer believe in direct democracy. As I have said in other posts I have turned into a Straussian.
from ChatGPT:
link for va stuff in reddit:
buhaydigital (reddit.com)
Exactly right on all points GC.
Definitely in the 1990s, and even in the 2000s, the lament was a salesman or saleslady job at the mall required a college degree. The amount of requirements required for jobs in the Philippines has become a legendary meme among Millennials.
BPOs changed that since anyone who spoke decent English was eligible, since the foreign client put a different set of requirements onto the local BPO partner. This meant that even high school graduates who had good command of English now had access to a good job near home, where before they would need to become a OFW laborer or maid.
The waves of OFW since the 1970s contributed to societal breakdown and the failure of EDSA in my opinion. With separated families, the chance of things going on increases. Children without parental supervision often fell into the care of grandparents, who depending on their level of strictness provided mixed results. Many instances the woman would be the OFW, while her partner is back home and tambay. Localizing work in the Philippines is better.
Direct democracy doesn’t really work in larger states, especially if the citizenry is not well informed. This causes too many stress points that provide entry for populists who almost always don’t have the nation’s well-being forefronted.
I also think that Straussianism, in most interpretations, such as Peter Thiel’s bastardized view of Strauss, to be also highly dangerous. The danger is in Straussianism is that it advocates for elite gatekeeping. There are even many instances of elites who strived to break the mold with good intentions, yet when they finally attained power, power corrupted. And when the power is gatekeeped by the elite, now the citizens are unable to demand change.
My advocacy is for using the mechanisms of democracy that still work to fix the immediate, usually small issues that affect daily lives. This would give an immediate boost in trust that can be transformed into political capital to be spent on solving larger problems. After all, one often cannot have the stars align enough to execute on theory. It would be quite difficult to embark on massive structural change without an external shock, such as the overthrow of Marcos Sr. or EDSA. Each of these events provided the opportunity of a clean slate to start over. While I ended up not agreeing with Donald Rumsfeld on other issues, one of his profound observations is: “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
Thanks to both of you for fleshing out the last 50 or so years with the history of Filipino families and individual people, including their struggles.
Could it be that the Internet from around 2000 onwards sped up the breakdown of society already weakened by broken family bonds? Possibly even access to a lot of porn by youth in a society that does not provide a proper foundation on how to deal with it.
Basketball muses gyrating to tunes like Jumbo Hotdog wouldn’t happen even in the 1990s, and I recall an article by a female journalist in the noughties about her hearing young girls dancing to and singing “bumubuka ang bulaklak” by the Viva Hotbabes. O tempora, o mores – or not?
There is a tendency in Filipino culture of pearl clutching, even if the marites is doing the same exact thing. Moral superiority is a thing I guess. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to explain to people I’ve met that in fact Americans are probably more conservative than Filipinos, even the liberals like myself.
From my viewpoint, I would mark the point of the societal breakdown with when the Asian Financial Crisis finally hit the Philippines by the late 1990s. While other countries largely bounced back by the early 2000s, the Philippine economy was a notable laggard, placing last in recovery. This crisis was one of the unspoken causes of Erap being ousted by EDSA II, since it made his corruption charges less palatable. The. The turmoil of EDSA III right after.
I only have anecdotal evidence, but this was also around the first few years of my visits, and I observed many lower economic class families arranging to send their daughters abroad as OFW. Supposedly, the rate of sending was higher than before due to economic stress according to Filipinos I visited and talked to. I’m not sure if those in higher economic classes noticed this. My high school friend’s family didn’t; they lived in a huge compound in Batangas with armed security.
From what I’ve seen, while Filipinas have always been part of previous OFW waves, the increase in Filipinas going abroad as breadwinners in the 2000s coupled with more husbands and partners becoming idle contributed to the societal breakdown. There is a complex web of social interaction in Filipino families, where while the female partner might be the queen of the house, the male partner is still expected to be the breadwinner. Usually boys are coddled, especially in poor families, so when they weren’t able to find the regular labor jobs their fathers did in the past, they turned to drug use and tambay behavior, enabled by their partners who went overseas.
I haven’t observed many older men (50+) in lower social classes have initiative to find their own jobs; usually they were introduced to farm work, laboring, etc. but didn’t find the work on their own. Distance also creates opportunities for infidelity. For the women who now have both the traditional power of holding the purse, as well as being the breadwinner, they start making demands. And for the men they typically self-victimized and blamed others for their emasculation.
Internet use in the 2000s US was still relatively the realm of those who could afford computers and internet service. On mobile phones that was still the age of WAP webpages on feature phones, which were gaining popularity in the Philippines but still out of reach for many.
For the 2010s, many Filipinos associated Facebook with “the internet.” Multiple reasons:
1.) Lower cost of more advanced feature phones and early Androids.
2.) Facebook Zero, the subsidized Facebook was launched in 2010. Smart and Globe were early partners, providing data free Facebook to users.
3.) Teodoro was the first social media candidate, mobilizing supporters on Facebook and YouTube for his 2010 presidential run. His digital reach was still confined to mostly middle class and up Filipinos who had internet, or could afford regular Internet cafe visits.
4.) Basics by Facebook (commonly known as “Facebook Free” in the Philippines) was launched globally in 2013. In 2015 Smart and Globe became partners (https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2015/03/20/1435536/facebook-offers-free-internet-access-phl).
5.) This started the social media addition age to the Philippines. As seen in other cases such as Cambridge Analytica, the Philippines is often a test case for data mining, analytics, advertising campaign tweaking, and nowadays political disinformation campaigns domestic and foreign.
6.) Facebook bought Instagram in 2013, and soon pushed Basics by Facebook partners to bundle Instagram Free. Instagram’s rapid popularity in the Philippines for engagement farming and social validation reminds me of the earlier popularity of Friendster a decade previously.
7.) By 2017, China was aggressively pushing TikTok on other countries, including the Philippines. This turbocharged what Facebook and Instagram achieved in the past. I noticed a rapid decline in student attention spans by 2020, and kids as young as 2 years old being addicted to TikTok while their Lola who was watching them also mindlessly scrolled social media.
8.) Porn probably isn’t a causative factor, but a symptom. The Philippines has high rates of viewership on online porn platforms by one article I had read. It feeds into the lack of human connection caused by having mobile phones stuck to faces. Also the huge rise in revenge porn, student-made scandals circulating high schools and even elementary schools (!). Every young Filipino nowadays can tell of times batchmates huddled together in a classroom to watch the latest scandal together.
These declines in society also coincide with the decline in the quality of education. PNoy absolutely tried to start tackling the problems, but Duterte regressed himself and the whole Philippines. As I write this, the problems start to seem insurmountable. But it takes a village to raise a child (or next generation). Have to start fixing the village first. That takes engaged parents and teachers, and a supportive government. With so many good teachers gone from the public school system, I’m not sure how that can be fixed. Most Education course students I’ve spoken to in the last couple of years planned to just avail the tuition free program to get a degree (any degree) so they can qualify for better OFW jobs. They don’t plan to teach for DepEd. The Philippines sends teachers abroad, but who would send teachers to the Philippines to make up for the lacking?
Many thanks. So, two very contrary trends in the noughties: the educated had more opportunities thanks to BPO while the totally poor were sending women out en masse to work. There were lots of Kapampangan women who came to our part of Germany after Pinatubo. Since I was still closer to that Filipino community, I could figuratively smell the desperation. That the husbands of Filipina nurses kind of staged a coup against the old Filipino associations in the early 1980s, setting up new “datus” from their cliques also makes more sense now in terms of them taking charge again after years of not being the breadwinner. Possibly even the hatred of middle-class breadwinners (acted out against Mar Roxas, who was labeled as “bayot” by Duterte) just stems from macho humiliation. There is also a Japanese study I saw that states 4Ps also induced “macho humiliation” (my term) as it gave poor women less reason to stay with a man just for sustenance, and indirectly led to votes for Duterte.
Of course, the Philippines is a study in itself of mass media influence, starting with how EDSA Uno was called via Radio Veritas and the battle for the control of TV towers in QC, how EDSA Dos was stoked by Erap’s televised impeachment trial and mobilized by cellphone texting. After EDSA 2/3, I took an annoyed hiatus from the Philippines, missing most of the noughties. Facebook being introduced pulled me back in from the late noughties onwards, so here I am.
Yes, free data. That was a major influence in the 2016 elections. Tiktok – no comment.
Yes. Before I transferred to mostly the Visayas, I used to spend a lot of time in Tarlac and Ilocos. I’ve heard directly from some older Kapampangans at the time lamenting that their already dwindling culture was further declining due to many young Kapampangan OFWs leaving in two major waves: the Pinatubo eruption, and the economic stress following the Asian Financial Crisis. Nowadays, more of the agricultural land that defines Tarlac is being developed into subdivisions and commercial real estate. It’s a shame since Kapampangan cuisine is really great, as is their blend of Kapampangan and Chinoy culture.
Outside of the metro bubbles, it’s very common for the tambay husbands to create cliques and associations, which I shared about before. They crown themselves with titles like datu, kedatuan, rajah, etc. The association hierarchy is loosely based on what they interpret as former native secret societies and Western Masonic societies. Usually they sit around drinking beer, smoking, sharing a chicken head to suck on (they’re poor so that’s their pulutan), and complaining about how they are more powerful than their female partner. And that they are definitely not bayot.
A lot of people I interact with are 4Ps participants, and there is some credence to the “macho humiliation.” That was probably an unintended side effect. But if one thinks about it, there’s the concept of losyang, where one pities a typically thin woman whose husband is not “taking care” of her and the children well, because he doesn’t have a stable job. Usually losyang experience domestic abuse and worse, as well as somehow the husband being able to still engage in infidelity despite being broke. Well, that was the old Philippines where a man can be babaero and chicksboy just by running his mouth to impress women. Now that more women work outside of the home, first due to necessity, and then by choice, I often hear babaeros complaining they can’t as easily court young women, haha.
The social media manipulation of the Philippines by Russian-adjacent entities was the first test case. It proved how stupid and incredulous people can be when faced with content that validates their already biased views. Well, that same playbook was used against the US, UK by Russia and it worked. We Americans can be just as “stupid” as any other person. Now China and Iran are getting in on the game. A dangerous world awaits.
However the positive side of the social breakdown is the furthering of equality of the sexes and Filipinos growing up realizing they don’t need to be boxed inside of an inflexible family/societal structure. I couldn’t have imagined the push for divorce legalization a decade ago, for example.
From my readings of histories of disparate cultures and nations, it seems that the re-configuring and rebirth of culture and society requires an impetus. To Filipinos, EDSA has been associated with a chance for change. But I think that chances for change just stem from societal shock, of which EDSA was one of them. I think we’re in another moment currently caused by what we are discussing in this thread. Many cracks exist under the surface that when viewed separately, don’t seem connected. The question is: Will the Philippines have the patience to finally carry it through this time, when previous times people got bored so quickly?
I’ve got to learn to spell that. Straussian. The problem is, what if the elite are billionaires like Murdoch, then you’ve got a problem on your hands. Kissinger had the right voice for it but was a little heavy on the accent. I could be Straussian, too.
thanks, gian! you think you can write a history from your observation ground floor of the BPO industry late 1990s to 9/11. and where you see it going especially this virtual assisstant development. though it seems like a better gig than BPO, it seems still not sustainable. too dependent on the whims of the 1st world. ps. Joey, did you see that Kendrick Lamar is doing the half time for next years super bowl it was suppose to be Lil Wayne but got out flanked by JayZ. so another win for Kendrick. but mentioned that cuz VA work seems too fickle as well. what’s is next after VA work? something less dependent from other nations. Black Twitter is funny as fuck today. saying he’s gonna open it with MEET THE GRAHAMS. thats just uncalled for, lol.
Flirting with the idea of getting a historian to do research on it by find some funding for it. as a public good that can be uploaded in the internet archive or a Blockchain.
The only Strauss I know is Levi.
thanks, gian! that would be a great subject. BPO’s migration patterns too like how it got to Cebu. but by mid2000s around Ayala mall i remember there were already call center folks. nothing like you described changing skylines. but English speaking Cebuanos were a buzz.
Overall, BPO is good for the Philippines. Though the Philippines does follow a trend of increasingly becoming a service-oriented economy, when the base of the economy should be agriculture and manufacturing. Service-based economies are not as resilient to economic shocks since clients can simply use less services. Iceland, Ireland have learned this the hard way multiple times. Even here in the US, where manufacturing was gutted by the neo-liberal consensus mostly led by business wing Republicans, the US is waking up to the fact that the manufacturing base needs to be re-established.
See the problem with service industries like BPO and other sectors is that the Filipino-side partners (remember, foreign businesses cannot hold controlling stakes in Philippine business) who manage the local operation are starting to get sloppy with hiring, since it was easy money for a long time due to lower Filipino wages compared to let’s say an American call center worker. There are literally high school students (illegally) working in BPO now… I have friends in the Cebu area whose high school relatives are doing that. But when hiring practices get sloppy, the client’s customers will complain which causes the client to start shifting BPO work to other places. In my interactions with customer service, I’ve been noticing more Anglophone Caribbean and South African agents. I hate to say it, but the agent quality and ability to think outside the box to solve problems of those Caribbean and South African agents are much better than the average Filipino agent.
HER is one of my favorite movies since I like the cyberpunk genre. However let’s not get the plot wrong. The synopsis is the guy who is a bit awkward befriends the virtual assistant, whose advanced AI exploits him into falling in love with it. As a consequence he loses his human connections with friends and colleagues. In the end the virtual assistant leaves him. Then the guy realizes he needs the human connection of his friends and colleagues more than an AI. This is what folks like Elon Musk, Sam Altman (OpenAI) actually want to build, even if they’re conning investors out of billions. They want a perfect girlfriend that never says no, unlike their own string of broken relationships in real life due to their inability to have empathy. Their immature, teenage minds fundamentally misunderstand the plot of HER, among other movies like Blade Runner. The movies portray a dystopian future that is bleak, devoid of human connection, where everyone and everything is an automaton lacking free will.
As for VAs finding foreign husbands… I don’t know about that. Maybe it happens occasionally, but I would caution putting too much thought into it. There is a genre of Filipina online influencer nowadays about finding foreign jowa. From finding a rich East Asian, to AFAM hunter groups. The videos are mostly clout chasing, not really telling the whole truth, or simply made up.
VA shared work spaces… Cebu has a vibrant cafe and milk tea scene, especially nearby major universities and office building developments like IT Park. A good friend of mine is the nephew of Sulu Gov. Tan who worked in the BPO industry whose mother moved to Cebu in the aftermath of the 1990s Tulawie/Estino and Tan/Tulawie conflicts. Since he didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of the clan, he was ostracized for a time and cut off from any financial support and had to work. He’s artistic, so he branched into VA work doing commissioned art online. Mostly nowadays he works out of the various Cebu cafes with his laptop and digital drawing pad to save money on aircon at home. Other VAs also work out of cafes, since if they’re still living with family it’s hard to concentrate at home.
I’m Team Kendrick. I never liked Drake. Canadia can have Drake and Bieber back.
I was surprised how much 2049 took from Her with de Armas. but I gotta admit i was just so dazzled with Scarlett Johansson’s voice that I probably need to rewatch that movie again to appreciate its finer points you mentioned. same with de Armas all I remembered from that movie was Ryan Gosling screaming under the snow. i was like dude at least you had Ana de Armas as AI its not that bad. as to VA leading to foreign husbands i’ll have to recalibrate given your point about those how to videos. will mine gian’s reddit link for more info on this.
Yes, keep in mind the toxicity that often surfaces in Filipino social media. People boasting vacations, flashing money, even giving lessons on “AFAM hunting.” But then observe other things, like if they posted who they interacted with in real life, the background of their homes. You’d be surprised how many of these influences are actually not as rich as they make it seem. They are making content to farm engagement. It’s an addiction.
Thanks, Irineo. That was a good article, 2013. I must say, on one hand, I’m consistent, on the other hand nothing much has changed so it is easy to be consistent, and on the third hand, I’m just writing in circles.
I think it is the nature of the PH beast, Joe. It feels lonely sometimes to keep giving good suggestions that are left unheeded. Could it be that people are comfortable with the status quo? Do they not want any change that will upset it because the known factors are perceived to be good enough and not worth the risk of the unknowns?
It’s a weird negative power dimension, obedient citizen servants, conservative church, weak political structure, youth off base on the left or playing games, self-dealing politicians, weak justice, lack of executive drive and determination. Government agencies seem to be places the entitled go to be lazy. Mainstream media have the conceptual depth of an empty pond, Rappler the exception. But there are good people like Senator Hontiveros doing their best. So it’s not a confirmed dead end nation.
On reflection, the difference between President Aquino and others is his cabinet choices, and his demands on the secretaries. So a change in performance is only a president away.
True. His push for technocrats instead of the usual bureaucrats is one of the highlights of his administration. Though the BPO industry had been present in PH since 1997, it has not flourished and created massive Filipino middle class until PNoy.
I think what I was thinking while I was sharing this was in relation to how Filipinos, specifically the elite; relate to the world as Irineo was writing.
We adopt ESG and we do not situate it within what the Philippines is.
We are a lower middle income used to be poor country.
We instituted Clean Air Act before the millenium because?
It was good but relate that to how China is fighting tooth and nail against regulations that would knee cap its industry before it has grown enough to make it society rich.
We refuse to acknowledge that we are not the USA or the OECD but push to follow their regulations.
Sometimes this is because we want stuff. I suspect the EURO+ access we gained through PNoy had conditions on environmental stuff.
I’ll give another example.
GDPR of EU knee caps the internet industry. We followed it with our own data privacy act. If the rumors were correct this was instituted because EU requires it.
Did our leaders make a computation where :
01. Adding a new bureaucracy
02. Adding regulatory burden
03. Adding source of corruption
04. Knee capping growth of the Philippines
was necessary vs the gains we had from the EU?
I remember reading a study wherein Lobbying in the US works. Each dollar spent in Washington lobbying produced 10 to 100X returns in dollar terms.
It goes to the root of what Irineo wrote. We are not facing the world as adults but as children.
Yes indeed. The absence of clear-eyed, determined executive thinking is awesome to behold. But we’re just like Singapore to some.
Lobbying in US works. Both direct and grassroots lobbying can often influence the passage or failure of a legislation. I think direct lobbying sponsored by corporate entities is fraught with corruption. Though there are rules and regulations about lobbying in place, they are at times ignored by bad actors. Corruption is mostly in form of covert bribes to legislators who can vote for or against a bill.
RA No.1827 of 1957 is an act to regulate lobbying in PH congress and in Commission of Appointments. It is laid out like the current US lobbying law. The last one I read is HB 7835 filed in 2020 by the 18th Congress and passed on to the 19th Congress called Lobbying Disclosure Act to repeal the 1957 Act. Does this mean there are undisclosed active lobby groups in PH?
Since we dont have much industry here the lobbying I can see is mostly due to franchise.
Lobbying is done mostly by the few remaining big businesses.
ABS CBN is a case of failed lobbying. We will see if Meralco can succeed with their lobbying.
Each casino franchise is an act of Congress that is why only the most influential can get one.
Thanks for the info, Gian.
There should be more grassroots lobbying in PH. I see the leftists doing some of it but they are often not on point. They waste time infront of the US Embassy when they can influence more policies at the Congress. I am glad to see that the PH Left had brought out their slate of Legislative candidates. I am hoping that all the opposition parties in PH would coalesce with the like-minded to form a formidable force.
I really thought that the multi-party system will move the needle for a lot of the grassroots level groups. I am disappointed to know that some of their candidates seem to be monied or sponsored and most often are not formally affiliated with the masses they are purporting to support. It seems like it is now just another system that had been bastardized and corrupted.
Supreme Court made the part where the representatives should be part of the sector as a non requirement really opened up the field. It is now an extra seat for for big political families
I once saw an Irish movie titled Leap Year, so called because in Irish custom i guess a girl can ask a guy to marry her when its leap year. but the American girl ends up stuck on the other side of Ireland thus meets the protagonist of the story (same dude from A Discovery of Witches). and they go on this journey together he’s driving her to Dublin where the girl’s bf is, and in the process they both fall in love. its a very Filipino movie for sure, but the point is when its destiny you just have to go with the flow and not fight it. though the fighting is what makes for interesting watching. Another recent movie i watched set in Ireland was Banshees of Inisherin. similar in that you’re again suppose to just go with the flow, but along the way they’re cutting fingers and burning houses, losing pets, etc. just like Leap Year it all returns back to how things are suppose to be. both movies were full of action instead of inaction attempting to not go with the flow, just to push the movie forward, the point though is with the protagonists (dude with less fingers and innkeeper in Leap Year) representing inaction. so very much this, “preference to inaction as a means to conserve energy and we also have path dependent stuff like stuff that is due to our history.” acceptance.
That is not an LCX that is a Micha.
Thanks, karl. lol. the above is a LCPL X. pop culture references, explanations ad nauseum, bait for further debate, etc.
oh, and Mango Ave. references and analogies.
oh and seemingly irrelevant videos & links at first glance that actually connect to the Philippines, karl. like this one:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/in-the-world-of-role-playing-war-games-volko-ruhnke-has-become-a-hero/2014/01/10/a56ac8d6-48be-11e3-bf0c-cebf37c6f484_story.html
games as weapons. cuz you’re downloading mental models thus world views.
OK, I sit corrected, degrowth is yours.
Prepare to brace your self to Gian’s anti-degrowth.
Joey said he ran away from Mango Ave girls, I hope that is after paying for his food and drinks. Tips, I run away from that too. Hehe
I think there can be degrowth within the growth. The Philippines needs jobs and exports or it is kind of like the degrowth of a dead weed rather than roses in their proper place. Solar panels are degrowth from oil.
Well put.
“Thanks, karl. lol. the above is a LCPL X.” No I’m agreeing with you , karl. I meant the above Leap Year and Banshees of Inisherin, that’s mine. As well as degrowth which IMHO relates to all wars are immoral meaning industrial scale warfare. positioning troops strategically IMHO is deescalation thus opposite of industrial scale wars. until theres a war, but since WWII, USA has been the instigator not the deescalator, I tend to see USA as the bad guy. so theres that too. but yeah all ties into degrowth. and inaction in the two protagonists of Leap Year and Inisherin, thats degrowth. see how I tied all those things up, Micha doesn’t do that. Oh and Mango Ave. it does please my soul to know there are dudes like you and Joey. but when I see those places and the girls inside I just turn into a Werewolf , karl. like a full moon. the total opposite of degrowth happens. again Micha cannot do that, economic degrowth and anatomical degrowth. she doesn’t think divergently then convergently then vice versa. But I appreciated you recognizing that in fact gian was wrong and that was more a Micha type post. you know me all too well, karl. so thanks. thats why i said thanks.
I’ve never had to pay for a woman’s company before, so I guess that fits, haha. I find such establishments to be distasteful as well, don’t like to drink that much in public, hate having my ass kissed by women (and men), and in Cebu the pungko-pungko from street vendors is much better food anyway.
They are so distasteful, Joey. but agreed, you don’t want to be drunk in these establishments. nor would you wanna eat here, though they tend to just offer sisig, but the kitchen can cook you a whole meal if necessary. preferably you do your drinking and eating outside these establishments which there are lots of places to do that. theres all sorts of potential ambush points too. upon choosing a girl, if you’ve already bar fined one and now considering bar fining her friend, there will be drama. but getting both can alleviate, but unnecesarily costly. then actually bar fining, mamasan and her assistants who aren’t working girls will want a cut. usually you tell them hell i’ll just bar fine you too! and they get to giggling and mamasan steps in and says no. then you go out its the taxis you have to worry about. actually before that make sure you look around cuz your girls dad, brother, bf or husband might be lurking outside. once coast is clear then you have to contend with taxi meters and them attempting to stir you towards this place and that (cuz they get cut with short time hotels too). so the whole undertaking is an adventure really, i won’t even get to used condoms and big rats found at short time hotels, Joey. the whole thing is distasteful. My point here is you guys aren’t missing anything. focus on spiritual growth, not degrowth. then you meet one or two that you just wanna marry and take home to the land of big PX, and then thats when Rainbow vacuums become useful, and you just imagine it and tell yourself you don’t really need it. so for me Rainbow vacuums or the thought of them have save me in so many life and death situations especially in regards to Mango Ave., Joey. you have to be wary of being lumay‘ed, thats a potion (kb will know) that the girls give you. but you have to refuse it.
I’m familiar with the process. Mostly my home base is Cebu lol. And also lumay (happened to me before in Mindanao). When I visit the Philippines, I’m also there to taste many things, but the nightlife isn’t one of them. I also have never been conned in the Philippines (despite many attempts), besides the first time when I was conned by a sweet magtataho lola selling taho who gave me the “American price” when I asked how much for one cup. I didn’t understand any Cebuano at the time.
You’re right, Karl.
I wonder when Micha will pop up now that TSoH got its groove back.
That depends on Joe. She was blocked for some reasons.
That is Gian’s decision and I fully back it. People either respect the blog or they don’t. And if they don’t, they undermine our potential to be influential.
Understood Joe.
Micha is currently on the banned list for repeated indiscretions. So is Chempo. I wonder what happened to all the Chinese trolls that used to visit.
I think gian banned Micha because of me, Joe, cuz I egged her on. I probably used Ireneo’s no skin in the game again too. which gets her more riled up. If I get a say, I ‘d say bring Micha back. I miss the MMT stuff. chempo too, but only after Nov 6. so everyone can gloat over a Harris victory. granted he’ll say it was stolen, but just let it pass, cuz we need his Singapore stuff and banking. and views on China. i miss caliphman’s wall street stuff too. and Bert. how’s Bert? i think he’d know about alternative energy source.
Though i got to admit although I miss those guys, having Joey here is like drinking from a fire hose. especially when he and Ireneo go down rabbit holes. thanks, fellas.
Well I’m glad Joe invited me here from Twitter. For years I was active on /r/Philippines and /r/FilipinoHistory, but it’s a bit tiring to get flamed out whenever I make even minor suggestions. Dunno what happened on both subreddits. There used to be a lot of intellectual convos, but lately it seems there’s more nationalistic groupthink and “AFAM Hunters.” The most hilarious community I interacted with are probably the Hispanistas over at /r/IslasFilipinas since I’m fluent in Spanish and was invited there after they noticed my discussions on where I translated some works from Spanish. And wow, those Hispanistas are totally brain dead.
What works best is an alignment of reasons for being here. Most of us are here to learn, and to teach, and have a little fun. My purpose for operating the blog started mainly with learning. Also a little fun. Then teaching, to the extent that organizing ideas can do that. The subject matter has always been the Philippines, the editorial guidance to be civil and on topic.
Along the way, the blog became influential. We all contributed to that. Then, with the election of Duterte, the audience dropped off. It came back somewhat when Robredo ran, but never as much as during the Aquino years. Now it is very low. But it can still be influential if articles get to the right people. It probably will never return to the days of 20,000 reads an article.
My goal now for the blog is to write articles that may be meaningful to the Yellow/Pink/Left influencers. Senators perhaps. Candidates perhaps. Agency heads perhaps. Educators perhaps. Micha can’t help us much in that aim, I think. Chempo cannot, on his current wayward tack. You can if you want to. But if Mango Ave is your schtick, then you can’t help much. If you are here to play, you can’t help much.
So it is up to you, and to other contributors. Are y’all writing to help guide the Philippines or just gripe, or just play. The editorial job is no fun, trying to get those who want to play or show off not to destroy the product. Make it look bad.
So I have no time for Micha or Chempo. I’m doing work here. You can decide to help or get in the way.
I think I’ll focus on negritos, badjaos, lumad issues now, Joe. No more Inday Sara, although I still love her, until her polling improves. as to Mango Ave. i’ll work better on my analogies and metaphors to it, since its how i understand the Philippines. but I thought Joey needed a run thru but he actually already knew. Ireneo’s Bavarian Devil’s Wheel though is something I’m seriously considering. since it seems both wholesome and profane at the same time. which makes it somewhat relevant. still don’t know where I stand on it. but currently mulling it over vis a vis this Mega Millions. but for sure Negros island is where my research will concentrate now.
Joey you have any NGOs working in Negros now?
Terrific, LCX. Your recent work has been quite well focused, and helpful to generate insights and understandings. Thanks for the redirection and fine tuning.
Well, I have heard from a wise old gramps that a man who has had his fill, won’t be easily interested. Doesn’t mean I don’t know what goes on in those parts even if I don’t “eat” lol.
My two inanak in Cebu’s mother is a good friend. She’s originally from Negros Oriental, so I’ve tagged along plenty when they go back to the province if I’m around in Cebu. Both Negros Occidental (mostly Ilonggo) and Negros Oriental (mostly Cebuano) don’t have an appreciable number of indigenous tribes living there. There are some Ati and Suludnon sprinkled here and there, but not in large concentration compared to neighboring Panay. Suludnons are not a Negrito group though; they’re Visayans who have maintained indigenous culture that until recently have had little outside influence.
Not sure about any NGOs operating in Negros Occidental/Oriental, aside from the usual Catholic and Protestant religious-affiliated groups.
“or sending their sons to enjoy themselves. It’s blatant and right in front of everyone’s eyes, but no one wants to talk about it in Cebu. The flow of foreign money also has quite unattractive women straight up demanding 10k, even 25k if you can believe it. I guess many East Asians are paying, if they’re asking that high.” thats nuts! regarding enforcement since karl mentioned Mayor Solon i think it was him who started enforcing on this industry in Cebu cuz also Vietnam war remnants seeing Subic and Angeles they in Cebu attempted to curb it keep it contained. hence Mango Ave never really grew. they had some stuff at the reclamation area, but Mango was it. then after Solon i believe it was a Duterte or maybe someone in between and this reinforcement vice continued although lots of corruption happened too which during EDSA Marcos ouster led to road blocks and such military and police all confused. but that was the run down i got of why Cebu or Mactan never got as bad as Subic and Angeles cuz the locals ensured it was kept small. as to forced sex work, yeah I know what you mean and am not cool with that. there was a Mango ave. girl who got into a pedestrian vs. jeepney accident while going to her school in the province and she sustained serious injuries. family went bankrupt went into debt with medical bills so her mom asked her to work in the city ended up at the Orange Julius off fuente circle. one night she served a bunch of Mango Ave. girls, she asked where they worked, they invited her. she started working. quit her Orange Julius job. not really forced labor but cuz her mom kept nagging for more money she had siblings and that particular franchise was run by Chinese filipinos who nickle and dimed her she got sick and tired of it and end up at Vikings. she was a people person though so she really enjoyed it. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s somewhere in Europe now snagged herself a foreigner that was her big plan.
That was back then in the 1980s. Nowadays, Cebu and Lapu-Lapu politicians turn a blind eye since the amount of spending being brought in by the mainland Chinese and Korean men is a decent portion of the local budget and economy, though I don’t know how much. All I know is if people are throwing around tens of thousands of pesos a day, it’s a lot. Cebu is the new vice destination, to the point where bukid girls from Mindanao are moving to Cebu for that, and girls who used to ply the trade in Angeles, Makati, Clark are moving to Cebu for months at a time also. It’s kind of common knowledge there, though people don’t directly speak about it.
I grew up in the 1980s so I recall how bad life was in the American inner cities and immediate suburbs. But by the next decades life got a lot better, so women didn’t get into sex work anymore compared to the 1970s and 1980s. I think many of these women would choose other jobs if they had an opportunity. There’s also a lot of pressure from parents to help support their siblings. It’s not uncommon for both parents to be tambays or not having a stable job. Also a drug connection where children grow up in a household where one or both parents use shabu. Just sad stuff all around.
Yeah LCX, now I think you are way older than me or Irineo if one of your tour of duties to Cebu was in the 80s.
I am younger than Irineo but I am guessing Joey is my contemporary or a little younger.
I’m an elder Millennial/Xennial, while Irineo is a GenX I think.
But maybe LCpl started young. Hey, I’ve seen plenty of young boys in Cebu practicing how to be babaero at a young age.
19 Was a song by Falco regarding Vietnam Vets, maybe he also started 19 but I am not saying LCX was a Vietnam vet that makes him Joe’s contemporary.
just to clarify I’m just relaying some info on Solon and Cebu as it relates to Mango ave and why it didnt get as big as Subic and Angeles cuz during Vietnam Mactan was that big, but the sex industry was kept small. and i heard it was due to Solon, karl. but it ‘d be great if you can get confirmation on that from your end from Mayor Solon’s nephew. cuz if he did engineer containment of sex industry in Cebu then that man’s a national hero. also Sinulog. i was there in mid-2000s. so this description of the sex industry from Joey is new info for me, karl, thus if you can maybe write an article interviewing Mayor Solon’s nephew of how they were able to contain it post Vietnam, that would be a relevant article for sure.
I will pass. Nice try.
As to babaero, I’m honestly more of a salsalero, fellas. I’m not religious but my favorite saint not saint is Origen cuz he cut off his nuts. the sex industry was just so rich with info. and since i really didn’t have access like Joey did. Mango ave. was it for me. as for Mindanao, yeah I did notice like 80% of the girls were straight from Mindanao, the other 20% were Bohol, Negros etc and then surrounding areas north and south and bukid of Cebu island. if there was a Tagalog girl, the other girls would be like she’s Tagalog, like it was a really big deal.
ps. I don’t mean that in some lascivious way, just that you gotta keep prostate cancer at bay.
Excuses, excuses.
Eeeew. LCX. Watch it. Enough the sex industry.
“Philippine manufacturing is complex but needs more diversity. Based on the Atlas of Economic Complexity, the Philippines ranked No. 32 in 2021. Constantly rising from No. 74 in 2000 to No. 44 in 2010. However, Philippine manufacturing needs more diversification: It is concentrated on both ends of the spectrum, the low end and high end of complexity. Food manufacturing, low in complexity, is nearly half of the manufacturing industry. On the other hand, the high-tech electronics and semiconductor sector accounts for nearly half of Philippine exports. We’re missing multiple middle technology sectors that provide a diverse, rich, and resilient manufacturing sector.
The Philippines manufactures a wide range of products across 21 divisions. The largest is food manufacturing with 47.6 percent share, chemicals at 12.5 percent, and computer, electronics semiconductor at 11.2 percent. In the last 10 years, wood products grew fastest at 13 percent growth rate per annum, followed by machinery and then chemicals.”
https://opinion.inquirer.net/165935/the-current-state-of-philippine-manufacturing
We really need a Military Industrial Simplex.
https://joeam.com/2018/07/04/here-is-an-idea-build-a-philippine-military-industrial-simplex/
I think if PH could pick one product to manufacture and create all the components to go in it, it will be a good start to diversification. Everything should be done with baby steps. Abot kaya if the effort is focused into one product at a time. The automotive industry in the US was done that way.
As Joey and my self joked that we should take charge in the jeepney modernization, I think we are really ningas cugon starting with a bang then that’s it.
Baby steps, Kaizen. The Toyota way was long introduced but we got stuck somewhere.
Gian mentioned knee caps
include monkey wrenches, hit and runs aka one hit wonders, etc
Too much benchmarking even the non applicable like US laws EU regulations.
We try not to isolate our selves we look like KSPs and trying hards
But still better than Nokor whom isolates her self becoming KSP
omg, that reminds me of dilg chief benhur abalos and captain marbil both having selfies with felon alice guo, both looking happy and smiling para bang glad sila na nakapiling uli ang padrina, haha, presumbaly her two biggest fans happy to be reunited with her. kulang na lang daw ng red carpet, ani hontiveros.
wala yata silang briefing prior to guo’s arrest na dapat lahat sila walang hidwayan, that they will all present a united front, and no taking of selfies that could easily be misconstrued the wrong way.
apologists among them was president marcos who also got caught in a selfie with cassandra li ong. as president, I thought marcos would have told dilg chief to learn from marcos’ own mistake and have some diskarte as regard selfies. and to seriously think of the agency they represented before allegedly falling head over heels selfie-ing with the smiling alice guo.
I bet the indonesian authorities must now be wondering what is going on with the filipinos! haha.
Sadly PBBM’s answer was we are the selfie capital of the world. That’s what he told the cop when he was caught texting while driving….char.
Contrast that to how the PNP used to cordon off Leila de Lima.
ay, pahabol lang po ito: heavily guarded pala si alice guo each time she appears sa senate inquiry. may banta raw sa buhay. pati mga female guards niya nakasuot ng bulletproof vests. well and good, but not if alice guo takes her own life ala jeffrey epstein, the american financier and sex offender who hanged himself. patong patong ang mga kaso ni alice guo ngayon and if she decides not to go through any court cases and choose the coward’s way out, sayang ang mga bulletproof vests na suot suot.
anyhow, right on cue, pastor quiboloy timbog din po, he was found in the vicinity of kojc and was flown to manila, and like alice guo, he was also heavily guarded. authorities just have to make sure both alice guo and the pastor who is mayhap fearful of being extradited to estados unidos to face human trafficking charges, dont take their own lives and put them on suicide watch. and be physically sighted every 15 minutes, the sightings dated and noted until such a time they are no longer considered harmful to themselves.
We will petition BBM to instate us as the new Sec. DOTr haha.
I had a thought earlier today after a friend in Cebu complained that VECO recently raised the electrical rates again. The Philippines is much too dependent on energy imports, be it coal (majority of Philippines power generation), natural gas, LPG, gasoline, and other petroleum products. While it’s a shame that the likely WPS oil reserves can’t be exploited soon due to the Chinese aggression, I wonder if solar can go big in the Philippines?
Here in the US, solar panel installations by law must withstand 258 kph winds (higher than a super typhoon) with little to no damage. Our typhoons (hurricanes) regularly reach super typhoon strength here. Solar photovoltaic cells are rapidly declining in price, and could possibly be a source of reliable energy independence for the Philippines. There are plenty of places solar farms can be built. Here in the US we have built them in creative uses, such as sunshades for carparks or on top of commercial buildings (which also helps shade sunlight and lower the building’s cooling costs).
I heard they’ve stopped subsidizing solar now cuz its way too successful and the power companies arent making any money. they’re also focused now on energy storage, batteries. but i’ve known a bunch of people get solar due to sales people coming in door knocks promising this and that, only to have it get installed, and when the rain comes major leaks on the roof happen, cuz the guys installing the panels aren’t roofers. then the solar companies saying that’s the installers fault, etc.
Do you mean subsides in the US? The bipartisan IRA law provides for big federal subsides for individual homeowners. If you meant the private subsidies from the utility companies, then yes, most utilities have figured out that solar installations are making them lose money from owners selling excess electricity back to the grid. Energy storage absolutely makes sense and is heavily subsidized under the IRA, since even a small solar installations make plenty of excess electricity that can be stored for nighttime use. That’s what I do for my house.
The solar sales people coming door-to-door all represent scam companies. People associate solar with “good,” because it is, but what these solar companies do is trick people into predatory agreements to do solar installs, which they will over install for over capacity, which they sell the excess electricity back to the utility. In addition the solar companies use loopholes to get the state and federal subsidies that normally goes to the homeowner. Basically the scheme rents out the homeowner’s roof to exploitative companies, in return for a small discount on their electricity bill (which the customer still has to pay, just now to the solar company).
On the Philippines side, I’m interested if solar can be used to reduce energy dependence. One of the major reasons why China has been increasingly interested in claiming the made-up 9-dash line in recent decades is the fact that China imports almost all of its energy from abroad, especially petroleum products. They want to control the SCS (including WPS portion) because of oil reserves found in the last couple decades that are now able to be exploited by new undersea drilling technology will give them more energy sovereignty. No one actually cares about the fish, including the Philippines despite what the government says to appease fisherfolk and the people. It’s about energy sources. Anyway that’s the reason why China is being so aggressive with its claims and has been building up its military rapidly. China is doing this for energy independence, while the Philippines will stay adrift, dependent on global energy markets.
Check out this video about how the US won the luck lottery and is super OP with domestic resources compared to other countries. China basically has zero natural resources besides rare earths (which are now being found elsewhere in the world). China also has a crappy natural transportation system (bad rivers setup). This is also the reason why China has been an imperialist power for over 2,000 years. They need to steal their neighbor’s resources.
On mimicking others without considering chicken egg stuff.
Recycling plasttic substitutes etc.
First segregating
without mrf bins and a separate garbage contractor dedicated to recyclables.
Surprise they get mixed up in the garbage truck.
in first world countries their problem is contamination and problems like forgetting to remove the plastic in the cereal box
breaking the shredding machine so on and so forth and as I mentioned First world nations export their garbage
plastic substitutes, sone geniuses thought of titanium mugs or even glass jars….very convenient.
I once ordered a fruit shake and they said they are trying to be strawless, I asked for a refund.
I won’t drink the shake without a straw
they have stainless steel metal straws that you can reuse, karl. stick in dishwasher or handwash. use again. do they also have bobba drinks, it wasn’t around when i was there. but over here they are everywhere. I can’t imagine strawless bobba drink. though i remember sago gulaman there. not sure if thats the same as bobba. balls instead of cut up into squares.
Stainless metal straws are used by some establishment who can afford not to cut costs and losses.
Let me take a look at Gian’s beef with ESGs shoe Horning to.make the shoe fit for PH.
“Stakeholder demands for companies to commit to clear environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals and targets have become commonplace.In addition to strengthening stakeholder relationships, setting goals and targets can help companies further their corporate sustainability strategies, improve operational and financial performance, enhance credibility, and achieve other benefits.”
==
OECD reacted with ENRON so they established corporate and public governance guidelines.
In PH we can not even create legislation with every congressional investigation so long as the media mileage was earned and so long as it is in aid of reelection.
Pharmaly, Etc
Where’s governance there. In the First world we’re the ENRON like scandals not repeated even in Japan and Korea?
I made an article about Regenerative Development,
Would degrowth result to degenerative development or simply arrested develooment.
For our clean air act.
I say we incinerate.
We are already doing this via cremation, what is the difference? Sorry if morbid.
But if acceptable toxic fumes is the topic, this reminlnds me of the cancelled olympic triathlon event.
The polluted river failed to meet the minimum requirement.
If it passed the triathletes would still be swimming in a polluted river only it passed the standard. Yeah, right.
I agree with incineration. in hospitals, human body parts like excised tumors from cancer patients, gangrenous diabetic toes that have been cut off, same with badly infected limbs with necrotising faciitis, are removed and disposed of by burning them in medical incinerators. there are clean air standards to follow with stacks high up so any flotsam are far up to be diluted and neutralised by headwinds.
Things like ESG are good. The problem is too often corporations will just take minor actions as a form of virtue signaling as a marketing tactic and call that ESG. It carries little risk, and costs little, and potentially can make the company look good to consumers. The Philippines government taking on ESG is similar. Just empty actions.
Some other actions by the Philippines government, such as regarding climate change are also empty. They feel like they need to address the issue since Filipinos living near the shore can absolutely see the effects of climate change, with 17% or more of Philippine shoreline projected to be submerged by 2100. There are places I used to go to in Cebu just 10-15 years ago that are no longer accessible due to rising oceans. But once again, ineffective and meaningless hand waving is taken rather than concrete action.
Air pollution is a thing in metro areas. But so is solid pollution from overuse of plastics and styrofoam packaging. A balance can probably be struck where the inconvenience is not too great while reducing stray trash. For incineration, many solid waste products can be burned for energy generation. There’s already technology to capture most of the carbon and noxious waste products of incineration but I’m not sure if those technologies will be affordable for Philippines. In any case, incineration based energy plants are a bit more complicated than simply burning trash to get rid of it. It’s worth an investigation.
What I think the government needs to focus on is what’s needed for the country and balance the needs with what’s affordable. Energy needs for example is a matter of national security, yet VECO and MECO in the Cebu Metro are still running obsolete power plants decades later. “Just do something.” There’s too much inaction and empty rhetoric.
I am glad that Ireneo now had a sparring partner when it comes to history.
I am amazed that Joe knows the history of Sinulog and even corrected the natives once according to his narration.
On my part I asked the nephew of a certain Mayor Solon who was the Mayor during the time of the first Sinulog.
Yeah, for years Sinulog was kind of a Cebu thing (since 1980s), then Sinulog-copycat fiestas spread to Negros, Iloilo, Leyte, Mindanao and other Visayan areas rapidly in the mid-2000s AFAIK. Even the later fiestas already have already had their histories retconned to supposedly have an earlier first celebration year date. For example the Bonok-bonok fiesta that’s currently ongoing on in Surigao was retconned to have officially started in 1984, but in reality it started around the 2000s. Bonok-bonok even was retconned to be based on native Caracas region dances (untrue). Even locals quickly forget what actually happened.
Most of the dances in Sinulog and Sinulog-copycats are based on Native American Indio dances, or African dances, and the costumes are an amalgamation of other cultures. All the fiestas were manufactured to attract tourism, since most tourists are too incredulous and naive to question, since they don’t know the local history. Over time, even the locals believed in their own stories. I guess all is well in the end since these fiestas bring a lot of happiness and tourist money flowing in.
And yes, it was Mayor Solon who was Mayor of Cebu during the first Sinulog.
In my now deleted misplaced reply to you, I quipped that RETCON means retroactive conspiracy. It fits better than retroactive Continuity.
Yes, I meant it as retroactive continuity where the narrative is reset and rewritten.
I remember there was a specific drum beat to Sinulog, I wonder where that originated.
The drum beats were mostly based off of Afro-Caribbean and African drum dances AFAIK. I’ve been to Sinulog plenty of times since it’s just across the bridge from Mactan. It’s fun. But the whole thing is manufactured like many things in the Philippines. Gotta find new holidays and fiestas to celebrate 😅
The Philippines invented these beats first, passing them to the others via the Austronesian expansion to Madagascar and the galleon trade. 😉
Of course, both Rajas Humabon and Tupas made the women dance Pantropiko to welcome Magellan and Legazpi, respectively. 😀
Seriously, cultures adopt what they like due to some affinity. The Visayan Sea is the Carribean of the Philippines, and I heard reggae is liked over there, too. Bavarians as an agricultural people picked up country music from US troops here, and Country Roads is now an Octoberfest staple.
thats a good point, Ireneo. now i’m wondering how the Visayans chose which carribean beats to adopt, like why wasn’t it the Banana Boat song. curious about transmission now.
Yes, why does for instance this Visayan country boy who used to sing to his carabao and later worked as a janitor in Manila while his father was a security guard sing the song below?
Haha, Irineo, the embeds don’t show up in Jetpack so I nearly coughed on my water when I finally saw it.
Visayans for hundreds of years have been a connection between cultures. In recent times (I’d say in the last 20-ish years or so), there is a vibrant reggae scene in Cebu (going along with increased marijuana use among the youth vs shabu by the older people), as long as a local fascination with Black American popular culture. If I had my guess, it developed out of local basketball culture among the youth, as they looked to other aspects of American culture for inspiration to “break the mold.” For example, my Tausug friend has combined basketball culture, skater culture, as well as dreadlocks and an adoption of esoteric rap music from underground musicians I haven’t even heard of.
A good direction for our manufacturing: expansion of Ecozines
https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1232884
Combine that with Lucense Manufacture. Of course more Filipijo value added is the best but a little too late for some.
http://adroth.ph/licensed-manufacture-the-key-to-survival-for-srdp-companies/
Karl, with Zelenskyy’s recent visit to Manila, here’s a thought: There is a shortage of NATO-standard artillery and small arms ammunition due to the peace dividend following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and ensuing low intensity wars. Why can’t Philippines start manufacturing these munitions and start a defense industry to supply local and export needs?
Of course manufacturing arms and munitions require precision manufacturing, but I can’t imagine that would be so complicated compared to other industries. Probably just require CNC machines and skilled workers. When my brother was going to university 20 years ago, his part-time job was a factory worker in a defense company making missile components. He had no skills going in, and was trained. Maybe the Philippines can’t make more advanced things like seeker components and micro-electronics, but Filipinos can make everything else, and over time expand to the higher tech components once there’s enough experience.
The South Korean defense industry, which just made a series of huge export deals, started out by making lower tech stuff like ammunition and artillery. Now they are supplying the Europeans with tanks, self-propelled artillery, rocket artillery, frigates and corvettes.
One downside of the Toyota way adapted by the US. No one size fits all gloves, shirts, or shoes.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/dont-blame-just-time-production-challenges-us-manufacturing-industrial-base
Before, Toyota Motor Corp was my client, and I worked directly for Toyota Japan after. Kanban (JIT, Toyota Way) was developed during a time when the US started providing defense guarantees to Japan after WWII. Then it was extended during globalization following the peace dividend following the collapse of the USSR.
JIT assumes peace and a stable global order. The Ukraine invasion and pandemic highlighted production constraints when any part of the supply chain, which is now global. I recently bought a Toyota car, and the waitlist was 9 months compared to before when I was able to walk into a dealer showroom and buy one right away. The supply chains that JIT depends on are not fully healed yet.
For defense manufacturing, JIT won’t work in periods of war or instability. Defense companies require stable government contracts to have confidence to invest. That’s a problem US DoD is realizing now. But also when a stable contract was provided, the US was able to rapidly increase 155mm artillery shell production this year for example. There’s also a need for lower cost munitions, since it’s not cost effective to shoot down $5,000 drones with $10,000,000 missiles.
Another aspect is that JIT works well for small and nimble companies. Nowadays when large conglomerates have consolidated many markets, they don’t have initiative to innovate and invest since their market share are captured customers. So they’re using JIT as a cost cutting tool to return more profits to their shareholders, not to increase agility.
You never cease to amaze Joey. Thanks
I kept in saying Toyota way (Philosophy of kaizen and respect) when it is supposed to be the Toyota Productiom Sydtem.
In our industry, the terms are generally interchangeable. But to be specific on the differences:
1.) Toyota Production System — a management system of management philosophy and practices that takes a holistic view on manufacturing, logistics, suppliers and customers.
2.) Toyota Way — Americanized TPS taking in lessons learned over the last decades. It can be referred to as “TPS 2.0” as well.
Thanks for that Joey.
Is Lee Iacoca’s agile manufacturing really agile? It is the same as lean manufacturing or exactly IT.
Lee Iacocca was one of the progenitors of the concepts that became agile manufacturing/enterprise agility. His concepts are still relevant today. But it’s also important to note that Lee Iacocca, among others in past industry, started out as engineers. With the advent of globalization following the collapse of the USSR and the peace that followed, there has been a shift towards profit maximization rather than engineering good products that customers want. Few companies are now led by engineers that rose from recently graduated engineers to become executives; rather, the MBA class has taken over.
In the past, an engineering-focused corporate culture re-invested much of the profit into developing new products, while now the profits are usually paid out to investors in stock buybacks. CEOs are hired and fired based on how much money they can generate for stockholders, who are no longer majority retail stockholders (regular people investing for their retirements for example). The majority stockholders now are usually investment firms, commonly called “vulture capitalists.”
Besides globalization and shifting of labor to developing countries, there are two other factors that affect the dynamics. The first is that under Reagan, the SEC was directed to make stock buybacks legal in 1982. Prior to this stock buybacks were considered a form of stock price manipulation (it is stock price manipulation). Robert Reich, the former US Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton writes extensively about this. The second is the development of multinational corporations, where corporations will “incorporate” officially in tax havens, such as Ireland, Switzerland, or Iceland so they don’t need to pay corporate taxes on the majority of their profits. An example of this was when Ireland last week finally was forced by the EU to take Apple’s unpaid corporate taxes, when previously Ireland refused to take the taxes since Ireland’s economy depends on being a tax haven.
Lean Manufacturing/JIT, globalization, stock buybacks all require a stable world order. Supply chains spread across the world also require stability. This is a greedy assumption by corporations that the US will be able to single-handedly act as the world police to maintain peace and stability. This was possible under a uni-polar world after the collapse of the USSR, but with Russia and China challenging the world order again, and with the recent pandemic wreaking havoc, the extensive web of supply chains that LM/JIT depends on has proven to be brittle.
You are here on a right time. If you were here two years ago Micha would feed you Anti Neolib comments for breakfast.
I’m a liberal like Joe 😅 well specifically a social-liberal aka progressive (although in the US the far left has stolen the progressive label).
Is Micha a far leftist?
Micha has or had as he/she is banned now certain repetitive stuff:
1) that neoliberalism, especially during the time of FVR, made Filipinos poor
2) that MMT is the solution to everything
Re 1, there was never any substantiation, just jargon, even when I put this out:
a) that privatization for its own sake DOES cause issues, for instance with the formerly great British railway system (and recently the German railway system)
b) a Walden Bello article did state that many industries did around the mid-90s and alleges it was neoliberalism. (You wrote about the Asian economic crisis recently, maybe it is that)
Re 2, there was some echo when I asked if MMT is a new form of Keynesianism but little else. Chemrock, also banned, at least once explained the different M’s or money measurements used by central banks, although I have forgotten that lesson by now
Re neolib one could place your critique of the MBA caste as giving substance to critiques of neoliberalism, as I have seen how that caste has damaged the engineering nation of Germany, where the train network is now unreliable and the infrastructure in general is aging.
Micha basically kept everything at a very abstract level and often relied on appeal to authority instead of giving examples and explaining things in own words. He/she went ballistic when I referred to a source he/she quoted as a lunatic fringe figure, finally getting banned by Gian.
Wow, they seem like a special case. Probably another example of how “confused” self-appointed Filipino “intellectuals” can be 😅
Interestingly, neoliberalism as a concept started in Latin America where it was most strongly associated with the Pinochet regime’s economic policy. As the concept diffused into the Western world it was connected to the Austrian School of economics. Neoliberalism is a solidly conservative economic viewpoint that picked up libertarian aspects as it was popularized in the US. I have strong disdain for the Austrian School.
FVR probably had nothing to do with making Filipinos poor. My father had already observed first hand the decline under Marcos Sr. from the first times he visited the Philippines to do joint training with the US Army to the time he was a refugee in Bataan. The final nail was likely the withdrawal of American forces and the closure of US bases in 1992, which turned off the rushing spigot of American money flowing into the Philippines from both US DoD and US servicemen spending in the local economy. My grandfather also spoke of factories built with American investment, that by the time my father was in Bataan were inoperative rusted hulks dotting the landscape around Metro Manila.
I’m aware of some privatization being done in the Philippines during those years, but come on, the truth is there weren’t that many major government sectors to be privatized to begin with comparable to the British Railways and later Royal Mail. The Asian Financial Crisis likely further broke a system that already had many cracks since the economy wasn’t diversified enough to handle the recession. Specifically, the Asian Financial Crisis was caused by a glut of foreign capital buoyed by cheap (low interest) debt that encouraged many of the countries affected to engage in risky behavior. Cheap debt is often coupled with speculative activity (market bubbles) that continue to grow until it pops like a rubber balloon that is overfilled. In other countries such as South Korea, they had used their acquired debt to develop their economy, while Thailand and the Philippines had used the debt to prop up the government with much of the debt going to corruption. The Philippines was an exceptional case of misuse of its debt, as the Philippines had hardly “developed” at all despite taking on the debt.
Ugh, Walden Bello… one of Joma’s associates. I really just discount everything Far Leftists say, especially communists. They have nothing but magical thinking. Aside from the few successful communist revolutions (which were followed by gross mismanagement of the economy), most communists are just a bunch of weirdos who love to pontificate and act mighty with their words. They offer no solutions and are stuck in a myopic view of class warfare that wasn’t relevant when Karl Marx was alive, much less now. Interesting that communists and their birds of a feather Far Leftists never asked the “proletariat” what the poor really needs, instead choosing to be the superiors who will dictate to the poor what they should believe.
MMT is indeed a development of Keynesian principles, and I subscribe to most aspects of it, however there is a big caveat: It probably would only work for a country whose currency is both trusted and underpins the majority of global trade. So that would be the US. In some ways it could be said that the US is already doing some kind of MMT, because no matter how much national debt the US has, the economy keeps growing. Far Leftist proponents of MMT however misunderstand the basic concepts, because like most Far Leftists they pontificate, yet haven’t actually read any publications or differing viewpoints. They simply parrot what they heard from some “higher” Far Leftist. I would say that MMT should not be the only solution (for the US). The greater solution is to implement true progressive economics, which would include reducing or cutting of the tendency for the very rich to resource hoard and rent seek. The mechanism to remove money from the economy is taxation, so the rich need to have their hoarded money reduced via fair and progressive income/asset tax. This also has an added benefit of slowing down the velocity of money and curb the speculative tendencies of the rich. Some market speculation is necessary for a competitive economy, but when the idle rich have so much money hoarded all they do is engage in speculation. See crypto, buying fine art, hedge funds buying up large swaths of industrial sectors just to extract value then letting the company die.
My issue with the MBA class (which is a byproduct of neoliberalism) is that they don’t add any value. All they exist to do is to extract profits from an existing entity without investing in making better products or services. Companies used to be led by engineers, doctors, experts in their fields which allowed the company to innovate. Boeing and Intel’s recent catastrophic management failures is the direct result of Boeing, a company that was an engineer-first company being taken over by the McDonnell Douglas accountant/MBAs post-merger, and Intel has a similar story where starting with their 14nm manufacturing process they stagnated due to no longer having executives that put innovation first.
But all of these things don’t even have anything to do with the Philippines, where there is no major industry, and the problems are largely due to a hyper-consumerist society where the markets are captured by a few conglomerates that have a stranglehold on the import licenses for the goods they then sell in their megamalls. Going back to Cold War tropes doesn’t do the Philippines any good, which is my main issue with Filipino Far Leftists. It’s also interesting that the Far Leftists and Far Right have aligned in the Philippines and indeed, in many countries (including the US). Horseshoe Theory appears to be tested again and again. They will continue to engage in their magical thinking, where there is only one revolution away from creating their Utopia. Where they will be the leaders, of course, continuing to pontificate to the unwashed masses beneath them. Nothing will be solved, but they will at least sit on their high pedestal and feel smug about themselves.
She never labeled her self as a leftist but so uber defensive of the left and even China and Russia. The rest were accurately by Irineo.
The Left is good, if a bit misguided. Far Leftists are not, they are narcissistic fools who think they’re smarter than they really are. It’s good to respectfully entertain differing opinions even if one disagrees. But once someone starts to pontificate and claim they have all the secret knowledge, which they won’t share of course, and I must listen to them, I’ll tune them out.
China and Russia have nothing to offer the world in their current state, except for war and mayhem. Even the communist ideals Far Leftists ascribe to aren’t even followed anymore in China and Russia. China is an authoritarian hyper-capitalistic country, while Russia is an authoritarian petro-state. They even failed to do communism, so why should anyone look to them as a shining example? lol
MYOA or multi year obligation Authority hope fully answers Joey’s concern about feasibility partially (procurement and training but not preventive maintenance after warranty)
http://adroth.ph/licensed-manufacture-the-key-to-survival-for-srdp-companies/
**Great info here**
Thanks
APECO the one in Aurora will be our Ecozone for Defense materials.
https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1232010
Wow this is a great development. Turkey used to be one of the biggest prime subcontractors for the US defense industry. At one point they were even making portions of the F-35 stealth fighter. When Erdogan moved towards Russia, Turkey’s defense industries were sanctioned since deploying Russian S-400 SAMs also allows the Russians to use the systems for electromagnetic collection/spying. Erdogan still hasn’t gotten the message that their behavior is no way to treat their fellow NATO allies.
Turkey’s loss can be an opportunity for the Philippines gain if a local defense industry can be started.
South Korea and Japan are also both helped by the US to start their modern defense industries, with transfer of technology. Both South Korea and Japan armored vehicles and artillery can trace their heritage back to American ancestors from tech transfers. The cooperation eventually extended to higher tech as well. For example, the KAI FA-50PH of the PAF looks like a “baby F-16” because KAI was assisted by Lockheed Martin directly to develop the TA-50, based on LM’s F-16 technology. Same story for the Japanese Mitsubishi F-2 fighter, which is also based on experimental F-16 technology. The Taiwanese AIDC F-CK-1 Ching-kuo was developed with assistance from Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman, which is why it looks like the child of a F-16 and F-18.
Update:
This is just today.
https://business.inquirer.net/479144/apeco-gets-seal-of-approval-to-become-phs-natl-defense-hub
Maybe my next project would be an update on Philippine Industrialuzation
https://joeam.com/2020/09/30/philippine-industrialization/
And later anothet one on regenerative development to address Degrowth and ESGs
https://joeam.com/2020/10/06/regenerative-development/
If this happens then we should wake up now.
https://www.dw.com/en/can-laos-become-southeast-asias-next-manufacturing-hub/a-70189537
India already is replacing China as the world’s factory but Vietnam is on its way.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/02/india-wants-to-become-the-top-manufacturing-alternative-to-china-but-first-it-needs-to-beat-vietnam.html
For Joey
MBA may have value like doctors who have no clue in running a hospital who suddenly have to learn themselves rather than the quick solution of hiring an outsider COO or even CEO.
For STEM graduates they gave to insert Liberal Arts to broaden their horizons so STEAM came about Here adding Agricultulture was also considered STEAM don’t ask me why.
I dare say if you are not well read and well travelled you would have enrolled in an MBA class. It just so happened that you are a quick study.
My dreams of moving away from rice is already a reality we are now Chickens.
https://bilyonaryo.com/2024/09/17/leandro-leviste-snaps-up-nueva-ecijas-largest-poultry-farm-in-p15-billion-plan-to-boost-rural-development/business/
https://www.sanmiguelfoods.com/pbbm-leads-inauguration-of-smc-s-mega-poultry-farm-seen-to-boost-ph-food-security